In a New York studio on the Bowery in the late 1950’s, artist Mark Rothko (J.C. Cutler) stares endlessly at his painting, an impressive commission for an unusual setting: the new Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue. Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant (Steven Lee Johnson) and the threatening presence of a new generation of artists, we see the intense portrait of a brilliant, yet angry mind.
