Living in Oblivion

Living in Oblivion (1995) is a deadpan indie comedy you can watch online on iFILM, written and directed by Tom DiCillo. Steve Buscemi plays Nick Reve, a low-budget filmmaker trying to shoot a single scene — and failing, repeatedly, in new and inventive ways.

The actress blanks on her lines. The camera operator turns up rough. The smoke machine has opinions of its own. Then a vain leading man (Dermot Mulroney) arrives and makes everything worse by trying to make everything better. The film plays out across several nested layers of reality and dream, each more unhinged than the last, with Catherine Keener and an early Peter Dinklage rounding out a cast that commits fully to the chaos.

DiCillo isn't poking fun at Hollywood — this is a film about the gap between the movie in your head and the one you're actually making, and it gets that gap exactly right. Watch Living in Oblivion (1995) online on iFILM.