 In his 27 years of life, Warren Jaffe (Ben Schmidt) has only known failure and disappointment, so he has decided to devote his life to making other people happy by becoming a professional clown. He moves into a tiny house in Minneapolis with five other struggling clowns, each trying to maintain high spirits in a depressed marketplace. To make matters worse, the roommates live in the shadow of their friend, fifth-generation jester Greggory Birmingham, III (Taylor Hays), who lives alone in a nearby mansion on an inherited clown fortune.