: After years of work, the Superbia workshop is a critical success but fails to find a producer. Jon’s agent, Rosa (Judith Light), tells him the hard truth of an artist's life: "You start writing the next one". Key Characters

: A dancer who represents a different path to fulfillment, ultimately breaking up with Jon to pursue a teaching career.

: Jon's childhood best friend who provides a critical perspective on Jon's privilege and the reality of life as a gay man during the AIDS crisis.

: Set at the height of the epidemic, the film highlights how the crisis ravaged the artistic community, adding a literal sense of mortality to Jon's figurative "ticking clock". This is personalized through his friend Michael’s HIV-positive diagnosis.