In Berkeley, California in 1988, Mark O'Brien is a poet who is forced to live in an iron lung due to complications from polio. Due to his condition, he has never had sex. After unsuccessfully proposing to his caretaker Amanda, and sensing he may be near death, he decides he wants to lose his virginity. After consulting his priest, Father Brendan, he gets in touch with Cheryl Cohen-Greene, a professional sex surrogate. She tells him they will have no more than six sessions together. They begin their sessions, but soon it is clear that they are developing romantic feelings for each other. Cheryl's husband, who loves her deeply, fights to suppress his jealousy, at first withholding a love poem that Mark has sent by mail to Cheryl, which she eventually finds. After several attempts, Mark and Cheryl are able to have mutually satisfying sex, but decide to cut the sessions short on account of their burgeoning feelings.
Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) is a young novelist who is struggling to recreate the early success of his first novel but unable to commit to any of his ideas. With his introverted personality and idealistic view of what it means to be in love, Calvin also struggles in finding relationships, feeling most women are only interested in an idolized and preconceived notion of who they believe him to be.
The film opens with Super 8 footage depicting a family of four standing beneath a tree with sacks over their heads and nooses around their necks. An unseen figure saws through a branch acting as a counterweight, causing their deaths by hanging.
Clayton Hammond (Dennis Quaid) attends a public reading of his new book, The Words. Clayton begins reading from his book which focuses on a fictional character named Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), an aspiring writer who lives in New York City with his girlfriend, Dora (Zoe Saldana). Rory borrows some money from his father (J. K. Simmons), gets a job as a mail supervisor at a literary agency and attempts to sell his first novel, which is repeatedly rejected by publishers.
The film begins with a plot structure based on a progression of chapters titled as "Voyages" in Hart Crane's life loosely related to Crane's lyric poem of the same name. In the first "Voyages", a depiction is made of an early attempt by Crane to take his own life. Among the other opening "Voyages", the audience is also shown depictions of several same sex relationships which Crane had throughout his lifetime in semi-graphic portrayal consistent with the film's rating. Crane's life is shown progressing through the various "Voyages" in the film, largely portrayed through his troubled relationship with the father, his close relationship to his mother, and his frustrating relationship to his job in advertising as a copyrighter in New York City. In the final "Voyages", Crane's difficult relationship to alcoholism is depicted, ending with his final "Voyage" on a small cruise ship at sea in the vicinity of Mexico where Crane ended his life by his own hand.
Nick Flynn (Dano) is an aspiring writer who works at a homeless shelter where his estranged father Jonathan (De Niro) is a client. Jonathan, an alcoholic ex-con and self-proclaimed "master storyteller", left Nick's mother Jody (Moore) years earlier to raise Nick on her own. She eventually committed suicide, for which Nick feels responsible. Jonathan gets into fights with the other clients, and Nick is tempted to throw him out. Nick and Jonathan get into an intense argument, during which Jonathan tells Nick that they are the same. The stress of seeing his father again drives Nick to drink heavily and abuse drugs, costing him his relationship with his girlfriend and coworker, Denise (Olivia Thirlby).
An idealistic reporter, Ward Jansen, and his younger brother, Jack Jansen, investigate the events surrounding a murder in an effort to exonerate a man on death row, Hillary Van Wetter. Van Wetter has been jailed for the murder of an unscrupulous local sheriff, Thurmond Call. Call had previously stomped Van Wetter's handcuffed cousin to death. Van Wetter is now awaiting execution. The Jansens are helped by Ward's colleague, Englishman Yardley Acheman, and Charlotte Bless, a woman whom Van Wetter has never met but who has fallen in love with him and is determined that he should be released and that they should marry. In prison Van Wetter regularly receives correspondence from her.
Marty Faranan (Farrell) is a struggling writer in Los Angeles, California who dreams of finishing his screenplay, Seven Psychopaths. Marty's best friend, Billy Bickle (Rockwell), is an unemployed actor who makes a living by kidnapping dogs and collecting the owners' cash rewards for their safe return. His partner-in-crime is Hans Kieslowski (Walken), a religious man with a cancer-stricken wife, Myra. Billy helps Marty with Seven Psychopaths, suggesting he use the "Jack of Diamonds" killer, perpetrator of a recent double murder, as one of the seven "psychopaths" in his script. Marty writes a story for another psychopath, the "Quaker", who stalks his daughter's killer for decades, driving the killer to suicide and ultimately cutting his own throat to follow him to hell.
In 1947, on the day his father is buried, Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) is invited by his friend Chad to meet Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) and Moriarty's 16-year-old wife Marylou (Kristen Stewart). Sal befriends Dean, smoking marijuana with him and visiting a jazz nightclub where they meet saxophonist Walter (Terrence Howard), who also befriends them. Dean gets a job as a chauffeur (having previously been a car thief). Sal teaches Dean how to write before another friend, Carlo Marx (Tom Sturridge), leaves with Dean for Denver.
A recently widowed single father, Jim Grant (Robert Redford), is a former Weather Underground militant wanted for a 1980 Michigan bank robbery and the murder of the bank's security guard. He has been hiding from the FBI for over thirty years, establishing an identity as a defense attorney near Albany, New York. When Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon), another former Weather Underground member, is arrested on October 3, 2011, an ambitious young reporter, Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf), smells an opportunity to make a name for himself with a national story. His prickly editor, Ray Fuller (Stanley Tucci), assigns him to follow up. Ben's ex-girlfriend, Diana (Anna Kendrick), is an FBI agent, and he presses her for information about the case. She tells him to look up a Billy Cusimano (Stephen Root). Billy, an old hippie with a history of drug arrests who runs an organic grocery, is an old friend of Sharon Solarz and a former client of Jim's. Billy is disappointed that Jim doesn't want to take Sharon's case, and he conveys this information to Ben when Ben questions him.
Morris Lessmore sits on a balcony in the French Quarter of New Orleans writing a memoir. Suddenly a storm strikes, blowing Morris’s writing out of his book and blowing him off the balcony. While Morris frantically grabs for his book, the storm blows away the buildings.
Rambabu (Pawan Kalyan) is a Hot-Blooded, High Tempered Mechanic who has a kind heart as well as a tendency to react to various social incidents shown or published in the electronic media. After studying his mentality, Ganga (Tamanna), a cameraman from NC Channel offers him a Job as a Journalist and he accepts it. Ex-Chief Minister Jawahar Naidu (Kota Srinivasa Rao) tries to collapse the Government and regaining the CM post and is strongly supported by his son Rana Babu (Prakash Raj), a newbie to politics. Meanwhile, a reputed Journalist Dasaradh Ram (Surya) brings the proofs and required information about the scams and atrocities committed by Jawahar Naidu, only to be brutally murdered by Rana Babu.
The film opens with a man leaving his Moscow apartment building. On his way out he notices strange activity in the basement, but ignores it. As he leaves, the entire apartment building is destroyed in an explosion.
As the film opens Eichmann has been captured in South America. It is revealed that he escaped there via the "rat line" and with forged papers. Arendt, now a professor in New York, volunteers to write about the trial for The New Yorker and is given the assignment. Observing the trial, she is impressed by how ordinary and mediocre Eichmann appears. She had expected someone scary, a monster, and he does not seem to be that. In a cafe conversation in which the Faust story is raised it is mentioned that Eichmann is not in any way a Mephisto (the devil). Returning to New York, Arendt has massive piles of transcripts to go through. Her husband has a brain aneurysm, almost dying, and causing her further delay. She continues to struggle with how Eichmann rationalized his behavior through platitudes about bureaucratic loyalty, and that he was just doing his job. When her material is finally published, it immediately creates enormous controversy, resulting in angry phone calls and a falling out from her old friend, Hans Jonas.