Burn After Reading (2008)

Plotzle Original · O6 · March 6, 2026 · Comedy / Drama

Six plot descriptions for Burn After Reading (2008). One is the real plot. Five are convincing fakes. Read them and guess which is real.

1. An office worker realizes his resignation letter was accidentally sent to the entire company when he meant to save it as a draft and spends the day fielding awkward congratulations.
2. A disc containing a former CIA analyst's memoirs falls into the hands of two gym employees who attempt to extort money for cosmetic surgery, but events spiral disastrously out of control.
3. Two college roommates discover their shared ex-girlfriend has written unflattering essays about both of them for a literary magazine and debate whether confronting her will make things worse.
4. A woman returns to her Minnesota hometown for a wedding and learns her high school boyfriend has been telling people they stayed in touch for years when they haven't spoken.
5. A retired librarian in Portland joins a community theater production where the director keeps rewriting the script to process his recent divorce and the cast considers staging a mutiny.
6. A corporate motivational speaker accidentally destroys all his presentation materials before a major conference and improvises an entirely fabricated self-help philosophy that becomes wildly popular among attendees.