Directed by Tom DiCillo | USA | 1995 | Fiction | 92 mins
Sponsor: Todd Lockwood & Shout Factory
Film Source: Shout Factory
Filmmaker in attendance for post-screening Q&A and signing of the newly mastered Blu-Rays of the film for its 20th anniversary
Whatever can go wrong does go wrong in Tom DiCillo’s hilarious send-up of the maddeningly chaotic vicissitudes of ultra-low-budget filmmaking. Indie film stalwart Steve Buscemi stars as Nick Reve, DiCillo’s directorial alter ego, who is in the midst of a disastrous film shoot with an absurdly unreliable cast and crew. DiCillo, who served as cinematographer on Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 masterpiece Stranger Than Paradise, channels the frustrations he experienced shooting the early Brad Pitt vehicle Johnny Suede into a screenplay that ambiguously mixes dream sequences and reality and blurs the line between cinematic artifice and real life. Also featuring Dermot Mulroney and Catherine Keener (in one of her earliest roles), Living in Oblivion is a true cult classic and an enduring tribute to the determination of cash-strapped independent filmmakers everywhere.