The film is a portrait of two shepherds, the Sanitrár brothers, notable representatives of popular culture. The film is conceived as their witness account as well as a probe into their broad family.
A small-town bar, open only from 9AM to 3PM and owned by Buck (Earl Holliman), is the setting where bored housewives and wandering husbands go to find some adventure in their miserable lives.
Two teenagers on the run with a quarter of a million dollars belonging to an illegal drug ring are pursued by a suave crime czar and, after they gain a celebrity of sorts, by the whole country, which wants to partake of their largesse in their coast-to-coast spending spree.
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff tells her friend Levin Schücking about her recently completed story Die Judenbuche and begins by reading from the manuscript.