Craig Blake (Jeff Bridges) is a young Southern man born of a wealthy family, but left lonely and idle after his parents died in a plane crash. He is content to spend his time fishing, hunting and puttering around his large family mansion in Birmingham, Alabama, inhabited only by himself and a butler (Scatman Crothers). Blake's "job" is a sinecure working at a shady investment firm run by a slick con artist named Jabo (Joe Spinell) and he does very little actual work. But since he has to have his name "on paper" somehow as an employee, he is asked to personally transact the purchasing of a small gym that the real estate firm is buying in order to clear space for an office high-rise.