In 1990, a frustrated young writer named John worked at the reception desk of the seedy Times Square Hotel. He kept a journal detailing his fall into a life of petty theft and drug use and the many marginal people he met in that world. Dutch filmmaker Klaas Bense buys the journal on eBay and begins a quest to track down the mysterious author—the final pages of the diary have been cut out with a knife—and the characters he limns, many of whom would, in their younger days, have seemed at home in an early Scorsese film or Midnight Cowboy. As images of the city are intercut with intimate interviews that are sometimes humorous and always moving, this intriguing film offers us a gradually clearing picture of what happened to John as well as a vivid reminder of the sordid realities of pre-Guiliani Times Square.  AK