Product Description: Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/13/2008 Run time: 90 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com: You won't find a smarter, more amusing, or more accurate send-up of low-budget filmmaking than Tom DiCillo's 1995 independent feature, Living in Oblivion, wherein a motley cast of would-be artistes blunders its way through a day on the set. Steve Buscemi plays goateed Nick Reve, a harried, sweating director whose crew of numbskulls and egotists seems hell-bent on ruining his film. The trials and tribulations of independent filmmaking are not foreign material for writer-director DiCillo, who cut his teeth as Jim Jarmusch's cinematographer on 1985's Stranger Than Paradise before going on to direct his own work, such as the offbeat 1992 comedy Johnny Suede. Like that film, Living in Oblivion rides a precariously thin line between the real and the surreal, featuring a midget actor and an exploding smoke-effects machine, as well as a ridiculously narcissistic Brad Pittesque character played by James Le Gros. While films like Get Shorty, François Truffaut's Day for Night, and Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt suggest that moviemaking is hip and glamorous, Living in Oblivion will have none of that. The film within the film feels like a director's primer on what not to do, and this modest-budget gem both lovingly and caustically strips the "cool" veneer from the filmmaking process. They should show this one to kids thinking of entering film school. It might make them think better of it. --Nick Poppy
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Not what I hoped for. Much worse.
I love the odd art film and had many people recommend this film. It just didn't work for me. I love most of the actors in it and tried really hard to see the funny but I just found it dull and below amateurish ... Read More
Rating: - "Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it?"
"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 ... Read More
Rating: - Living in Oblivion
This hilarious send-up is a both a loving tribute to the art of filmmaking and a farcical rendering of DiCillo's real-life experiences on the set of his previous indie breakout, "Johnny Suede." Never before has the ... Read More
Rating: - His moon is in Uranus
I normally do not enjoy movies about the making of movies, so I was very pleasantly surprised to be thoroughly entertained by 'Living in Oblivion'. The reason I took the chance at all was due to the presence of Catherine ... Read More
Rating: - The Experience of making a low-budget movie can't be fun?
Living in Oblivion was highly recommended to me by my fellow film crew members, because they all say that we are practically experiencing this film on our shoot. The only difference is this film actually have stars and a budget, ... Read More
- Not what I hoped for. Much worse.
- "Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it?"
- Living in Oblivion