Drew Baylor (Bloom) is the designer of the Späsmotica shoe, a world-famously hyped but flawed new product that his boss informs him will lose $972 million and is “a disaster of mythic proportions, […] a folktale told to others that makes other people feel more alive because it didn’t happen to them”.

After he is fired, Drew’s girlfriend Ellen (Jessica Biel) breaks up with him. Drew goes to his apartment, defeated, and attempts to commit suicide (by modifying an exercise bike and attaching a kitchen knife with duct tape so he would be stabbed to death when activating the bike). His sister Heather phones at just that moment to tell Drew that their father has just died and he needs to go to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to bring the body back home…