First came Napoleon Dynamite in 2004. Then came Nacho Libre two years later. Gentlemen Broncos, from 2009, is Jared Hess's third feature-length film that promised "another unique view of the world".
Benjamin (Michael Angarano) is an aspiring Science Fiction writer who lives with his mother, a fashion designed. He idolizes famed writer Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), even attending his class at a writers camp. Benjamin submits his latest opus — Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years — into the camp's contest, the winning story getting picked up by Chevalier's publisher nationally. But at the same time, Chevalier's boss threatens to fire him if he doesn't submit a decent manuscript... and he ends up stealing Benjamin's.
Other examples:
- Artistic License – Law: The Writers Guild of America doesn't cover literary writing, despite what is indicated by Judith registering Benjamin's novels with them. That field is handled by the Authors Guild.
- Eccentric Fashion Designer: Subverted. Ms. Purvis is a creative and eccentric designer, but her designs are as banal as they are bizarre and her personal style of expression is conventional, almost to the point of exaggeration.
- Fantastic Naming Convention: Chevalier believes a name that ends in -onius, -ainous, -anous or the like will be memorable.
- Law of Alien Names: Discussed. Chevalier orders his class of young writers to name their characters things like this, insisting a girl rename her character, Teacup, Tylonious.
- The Peter Principle: Even in the twilight of his literary career, Chevalier is still a talented artist in other fields, painting the covers to his own books and providing professional level narration for their audiobook narrations. It's just that he's no longer very good at coming up with new ideas for his novels.
- Screwed by the Lawyers: A positive in-universe example. It turns out that Judith has been registering Benjamin's material with the Writers Guild of America since he was seven, which gives him the leverage to successfully sue Chevalier for plagiarism and get Brutus and Balzaak pulled from shelves.
- Stylistic Suck: The film is riddled with this trope, from Lonnie's films to the visualizations of Benjamin's and Chevalier's visions of the Yeast Lords novel.
