Hollywood 1940, a pre-pubescent town, adorned with orange groves, pretty girls hoping to make it big in the movies, and gangsters like Bugsy Siegel, finding fertile ground.

The Great Depression may be over but war is on the horizon as a young man, Guff, with a peculiar talent for remembering numbers and patterns arrives with his friend, Nick, aka Picnic, a light-fingered pickpocket.

The Grauman's Chinese, the movie studios, his girlfriend, Julie, and the warm sun backdrop the events of the plot. Drafted, Guff's prowess takes him to encryption, German secrets, General George Patton, and the atom bomb. The decade's tumultuous events provide spice to Guff's adventures. It is all true except for those parts that aren't.