This is the story of a man who wants to do the right thing, but is punished for every right decision he makes, and rewarded for ever wrong one he makes. Everyone around him tells him to just accept it, and take the path of least resistance, but he can't accept the hypocrisy that everyone else does.

In 1996, Alan Sokal was sick of academia publishing nonsense simply because it agreed with the political views of the editors. He submitted a ludicrous article which claimed that quantum gravity supported Democrats over Republicans, just to see if it would be published. Despite being incoherent rubbish, it successfully passed peer review. When it was published, he went public with it, showing the bankruptcy of the peer review process. Rather than reflecting as to why they'd been so gullible, the easily fooled publishers held themselves blameless and said it was Sokal's dishonesty that was the real issue.

That's basically the story here, except with the publishing and entertainment industry rather than academia.

Instead of narcissistic liberal academics, it mocks narcissistic liberal entertainment figures. I'd say that the publishers are depicted as unrealistic stereotypes, except I've actually met people like this. The stereotype exists for a reason, sadly.

The schism between Monk's personal life and his professional one does slow the movie down in parts, but it's necessary. A movie that was solely about Monk's trials in getting his book published could easily come across as a rant, and be dismissed as such. By humanizing Monk, and showing the real impacts of why he makes the decisions he does, we can see some of the real world implications of his book.