In a dim bar, a college student boasts that the United States has no folktales about characters who grant wishes. An elderly man interrupts with certainty, recounting the legend of O.W. Grant, a mysterious figure who travels the country granting wishes to strangers. He does not always shape the world in gentle ways: he toys with people, but when he genuinely likes someone, he can choose to deal with them straight, offering a path that might surprise or unsettle them.
Across the heartland, a young St. Louis grocery warehouse worker named Neal Oliver dreams of becoming an artist, a life path that his father and girlfriend cannot quite support. On the eve of his 22nd birthday, Neal finds himself at a party where O.W. Grant appears as the waiter, delivering the celebratory cake. When Neal blows out the candles, a wish slips out—an elusive answer to the meaning of his life. The moment is稍 complicated by his father’s blunt gift: an admission letter to law school—an option Neal does not want. The family steps outside to admire a red BMW convertible his dad bought, a gift that feels like a statement about whose life is being chosen, not his own. A sudden, jolting accident follows—a bucket drops and strikes Neal, shattering the moment and sending his life down a new, unpredictable road.
A hospital becomes Neal’s first stage of trial. A doctor named Ray tests Neal’s perception with a sight test using playing cards, but Neal discovers that what he sees isn’t always what is real—the cards reveal the day’s message in a small, telling way: red spades and black hearts remind him that appearances can lie. Once discharged, Neal’s world grows stranger still. He glimpses a woman he has dreamt about on a billboard, but the billboard company insists the image is blank. Neal discovers a new picture of the woman—this time with a framed inscription that reads Call 555-1300. A call leads him to an appointment at a downtown address, and a new directive opens: deliver a package to someone named Robin Fields in Danver, Colorado (not Denver). The map misleads him, urging him toward Interstate 60, a road that doesn’t exist on his plan.
From there, Neal heads west and crosses paths with O.W. Grant on the roadside, a guide who points him toward the elusive Interstate 60. Along the way, Neal meets a spectrum of characters who embody the film’s surreal, almost fable-like tone: a man who can eat enormous quantities of food and drink; a woman in pursuit of a perfect, unending sexual experience; a mother who yearns to find her son in a city controlled by a government-managed drug; a dying ex-advertiser intent on punishing dishonesty; and Mrs. James, who runs a seemingly imaginary Museum of Art Fraud that houses real masterpieces posing as fakes. Each encounter expands Neal’s sense of possibility and consequence, hinting at a larger tapestry in which desires shape the world in threshold moments.
At Morlaw, a town famous for its lawyers who spend their days suing one another, Neal finds Lynn—the woman he has dreamed about and painted. Lynn, who had once met O.W. Grant and wished to meet the right man, becomes a catalyst for a pivotal turn: they share a night at a motel, and Neal paints the motel scene with a new intensity. Neal then leaves to fulfill his delivery to Danver, while Lynn stays behind, her fate intertwined with the town’s peculiar network of art, law, and illusion.
A radio bulletin later describes a murderer who matches Neal’s car, prompting him to abandon his vehicle and hitchhike. In Danver, Neal finally encounters “Robin Fields,” a name that turns out to be O.W. Grant in disguise. When Neal opens the package, a replacement monkey-head pipe is revealed, the fez-like symbol of Grant’s craft. With a gentle but inexorable power, Grant uses his abilities to warp Neal back in time, landing him once more in the hospital before the fateful first encounter with Ray.
Back in that hospital moment, Neal finds the courage to confront his father, insisting that he deserves to live his own life without parental interference. The story then shifts to a quiet, art-filled revelation: Neal’s sister escorts him to an art gallery where he discovers a painting of the motel—the work had been submitted on his behalf by O.W. Grant after Neal had seemingly left it there in spirit. Lynn, who reappears in the narrative, reveals that she works with Danver Publishing and has taken a genuine interest in Neal’s painting. This connection foreshadows a future collaboration: Lynn wants to commission Neal to create more roadside motel and diner-inspired pieces, suggesting that the road he travels may lead to a new chapter where art, memory, and wish-granting converge in unexpected ways.
In this layered tapestry, the film weaves a mythic road trip with intimate desires, the fragility of plans, and the moment when wishes collide with responsibility, leaving Neal to navigate the delicate balance between longing and the reality he chooses to build.
