A director of a low-budget independent film (Steve Buscemi) faces every conceivable setback during one chaotic day of filming in this brilliant and accurate satire. His glamour-boy star (James LeGros) seduces half the crew, his insane mother returns from the asylum, his cinematographer and assistant director have a fierce lovers' spat, and the dwarf he hired to surrealize a dream sequence rebels. Plus, the fog machine keeps acting up. Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival.

Filmmaker Nick Reve has only one thing on his mind: completing his low-budget, independent film. That may sound simple, but every day is a challenge. Take this morning, for example, which has already gotten off to a terrible start. First, his star players, egotistical heart-throb Chad Palomino and insecure but gifted Nicole, aren't getting along. It seems they haven't recovered from their bad one-night stand. Nick's tough assistant director Wanda has just broken it off with her cameraman beau Wolf, so he's in a rotten mood, too. And the technicians can't get the equipment working. To top it all off, Nick's mentally impaired mother has escaped from her rest home and walked onto the set.
It's one of those days where Murphy's Law reigns supreme... and anything can happen next.

The clashes between Steve Buscemi and James LeGros's characters in the film are supposedly based on LeGros's experiences with an actor he had worked with previously.

Winner of the 1995 Sundance Film Festival Screenwriters Award.

Shown at the 1995 New Directors/New Films series in New York City.

A JDI and Lemon Sky production.

Additional cast: Peter Dinklage (Tito).

Excerpt: "The only reason I took part in this movie was because someone said you were tight with Quentin Tarantino." -- Chad Palomino (JAMES LE GROS), to director Nick Reves (STEVE BUSCEMI).

DVD Features:

Region 1
Keep Case
Letterbox - 1.78

Steve Buscemi: American Actor/Director/Screenwriter
Dermot Mulroney: American Actor
Catherine Keener: Actress
James Le Gros: 
Nick Reve: 
Danielle Von Zerneck: Actress
Rica Martens: 
Peter Dinklage: American Actor
Kevin Corrigan: Actor/"Billy Bathgate"

Tom DiCillo: Director

Tom DiCillo: Director

"...DiCillo shows that what happens around a movie can often be funnier than the actual film..."
5 stars out of 5 -- "It remains perhaps the most honest, insightful film about filmmaking ever..."
"Small, smart and still exquisitely funny, LIVING IN OBLIVION is the pick of the offbeat comedies DiCillo has been popping out since the mid-1990s..."
"...An irresistible blend of mirth and malice....The cast is comic perfection..."
"...A clever and consistently funny inside-movies comedy....OBLIVION is an intricately constructed film-within-a-film..."
"...DiCillo's love of moviemaking...extends...over everything..." -- Rating: A-
"An amusing, cunningly structured look at the perils of film production, LIVING IN OBLIVION is an inside joke with a generosity of heart and humor..."