This film moves back and forth between its two main characters.

1- Peejoe Bullis (Lucas Black) and his brother Wiley (David Speck) are orphans who live with their grandmother (Sandra Seacat).

2- Lucille Vinson (Melanie Griffith) kills her husband Chester because he won’t let her go to Hollywood to star in the sitcom Bewitched, where she has been cast on a 2-episode role. Lucille is Peejoe and Wiley’s aunt, and the sister of Dove, another uncle of the two boys.

When Lucille goes to Hollywood with Chester’s head in a Tupperware container after having poisoned him with rat poison, she leaves her seven children with her mother, so Grandma has no more place for Peejoe and Wiley. They have to go to live with Uncle Dove (David Morse), and his wife Earlene (Cathy Moriarty). Dove tells sheriff John Doggett (Meat Loaf), that they don’t know where Lucille is heading for.