Joe Gillis (William Holden)’s Timeline and Summary
- Joe's dead in Norma's pool. But Joe rewinds the story, back to his life as a struggling screenwriter.
- When repo men want to take his car, Joe tries to either sell a script to a Paramount producer, Sheldrake, or get a loan from him or from his agent, Marino. He fails.
- The repo men end up chasing him, and Joe hides by pulling into the driveway of Norma Desmond's decaying mansion.
- Norma and her servant, Max, mistake Joe for the undertaker who will help with the funeral of Norma's pet monkey. Joe explains that he's the wrong man, but he prevents Norma from kicking him out by offering to help edit and organize the screenplay she's been writing.
- Norma and Max manipulate Joe into living at the mansion, and he becomes further isolated when the repo men finally get his car.
- Norma tries to force Joe to become her lover on New Year's Eve, but he turns her down and goes to a party with younger people, like his friend Artie and Artie's girlfriend, Betty Schaefer. But Norma tries to commit suicide, forcing Joe to come back and agree to be hers and hers alone.
- Joe still tries to seek freedom, sneaking out to work on a screenplay with Betty until they grow closer to each other and fall in love.
- When Norma finds out, she tries to tell Betty about her relationship with Joe, but Joe beats her to the punch and exposes the truth, telling Betty to go marry Artie.
- Joe decides to leave Norma and head back to Ohio, but she shoots and murders him first, and he falls into her pool—which is where we saw his corpse at the movie's beginning. His voice as a narrator lingers on, describing Norma's final phase of madness.