Living In Oblivion

‘Living in Oblivion’ (1995) started life as a short about the perils of independent filmmaking but in 1995 was expanded into a feature when, in true indie spirit, friends and wannabe producers started to offer their own funding. Finally being released on DVD this month the film now offers an interesting glimpse of the end of one of Americas most fruitful, exciting, and ultimately profitable periods of independent filmmaking, showing in an almost postmodern way (itself a buzzword of the mid-90’s) the era of flux between the earlier traditional indie pioneers such as Jarmusch, Soderbergh, and Spike Lee, and the late 90’s major studio affiliated productions of ancillary companies such as Focus Features and Sony Picture Classics. Indeed, in a world where films such as ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ (2006) are seen as being independent in spirit, ‘Living in Oblivion’s’ re-release couldn’t be more perfectly timed recalling as it does the days of genuine low-budgets and inspired individual creativity, even if it occasionally and successfully parodies this period.

The film concerns a fictional director’s frustrated attempts at completing a low budget feature whilst enduring all the frustrations and restrictions that can be expected within this mode of movie production. However, a closer inspection of the film’s form and style reveals something deeper, offering if in a light-hearted way a meditation on human creativity and the pervasiveness of dreams. The film is directed by Tom DiCillo whose loyal fans have since debated whether or not ‘Living in Oblivion’ reflects his own bad experiences of filmmaking, because four years previous he made the critical success ‘Johnny Suede’ (1991) which was, in typical debut feature fashion, a protracted and frustrating process by his own account. His sparse record of directing work since this film also compounds the theory that ‘Living in Oblivion’ may be somewhat autobiographical as DiCillo has subsequently only worked intermittently on television shows and as a jobbing cinematographer. This in itself is a shame as DiCillo was once a peripheral member of that influential first wave of American indie directors, working with Jim Jarmusch on his key debut film ‘Stranger Than Paradise’ (1984) and segments of his later ‘Coffee and Cigarettes’ (2003). However, troubled its origins may be ‘Living in Oblivion’ is still a highly enjoyable film even as it parodies a style and mode of filmmaking that has sadly long since dissipated in a tide of major studio funding and an increasing lack of new and original voices.

Even the casting recalls the mid-eighties to early-nineties glory days. Indie stalwart Steve Buscemi plays the film’s director Nick Reve with all his usual highly-strung nervy cool intact while Catherine Keener plays the lovable but lost female lead and James LeGros the good looking, vain and ultimately dumb lead male character, whom many have since suggested was created as a vicious attack on ‘Johnny Suede’s’ star Brad Pitt (although DiCillo has often discredited this). Other relative unknowns play the rest of the crew, but their lack of acting ability adds to the comedy of the roles they are playing- the pretentious cinematographer who insists on wearing a beret and an eye patch and the oafish sound and lighting men who are more interested in whether or not the lead actress will do a nude scene rather than their jobs at hand. (The film’s authentic indie origin is further attested to in the DVD extras when it is revealed that most of these people got their parts by putting up production money for the film.)

The film is roughly divided into three distinct sections, the first quarter showing Nick attempting to shoot what will be a key scene in his movie, a tearful confrontation and confessional between a mother (Danielle Von Zerneck) and her daughter (Keener). The shoot is dogged by an increasingly comedic series of mundane interruptions such as the boom mike creeping into shot and street noise invading from outside until a mysterious alarm sound sends Nick over the edge, coaxing one of Buscemi’s trademark bouts of misanthropic vitriol to spill out towards his entire crew and his two actresses. Suddenly the alarm sound is revealed to be Nick’s actual morning wake up call, and the scene we have just witnessed to be his bad dream, albeit one that reflects his mounting difficulties with the real shoot. At first this seems distancing, and there are no specific stylistic signatures that denote the difference between the dream world and the real world. In the opening the film within the film is shot in high-definition full colour while the “real” offset action is shot in a grainy handheld black and white that recalls the work of DiCillo’s peer Jim Jarmusch. However once the dream world is left, the middle section employs stylistically different if functionally similar devices to denote the filming and the film itself. Here the actual footage is in a higher-grade black and white stock while the offset action is in full colour. The middle section denotes the arrival of the big movie star Chad Palomino (LeGros) who initially claims to be a big fan of arty independent directors but then predictably turns out to be a vainglorious airhead who only took the part because he thought the director was “tight with Tarantino”, a reference that firmly grounds the film in its specific period of creation.

The opening scene reveals that Keener’s character Nicole Springer had a regrettable one-night stand with Chad the day before he arrives on set, which understandably adds to her inability to take his vacuous acting attempts seriously in the scene being shot. He also ignores most of Nick’s direction instead making ridiculous suggestions and constantly changing his mind thus again raising the director’s frustration to boiling point as before. It is also revealed here that Nick has a secret unrequited crush on his leading lady that towards the end of the scene, following an angry physical confrontation with Chad, he confesses to Nicole. However, she then wakes up revealing the middle section to be her dream, a device now used twice in a row with little regard for diegetic continuity, thus causing one to question the subsequent reality of the rest of the film. This turns out to be advantageous though as the last half hour proves to be the most incongruous but also the most humorous and touching of all three sections.

Nick is now filming a dream sequence involving Nicole wearing a wedding dress inhabiting a red room being taunted by a dwarf in a suit called Tito played by Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent, 2003). The references here point to an obvious yet affectionate parody of David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks’ or perhaps the pale imitators of his work that littered the early nineties. Either way the scene reflects an increasing pretentiousness creeping into Nick’s film that he at first appears oblivious to until once again proceedings inevitably descend into farce as Tito the dwarf gets angry at someone of his diminutive stature being cast simply to make the dream sequence seem especially strange- before he walks out, he angrily states that even he doesn’t have dreams with dwarves in them. This time no one wakes up from a dream proving the previous frustrations we have witnessed to coincide with the disastrous reality we are seeing now, but just as Nick is on the verge of quitting his film altogether, he finds unexpected inspiration from his aging, slightly senile mother who had wandered onto the set earlier. The scene is surprisingly touching and suggests, in the least sappy way possible, that filmmaking is hard but worth the effort when it goes right. This doesn’t stop Nick from one last daydream though when during an imagined awards acceptance speech, he bitterly attacks those he believes to have held him back over the years.

Stylistically the film never settles but this ultimately feels necessary to incorporate the complex web of dreams, and dreams within daydreams- Reve, the fictional director’s surname, is also a disambiguation of the French word for dream. As previously stated, what at first seems like a slightly annoying distancing effect actually suggests ways in which artistic frustration and inspiration can pervade into the dream world and vice-versa, making the overall effort seem almost like a more light-hearted and visually low-key take on the themes of Fellini’s masterpiece ‘Eight and a Half’ (1963). While that film was a high watermark of the early 60’s worldwide acceptance of European art-house cinema though, ‘Living in Oblivion’ documents the end of a different period, the original run of success of American independent directors of the 80’s and considering the self-reflexive postmodernist discourse that was popular amongst filmmakers and film critics alike during that period it seems oddly fitting that this is an independent film with independent filmmaking as it’s subject. The earlier Tarantino reference also turns out to be posthumously apt as he became perhaps the one director from this period to fully embrace wider audiences, bigger budgets and in turn arguably lower quality scripts in favour of high concept fanfare and exploitation film nostalgia. Since then, it has become almost an industry standard for any promising new American director having made inroads into Hollywood through music videos, advertising, or short filmmaking to gain a substantial one-to-three picture deal with one of the many major studio offshoot companies that offer reasonable budgets for low risk, potentially award-winning films. While it may seem wrong to criticise the relative ease with which new directing voices can now produce their first feature, ‘Living in Oblivion’ makes one slightly nostalgic for the times when passionate visionary young filmmakers with something to say had to call favours, max out multiple credit cards, and work several jobs just to get their first feature made. Although the process may never have been easy (as this film makes clear) it is hard to imagine the modern current day studio financed indies producing a new Coen Brothers or Richard Linklater, while promising modern filmmakers like Andrew Bujalski who do follow this older route often struggle to get their films shown in the increasingly competitive and business-like festival circuits. ‘Living in Oblivion’s’ reminder of the end of such a creative period in American cinema is saved from invoking too much sadness or nostalgia though by the fact that it is such a pitch perfect and highly amusing parody of not only a specific film movement, but also of the universal difficulties of the art of filmmaking and the foibles of human creativity itself.

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Country: USA
Budget: £980,000
Length: 90mins

Filmography:
‘Eight and a Half’, 1963, Federico Fellini, Cineriz
'The Station Agent', 2003, Thomas McCarthy, SenArt Films
‘Coffee and Cigarettes’, 2003, Jim Jarmusch, Asmik Ace Entertainment
‘Stranger Than Paradise’, 1984, Jim Jarmusch, Cinesthesia Productions
‘Johnny Suede’, 1991, Tom DiCillo, Arena

Pub/2008

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