Following the success of his television biography The Naked Civil Servant (1975), Quentin Crisp (Sir John Hurt) is invited to America to lecture on How To Be Happy, and falls in love with New York City's more permissive ambiance. Agent Connie Clausen (Swoosie Kurtz) enables him to be a "resident alien", writing movie reviews and dispensing words of wisdom. Curious about but impervious to trends, he describes A.I.D.S. as a "fad, nothing more", actually to divert heterosexual anger, but he is misinterpreted and reviled by many gays. A return to popularity occurs when he helps Patrick Angus (Jonathan Tucker), a young, A.I.D.S.-afflicted artist attain fame for his paintings and his healthy cynicism is marketed by performance artist Penny Arcade (Cynthia Nixon), putting him back in the limelight. Poor health causes him to refuse a lecture tour of England, but he gives a triumphant final audience at a gay club in Tampa. A postscript informs that he died at the age of ninety-one.