"Living in Oblivion" (1995) - is a 91 minutes long low-budget independent movie about trials and tribulations during making a low budget independent movie called.. "Living in Oblivion". Writer-director Tom DiCillo made in 1991 a film called "Johnny Suede" starring a young and unknown at the time actor named Brad Pitt. "Johnny Suede" was a failure with both critics and viewers but an artist can learn from any experience however disappointing or devastating it is. DiCillo wrote a short story from his frustration and turned his experience into a smart, funny, playful, and highly enjoyable second feature "Living in Oblivion" that takes place during one day of shooting a low budget film. Photographed with the color-to-black-and-white transitions, "Living in Oblivions" has surreal, strangely poetic and amusing quality to it.
The cast is solid and consists of DiCillo's friends who are the regulars in his films. Steve Buscemi, the king of independent movies, in the rare starring role, plays Nick Reve, a long-haired, dedicated but frustrated director who in the moments of creative inspiration has to get back to earth and to deal with the tensions between his leading lady (Catherine Keener, before her star-making turn in "Being John Malkovich" but already a wonderfully talented beautiful and sexy actress) with whom he is silently in love and the male star, arrogant egotist Chad Palomino (James LeGros does an un-flattering but hilarious and quite accurate impersonation of the real life model for Chad). If these problems are not enough, there is eye-patch wearing sensitive leather-clad cameraman named Wolf (Dermot Mulroney) who went through a painful break-up right on the set. There is a great scene with an irritated dwarf Tito (Peter Dinklage) who was hired for a dream sequence and who hates dreams with the dwarfs in them: "Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it? Do you know anyone who's had a dream with a dwarf in it? No! I don't even have dreams with dwarfs in them. The only place I've seen dwarfs in dreams is in stupid movies like this!" There is also a smoke machine that explodes every time when turned on...And to top it all, Nick's senile mother surprisingly shows up during the shot and eventually saves the dream sequence and the movie. That's what the mothers are for, aren't they?
The cast is solid and consists of DiCillo's friends who are the regulars in his films. Steve Buscemi, the king of independent movies, in the rare starring role, plays Nick Reve, a long-haired, dedicated but frustrated director who in the moments of creative inspiration has to get back to earth and to deal with the tensions between his leading lady (Catherine Keener, before her star-making turn in "Being John Malkovich" but already a wonderfully talented beautiful and sexy actress) with whom he is silently in love and the male star, arrogant egotist Chad Palomino (James LeGros does an un-flattering but hilarious and quite accurate impersonation of the real life model for Chad). If these problems are not enough, there is eye-patch wearing sensitive leather-clad cameraman named Wolf (Dermot Mulroney) who went through a painful break-up right on the set. There is a great scene with an irritated dwarf Tito (Peter Dinklage) who was hired for a dream sequence and who hates dreams with the dwarfs in them: "Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it? Do you know anyone who's had a dream with a dwarf in it? No! I don't even have dreams with dwarfs in them. The only place I've seen dwarfs in dreams is in stupid movies like this!" There is also a smoke machine that explodes every time when turned on...And to top it all, Nick's senile mother surprisingly shows up during the shot and eventually saves the dream sequence and the movie. That's what the mothers are for, aren't they?