Plot

When his son's body is found in a humiliating accident, a lonely high school teacher inadvertently attracts an overwhelming amount of community and media attention after covering up the truth with a phony suicide note.

Lance Clayton is a man who has learned to settle. His son, Kyle's an insufferable jerk. Lance is dating Claire, the school's art teacher, but she doesn't want to get serious or even acknowledge publicly they're dating. In the wake of a freak accident, Lance suffers the worst tragedy -- and greatest opportunity of his life. He is suddenly faced with the possibility of all the fame, fortune and popularity he ever dreamed of; if he can only live with the knowledge of how he got it.—andrew mcgraime

Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) is an aspiring writer that has never been published & is working as a poetry teacher at the school his son, Kyle (Darly Sabara), attends. Kyle thinks his dad is a homo. Lance is dating fellow teacher Claire. At school, Kyle shows friend, Andrew, some European porn but he finds it disgusting. Jennifer walks by, Kyle makes a sexual remark which causes him to get into a fight with another boy. They all get called into the principal's office where the principal (Geoff Pierson) advises Lance to put Kyle into a "special needs" school.

Lance finds out Mike, one of his colleagues, has published an article on a famous magazine. Lance tries to look happy for him but can't help but feel a bit jealous as he notices Claire taking an interest in Mike. When Lance gets home he finds Andrew on the computer and asks Kyle to send him home. Kyle says he can't because Andrew's mom is an alcoholic. Lance decides to let him stay. Lance calls Claire while getting ready to go to her house for dinner like they had planned, but Claire cancels on him. Lance angers Claire when he suggests that she has a thing for Mike. She cancels on Lance the following night as well.

Kyle is obsessed with sex & even takes a photo of Claire's underwear when the 3 go out for dinner. Andrew is his best friend & he spends most of his time with him. After dinner Lance drops off Kyle & then Claire. He returns home to find Kyle dead from auto-erotic asphyxiation. To save Kyle and himself embarrassment, Lance buttons up Kyle's pants, hangs Kyle's body from the closet and writes a fake suicide letter in order to fake Kyle's suicide. Andrew tells Lance that Kyle didn't seem sad enough to commit suicide but Lance just blows him off by saying Kyle was a "complicated guy". Claire is now with Mike & lows off Lance when he calls. Lance bakes weed brownies and takes them to his neighbor's (an old lady with asthma) house just to have someone to talk to. Sharing an interest in zombie movies, the neighbor invites Lance to watch a zombie marathon.

When the suicide note, is published in the school newspaper, all attention turns towards Lance as Claire pays more attention to him and more students switch from Mike's class to Lance's. As students inquire more and more about Kyle and his interests, Lance starts making up things. He even starts writing a journal, pretending Kyle wrote it. The kids at school start wearing shirts with Kyle's picture on them. Andrew talks to Lance about it saying the suicide note didn't seem like something Kyle would write, but once again Lance blows him off by saying Kyle was a smart and complex individual.

Lance talks to the grief counselor but he assures Lance that Kyle's suicide note has touched a lot of students causing them to reach out to him. That weekend Lance writes the rest of "Kyle's journal" which he then gives to the grief counselor telling him to take a look at it and see if he should publish it for it to be valuable to the other students. They publish the journal which is then handed out to kids at school.

Lance grows all the more popular but it seems as if Mike is starting to get suspicious. Lance cancels on his neighbor by saying he has an emergency even though he is playing golf with Mike and Principal Anderson. There, Principal Anderson tells Lance that he is going to rename the school library after Kyle.

Lance gets invited to go on a talk show but as he is getting ready to leave, Andrew visits him and tells him how the journal doesn't sound anything like Kyle. Lance gets a bit worked up and tells him to just let it go and that no wonder his mother drinks, causing Andrew to storm off.

After the show, Lance gets a call from someone saying that the journal has caught the attention of several publishers.The next day at the library dedication, fueled by the guilt of exploiting his sons death for his own benefit and the hatred towards those who pretend to have liked Kyle when in real life they didn't, Lance tells everyone the truth behind Kyles death, revealing that he was the one who wrote the suicide note and the journal. Lance walks through a crowd full of looks of indignation, now that everyone knows he was living a lie. Immediately after, feeling liberated, he runs to the schools pool and dives in naked. Lance is now disliked by everyone except for his neighbor and Andrew who advises him to keep writing. The movie ends with Lance, his neighbor, and Andrew watching a zombie movie