In 1899, Christian arrives in Paris, and makes friends with a group of Bohemians who visit the Moulin Rouge regularly. They are trying to produce a musical called "Spectacular Spectacular", which the owner of the Moulin Rouge, Harold Zidler (played by Jim Broadbent), plans to show at the cabaret. The Bohemians' leader, Toulouse-Lautrec (played by John Leguizamo), is pleased with Christian's talent at writing and insists that he write their musical, "Spectacular Spectacular". Once they find out that Christian is an amazing writer, they come up with an complicated plan of presenting Christian to Satine, who is a beautiful courtesan, in the hopes that she will be impressed with him and persuade Zidler to hire Christian as the writer of the musical.