Mark Borchardt of
Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, dreams of being a professional filmmaker. Currently, however, he delivers newspapers for a living, is deeply in debt, still lives with his parents, suffers from alcoholism, and is estranged from his ex-girlfriend, who is threatening to move out of state with their three children due in part to his inability to pay
child support. He acknowledges his various failures, but aspires to one day make more of his life. Hoping to jump-start his career, Mark restarts production on
Northwestern, a feature film he has been planning for most of his adult life.
Northwestern attracts some interest from the group of amateur actors with whom Mark has produced some
radio plays, but by the fourth production meeting almost no one shows up and Mark is forced to acknowledge that he currently lacks the resources to continue the project. In order to attract the attention and financial resources needed to produce
Northwestern, Mark decides to complete
Coven (which he mispronounces with a long 'o' as ), a horror short that he began shooting in 1994 but ultimately abandoned. He receives financing from his uncle Bill, an increasingly senile retiree who lives in a dilapidated trailer despite having $280,000 in his bank account. Bill hesitantly agrees to invest in
Coven with the goal of selling three thousand VHS copies, which Mark says will raise enough capital to finance
Northwestern. Although Mark is hard-working and knowledgeable about filmmaking, he is also poor at planning ahead and is inarticulate as a director. He builds his production crew out of friends, family, and neighbors, many of whom are incompetent at their assigned tasks. Particular attention is given to his best friend
Mike Schank, an amiable recovering alcoholic and drug addict who is one of the most reliable members of the crew. Mark and Mike bonded over their shared love of vodka as adolescents, but Mike is now sober and has joined
Alcoholics Anonymous, though he has become a compulsive gambler; he reasons that, while you sometimes win and sometimes lose the lottery, "when you use drugs or alcohol...you always lose." As work on
Coven continues, Mark faces the skepticism of his family and his deepening alcoholism, though he does eventually wrap principal photography. At Thanksgiving dinner and later at a
Super Bowl XXXI watch party, he gets drunk and becomes alternately agitated, cheery, and despondent. He wistfully watches footage he had shot for
Northwestern in 1990 and contemplates whether or not he is a failure. After an extended post-production process, during which Mark occasionally sleeps in an editing room at the
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,
Coven is finally finished minutes before its premiere at a theater in Milwaukee in the summer of 1997. The screening sells out, and Mark's family and friends are happy that the project has finally been completed. Mark visits Uncle Bill and discusses the prospect of future fame and wealth and realizing the
American Dream. The closing text reveals that Bill died on September 13, 1997, leaving Mark $50,000 towards completing
Northwestern. ==Reception and legacy==