Peter Dinklage

DVD/Stream of the Week: LIVING IN OBLIVION

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Peter Dinklage and Steve Buscemi in LIVING IN OBLIVION
Peter Dinklage and Steve Buscemi in LIVING IN OBLIVION

The hilarious 1995 comedy Living in Oblivion follows a grossly under-resourced indie movie director (Steve Buscemi), who must  somehow finish his low-budge/no-budget art film despite being surrounded by zanies.  He’s got a neurotic female lead (Catherine Keener), a preening and slumming A-list star named Chad Palomino (James Le Gros) and an elderly actress who can’t remember her lines (Rica Martens).  His stubborn and sullen cinematographer (Dermot Mulroney) is bedding the First Assistant Director (Danielle von Zerneck), who has an agenda of her own.  With this outfit, everything that CAN go wrong…

Living in Oblivion is filled with lines like “I can’t act. I can just do shower scenes in Richard Gere movies for the rest of my life!” and “Hey! That’s my eye patch and I don’t want anyone else wearing it. It’s insanitary.”

But the pièce de résistance is the feature debut of Peter Dinklage, 8 years before his breakout role in The Station Agent and 16 years before becoming a star in Game of Thrones.   He plays an tiny actor with a gargantuan chip on his shoulder:   “Why does my character have to be a dwarf?” and “I don’t even have dreams with dwarves in them. The only place I’ve seen dwarves in dreams is in stupid movies like this!”.

Director Tom Dicillo, having been Jim Jarmusch’s cinematographer, was no stranger to indie filmmaking.  After Living in Oblivion, Danielle von Zerneck moved on to a producing career.

Living in Oblivion is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Xbox Video.

Pete Smalls is Dead: see Living in Oblivion instead

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That’s the trailer for a movie I was really looking forward to – Pete Smalls Is Dead.  Quirky characters played by Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) and Mark Boone Junior (Sons of Anarchy) embark on a comic adventure.  The rest of the cast is great: Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi, Rosie Perez, Michael Lerner,  and Seymour Cassel.  Unfortunately, the writing fails the actors, and the movie just isn’t that funny.  I fell asleep and had to finish it the next day.

So instead, I recommend that you watch the trailer (much funnier than the movie) and then rent a really funny Peter Dinklage/Steve Buscemi movie – Living in Oblivion.  Real life indie director Tom DiCillo (Johnny Suede, Box of Moonlight) wrote Living in Oblivion about skating on the edge of disaster while making a very low-budget indie film.  Buscemi plays the indie director, who must deal with a narcissistic leading man (James LeGros), a low self-esteem leading lady (Catherine Keener), a pretentious and self-absorbed cameraman (Dermot Mulroney) and a dwarf actor with an attitude the size of Manitoba (Dinklage).  The screenplay is hilarious and the fine actors all nail their roles.  Watch and laugh.

LIVING IN OBLIVION