Caught in the Carousel

Director Tom DiCillo

By Alex Green

"Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion," wrote Mark Twain on the subject of celebrity. In other words, there's no practical explanation why some people get famous while others wallow in obscurity. It's timing. It's chance. And looks don't hurt, either.

Years ago, my friend was an aspiring actor in Los Angeles. He worked the night shift at the Chateau Marmont and he'd always call me at three in the morning to tell me which stars he'd seen checking in. And he saw them all-a hipster's refuge, the Marmont never has a shortage of famous faces, so every late night phone call was rife with Lohans and Spearses and Depps. (Two out of those three, incidentally, have been banned for life from the hotel. We can't say who, but let's just put it this way: neither have ever played a pirate.). One night he called to tell me that he'd just helped Johnny Depp take his bags from his car to his room. My friend hadn't had an audition in a year and a half, but he made this thing with Depp and the bags sound like he'd booked a regular gig on House.

"Things are definitely happening now," he said, "they're finally happening."

The thing was, nothing was happening. Bags were being brought from the car to the room, and that surely wasn't some kind of test to help decide if his car unloading and room depositing skills were worthy of landing him on the set of Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp kept coming back and every time he did, of course there were bags to be carried and after a while that was my friend's regular gig. (And just for the record, I'm told that Depp was always gracious and tipped very well every time.) My friend always kept a watchful eye out for Depp--he actually looked forward to carrying his bags--because he loved that long walk from the car to the room; he loved those Johnny Depp-owned bags in his hand and he loved that three hundred and eleven second glimpse into the star's life. Just to be that close to what he wanted was as good as getting it.

My friend, by the way, is now a ski instructor in Whistler. He no longer acts, but whenever Johnny Depp's name comes up, he'll say, "I know that guy-he's awesome."

Now, I have no idea if Johnny Depp is awesome, but I do know this: the more people say things like that, the less awesome he actually has to be. He just has to show up. In his essay "The Concept Of Hero Against Democracy," writer Ray Browne declared, "Heroes exist only so long as they are granted their superiority by the people.Once that license has been withdrawn, the heroes lose their power, their recognition, their status. They become historical references and has-beens." So while celebrities like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton make magazine covers and lead stories on the evening news for shaving their head or trying to avert prison, one could make the argument that those mediums are the only things that are really keeping them relevant. Alive. Real. The aforementioned stars often complain about being trailed by the Paparazzi, but the fact is, without them, they wouldn't exist.

All of which brings us to Tom DiCillo's marvelous new film Delirious, a moving and hilarious look at fame, celebrity and the Paparazzi, who, DiCillo points out, really do nothing more than keep celebrities famous. Played with irritable charm by Steve Buscemi, who masterfully registers all the belligerent cadences of world-weary bitterness and career frustration, Les Galantine is a low-level celebrity photographer living in a run-down cave of an apartment that looks as though it hasn't had a houseguest since the Ford presidency. Amidst chaos, dust and stuffed rodents that look as though they come from a taxidermist's scrap heap--"collector's items" he calls them--Les is waiting for that one perfect snapshot that will galvanize his career and put him in the upper echelons of photo journalism.

After a chance encounter with a twenty-year-old vagrant named Toby Grace (played with pitch-perfect naïveté' by Michael Pitt), Les, obviously lonely and lacking friends, lets down his guard and takes the young man in and makes him his assistant. From there things get better for both of them--Toby has a place to stay and Les has someone to talk to--which can only mean things are about to get worse. While Toby falls in love with K'Harma (Alison Lohman), a pop star who comes across like a confluence of Britney Spears and a pageant queen all grown up, and finds himself embarking on a successful acting career, Les can feel himself losing his new friend to the very world he hungrily trails. As it becomes clear to Les that he's not meant to inhabit that world, he's only meant to take pictures of it, his resentment gives birth to an almost feral rage that may or may not have murderous results.

Confronting fame, friendship, idolatry, beauty, loneliness and our inexplicable fidelity to the celebrities we worship, DiCillo's film is a wrenching character study that presents celebrity and the Paparazzi as part and parcel of a creepy kind of food chain. Although they're on opposite ends of the chart--when we meet Toby he's penniless and homeless, sleeping on a park bench, while Lohman's K'Harma lives in an opulent hotel--they need each other to survive.

This new film written and directed by someone as accomplished as DiCillo (Living In Oblivion, Box of Moonlight) starring folks like Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt, Alison Lohman and Gina Gershon and that focuses on the ephemeral world of fame, the emptiness of the glamorous life, the loneliness of the stars and the people who photograph them, is a topical and timely tale that should have already opened in wide release across the country. Oddly, just the opposite has happened. In spite of glowing reviews (Roger Ebert remarked, "This is the best DiCillo movie I've seen, and he's made some good ones."), festival wins and nominations (it won Best Director at HBO's U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, the Prestigious "Centerpiece Film" Honor at the San Francisco Film Festival and it was an Official Selection at Sundance) and star Steve Buscemi visiting the late night talk show circuit to promote it, Delirious has ended up cruelly becoming a casualty of the faulty business side of modern cinema. Cleary disappointed that his six-year labor of love wasn't receiving the kind of release it deserved and stunned that executives wouldn't return his phone calls, DiCillo turned to the blogosphere (www.tomdicillo.com) and began posting dispatches detailing what exactly was going on.

Brutal, unflinching and hilarious, DiCillo's missives are pointed mediations about the movie business ("The only thing people respond to in this business is Power. And when someone gets power they feel compelled to shit on everyone beneath them.") and wild fantasias (an imagined Playboy Mansion excursion that finds him beside Hugh Hefner in the "lukewarm water of his famed underground Grotto" is especially riotous as is his friend Jimmy swinging a weighted sock at inept studio executives) that allowed him to vent his growing frustration. He also uses his blog to offer generous glimpses into the screenwriting and directorial process (".for a director, writing the screenplay is one of the most delicious and exhilarating periods in making the film. In your imagination you can do whatever you want. Plus you never have a car alarm go off in the middle of a shot. It never rains unless you want it to. The actors never complain, they never say, 'My character wouldn't do that.' You get access to any location your imagination can afford. The shots are always spectacular, the music sublime and the lead actress always has that amazing look in her eyes that no one has ever seen before. Sometimes an entire day will go by without my even realizing it.").

From his home in New York, the director spoke candidly to Caught In The Carousel about just what exactly is going on with Delirious.

CITC: First of all, I loved this movie.

TD: Thank-you. I'm proud of it-I'm proud of everything that's in it. Steve Buscemi's performance is beyond comprehension. And I'm not just saying this because he's in my movie, but I think when people see that performance, it is so brilliant that they don't even recognize it-some people do, but not to the degree that I think it warrants. It's an astonishing performance. I haven't seen anything like it.

CITC: He's so fluid. I think he should be nominated for an Oscar.

TD: Hugh Hefner said the same thing. He loved it and he said, "You should submit this film for the Oscars."

CITC: You really got a great performance out of Michael Pitt, who plays Toby.

TD: I did. It almost killed me, but I got it. He brought a tremendous amount to this part. He needed to be believable crawling out of a dumpster at the beginning of the film and believable walking down the red carpet at the end of the film. I've seen both homelessness and stardom portrayed in movies and on T.V. and I've never believed it. You're either going, "That doesn't look like any homeless person I've ever seen," or "That's just a star not doing anything and we're supposed to think he's famous because he really is a star." They're difficult things to do and Michael had both of those qualities. He brings a history to the frame that when you look at that face you know this kid's been through something. I felt very lucky that I found him.

CITC: I love that moment after Toby spends the night with K'Harma, when he hugs the doorman on his way out of the hotel.

TD: I'm going to give that to the originator, which was Michael Pitt.

CITC: It was his idea?

TD: It was his idea. I wrote the scene, I designed the shot, but it was Michael's idea to hug the doorman.

CITC: I think it was a good move.

TD: At so many audience screenings that I've been to, people applaud at that moment. I put a lot of care into making that character not just a total wide-eyed innocent. In his own way he knows how to use that smile to get what he wants. He has this combination of innocence and the ability to roll with whatever happens in life.

CITC: And he kind of figures that out by the end.

TD: Exactly.

CITC: After he hugs the doorman and makes his way home, it's wonderfully dreamy-he's climbing on cars, he's in a big city with no one in it, and he sees flower petals falling from the sky. You really capture that moment when falling in love is so powerful, it's like there's nothing else populating the world but that love.

TD: The script went through so many drafts that when I came to that walking home in love scene I kind of went to myself, "Alright Tom, for no money how could you make this a little bit like Singin' In The Rain?" It's a perfect place for the film to rise above the literal and become kind of magical, because the kid's in love. It can be exaggerated because that's how you feel when you're in love. It was simply putting a reflection in a puddle-we did the shot of K'Harma's face in a puddle and these flowers falling on him. We lucked out on the day we shot the flowers because the sun and the light and that blue sky was so beautiful and we got that moment.

CITC: Speaking of beautiful, Gina Gershon is just terrific.

TD: To me she represents the juiciest embodiment of a woman actor-she just has it. She's strong, she's sexy, she's funny, she's smart as shit and she's brave as hell when it comes to acting. She just jumps in.

CITC: How did you get her?

TD: Man, that was a happy accident. We had had somebody for that part and she pulled out at the last minute. Through my manager we made one phone call to Gina--she was available and she came in. That's how it happened. I had always wanted her but I'd met this other woman two or three years ago and she said yes and so we were committed to her. But I always felt like Gina Gershon would nail this part. And it ended up that she did.

CITC: And there's that moment in the film when she realizes that Toby is in love with K'Harma, who's a great deal younger than Gina's casting agent character. At first disappointment registers on her face because they live together and everyone knows they're sleeping together, but then she seems to just say fuck it and leads him into the bedroom.

TD: I didn't want to romanticize it-you know, this is a career woman. Ultimately I think she does love Toby and kind of wishes she could have worked something out with him, but then the very next best thing for her would be for her to be his manager and to sleep with him.

CITC: Was it pretty cool to have Elvis Costello around?

TD: It was amazing. The purpose of his scene was to have Les come face to face with a real celebrity and to see whether his theories about everybody being equal are really true. Well, it ends up that they're not true for him. He, in fact, is terrified of real celebrities because he feels so worthless. In the presence of someone whom he considers great he reverts back to what he's been told about himself, which is that he's a nothing. I needed to have a real star for that-I wrote it with the idea that maybe Paul McCartney might do it, and then I tried to get David Bowie. Both said "No." We were two weeks before shooting and Buscemi said, "Listen, I know Elvis." And I said, "Let's give him a call." I'll never forget the moment-I was in a location van with about twenty-five people and we were driving through Brooklyn. My cell phone rings and I pick it up and it's Elvis Costello. He said, "Hello Tom, it's Elvis, I'd like to do your script." And the whole van got completely quiet just in time for me to say, "Oh, Elvis, I'm a really big fan." I mean, what else can I say? I am! I'm a huge fan of his! I sounded just like Les in my movie. I met him, we sat in a coffee shop two days later, he sketched out what he'd like to do. He's got a great respect for acting-he loves it. He just came in and everyone was so psyched to have him there.

CITC: You really get in the world of fame and beauty, but what's so fascinating is what you do once you get in there.

TD: I wanted to try to show this world without being accused of being secretly enamored of it or being bitter about it. I just wanted to show it. Every red carpet I've ever been on, I've seen such bizarre extremes of human behavior that I can't even describe it. This business brings out the most perverse and bizarre human behavior about nothing. But yet, it's like life and death to them. In the film Gina argues with Callie Thorn about which of their stars is going to get out of the limo first. That three feet of carpet space becomes life and death. I'm not fascinated by the business, but I am fascinated by that kind of behavior. I wanted to write a script that starts at the bottom, that starts with a guy on the lowest rung--a member of the Paparazzi--and see if I can tell a story that people would be interested in.

CITC: Speaking of the lowest rung, you almost seem to insist on the fact that these celebrity journalists live in abject poverty-they're always unkempt and they live in sloppy places. They come across as bottom feeders.

TD: They are bottom feeders. I just wanted to show that world. We lit it so that the world of the Paparazzi was always kind of dingy and slightly greasy on the edges. And I wanted to contrast that with K'Harma's whole glittering world. And that world, by the way, mostly exists in people's minds: "Oh, if I could only be there I would be happy.." That was a challenge, trying to create that difference between those two worlds on such a low budget and shooting it in twenty-five days.

CITC: How did you pull that off?

TD: We had a great crew--everyone was devoted to the film, we had great creative input from everyone and we didn't really have any problems when we shot it. It all went amazingly smoothly.

CITC: Let's talk about the relationship between K'Harma and Toby. When they're in the bathtub together and she explains that even though she lives in luxury hotels she is, in a sense, homeless. It's odd that she's telling this to someone who actually is homeless, but Toby totally gets it. And I think he gets it because these two are very much alike. What were you after with this relationship?

TD: There's a certain archetypical quality about the two of them that I wanted to put in there. Toby represents-on the idea level-something that I think K'Harma was at one point herself: a pure innocent. I think that innocence was twisted by the business. And after you're in it for a number of years.Look at Britney Spears-you can see it. I'm not saying she's an amazing pop star but what she's turned into is very sad. And so K'Harma sees some of herself in Toby and that's why they're drawn together. The idea was that the film would operate as a kind of contemporary fable or a fairy tale. And I actually believe this fairy tale-I think we all do. Sometimes you go to a movie and you want to sit there and let some sort of mystical experience take you away. In other words, someone appears on the screen that you've never seen before and you witness the birth of a star. That's what keeps us all going-that's what this whole business is about. If we didn't believe that, none of us would keep doing it. I firmly believe that and structured the film like a fairy tale.Toby is like this lost innocent wandering through the wilderness of New York City. He meets this troll under a bridge in the form of Les and K'Harma is the lost princess that he has to somehow rescue.

CITC: And I think even the most hard-hearted folks are rooting for Toby and K'Harma at the end of the film.

TD: Listen, it's a complicated ending and some people have really taken offense at it as if I'm saying that Fame and Stardom are what everybody should wish for. I'm not.

CITC: So what are we supposed to make of Toby and K'Harma as the film closes?

TD: At the end, Toby and K'Harma have turned literally into metaphors. They embody, to me, the end of the cycle. I'm not saying everybody would be happier if they were all stars-that's bullshit. I mean, first of all, who knows how long they're going to be together? And second, clearly they're being removed from the human race, that's why I shot it that way at the end: to have them disappear into light. They're taken somewhere-who knows where, but they're gone from the human race.

CITC: And Les?

TD: He stays behind. That's why I love Les Galantine so much-because he's like all us. He's stuck on earth in the muck, he's got to fight every day of his life to somehow survive and that's where my real interest lies.

CITC: Why has there been some resistance to an emotional ending?

TD: I just think that today people have such reluctance and fear of anything truly emotional because we've been so scarred emotionally as a nation and as a planet. We can't trust anything emotional so we sneer at it and we ridicule it. Some people have taken that approach to the ending and actually got angry that there wasn't violence.

CITC: Interestingly, you could have made K'Harma a loathsome sort who pushes people around. But in the one instance when she does yell at her assistants, she immediately apologizes and hugs them and tells them how much she loves them and it's completely sincere.

TD: She's so conflicted. She's lost. And I know that's what drives the most wretched human behavior-when people are the most in pain.

CITC: And you seemed like you wanted to stress that she's not a bad person. Alison Lohman is marvelous at conveying this.

TD: In the writing of the screenplay that was so critical to put that element in there. I didn't want her to just be a caricature, I wanted her to be someone that you cared about, that you could see was conflicted and troubled. And Allison Lohman really did that. She brought that sense of reality to that character. She did the singing and dancing-that's her voice in the song. What a great performance.

CITC: Let's get back to Les for a second-the scene where he takes Toby to meet his parents and show them that his photo got placed is really wrenching. They're so cruel to him and even though he doesn't get that he'll never get what he wants from them, Toby does.

TD: I wanted Toby to just sit there and observe. I don't think Toby was quite prepared for what he stumbled into by going with Les to see his mother and father.

CITC: But yet he understood it.

TD: He absolutely understood it. I think he recognized it from his own life. In fact, that's what he says to Les in the next scene. But I'd been making some observations about dysfunctional families over the last couple of years and put that into the screenplay. Les' parents for whatever reason have chosen to negate Les. And nothing he can do will ever please them and his problem is that he keeps going back to them. He should leave-he should just turn his back say, "Wow, I'm not going to get anything from there." As painful as that is, it's really the only way to move on. What I wanted to do was use that scene to help illustrate Les's instinctive sense of worthlessness. And it is that sense of having no value, that he's convinced he's a piece of shit that I was interested in. The instant he walks in his mother says, "Did you step in something?" as if she's in the presence of shit. What a struggle in life to have to somehow believe that waking up every single day. I'm telling you, people can instill that self-image so many ways to other people. I just love watching an actor or a character struggle through something as potentially destructive as that.because that can kill you.

CITC: It's hard to deal with that in life.

TD: It is! I mean, I don't want to get too heavy about it, but certainly, I did think about this stuff when I wrote the screenplay. Look at what the world places value on right now; no wonder we're in such a state of confusion and disorientation as human beings. We have no idea what has real value. We think Paris Hilton has value simply because she's in the news. If we don't have a camera pointed at us twenty-four hours a day, we don't have value.

CITC: Let's talk about the unpleasant business side of things-why wasn't Delirious widely distributed?

TD: I'm bewildered beyond comprehension that the film has been struggling so much and that certain people did not have any faith in it. It's won a lot of awards, which I'm pleased about but there was never any massive wave of consensus about what the film is and why it should have value. Here's a little history for you: We went to the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain. The film won Best Director and Best Screenplay as well as Best Picture by the Catholic Church. It was amazing. We got interest from all of the top four independent distributors: Fox Searchlight, Independent Focus, the Weinstein Brothers and Lion's Gate. They all said their upper tier people wanted to see the film and were interested in buying it. The company-this fictitious company Gestation-proceeded to present the film to these guys either on DVD or in private screenings and without an audience. The film is essentially a comedy and it needs the presence of people in the audience. So all these guys passed on the film. Then we got invited to Sundance and the intention was to use the festival to help re-interest these distributors-to get them to come to screenings with audiences there.

CITC: How did that go?

TD: Well, at the first screening there were 1500 people there-it was sold out. It was an amazing screening. I turned around and I looked at my producer and I said, "So who was here?" Nobody was there. They didn't get anybody to come.

CITC: Whose fault was that?

TD: That was partly Gestation's fault and it's partly the fact that the film was already spilled milk at this point. They said, "It's not new--we've already experienced Delirious." And so they all passed on it. Every single U.S distributor passed on this film. On a business level, I have never experienced anything so bewildering and terrifying in my life.

CITC: It sounds like a nightmare.

TD: I couldn't comprehend it. The Hollywood Reporter and Variety wrote from Sundance, "Look out, this is going to be one of the top contenders. Bidding war for sure. DiCillo's most accessible movie. Sure to have a commercial life." We didn't get a single offer. So Gestation made a decision to distribute the film themselves. They started their own distribution company and distributed the film, which I'm grateful for-of course I am. But I have to also say, from a purely selfish point of view, that I don't think they spent any money. I still think we had great potential with the movie, but I'm sure you'll tell me that the ad presence in the Bay Area is probably non-existent.

CITC: It hasn't been great.

TD: They didn't spend any money. They didn't bring me out for press or even arrange for phone call interviews. This conversation with you is the only piece of press I'm doing for the San Francisco release. It's what I ended up with-a group of people with gigantic egos who don't want to listen to a single thing I say. This is the only film in my entire career that has gone to different markets where I have not done interviews for them.

CITC: Did you try to talk to them?

TD: I asked the guy distributing the movie, "What's the deal? How do you expect anybody to be even aware of the movie if you don't either take out ads or do some promotion?"

CITC: What was the response?

TD: "Oh, don't worry, it's okay, we're not doing that."

CITC: What's the single biggest element that got Delirious in the bind that it's in?

TD: If anything, I might say that the film is unique in that it is an attempt to tell a story swinging back and forth between comedy and a very intense emotion. I love that combination-to me it's what really excites me. It's not to just screw somebody up or to play with someone's mind, it's because that's what life is to me. Some audiences seem to not know how to deal with it. Maybe they look at it and say, "Well wait, it should either just be funny or it should just be sad. We can't have it be both." Listen, the people that appreciate it appreciate it for that-the people that don't appreciate it, they get furious at the movie.

CITC: Furious?

TD: (Laughs) They get so angry at it. I can't even believe it.

CITC: What about the reviews? Not only have they been great, I just read Roger Ebert's review and it was wonderful.

TD: It's a beautiful review. I wish that this company had taken that ad and put it into some newspaper advertising. They didn't do that.

CITC: At what point did you first sense there was trouble?

TD: I knew I was in really bad shape at Sundance four days after my main screening there, which I told you was solely intended to get these distributors to come and watch the film with an audience. We only had two screenings in Park City. There were two other screenings but they were too far away for distributors to go to. But by the time this one guy from the company showed up to theoretically wrangle distributors and to make the sale, there were no other screenings. He showed up four days after the film was screened. We were in a hotel-me, my producer, my manager and my wife-and I said, "Listen, what's the plan, guys?" And he sits there and he says, like he's annoyed at me, "What are you worried about? We'll get these people to come to the next screening." I leapt up out of my chair and I said, "You fucking idiot! There aren't anymore screenings!" There was dead silence in the room. Dead silence. Right then was when I knew that I was in serious, serious trouble.

CITC: And that was in January. So you've known for months things weren't right?

TD: I was hoping against hope-what can I do? I've had to work with them, fighting every step of the way to find out what kind of promotion they were going to do, how they were going to release it.

CITC: And this movie was, start to finish, six years in the making?

TD: Yeah.I'm looking back at my notes and I wrote the first note about the script in 2001. There's a stunning reality here-that's how long it took me to make the movie. One hopes that each film enables you to make another movie. But there's something disheartening about working that hard and by a miracle ending up with a good movie that no one sees. Not all of my movies are great, I'll be the first one to admit that; sometimes you can't even control how a film turns out. But when one turns out good and people aren't getting a chance to see it-well, it's a great pain for me to see that

CITC: What happens next to the movie?

TD: They're probably prepping for a DVD release at the end of the year. That's it.

CITC: So it's the greatest movie of the year that no one's going to get a chance to see in the theatres?

TD: Probably..right. Not many people know this stuff and it's hard also to even expect people to be interested because the only thing that happens is you come off sounding like sour grapes. I don't want to alienate people, but I also have to stand up for what I believe and I believe that what happened to this film was an injustice. Not a personal injustice..maybe it was just an accident. Maybe it was just a perfect storm of accident and incompetence. I don't know and that's what my struggle is now: trying to decipher what it means and should it affect what I try to do in my next film. I'm not going to let it and hopefully I'll be able to make my next film, but does it mean that in order to survive in this business I have to make 3:10 to Yuma? I don't want anybody to think that I'm asking for special treatment, or isn't it so sad what happened to me-I'm not trying to say that. No one asked me to get in this business and everyone knows that when you try to do something kind of personal and special to you that you immediately alienate half the population.

CITC: How did distribution work for your other films? Did you take a different path?

TD: Every one of the other films had real distributors. Some people could argue very justifiably that even those distributors didn't really do a great job. The distribution on Living In Oblivion was horrible. We had such great press and again, these people didn't spend a dime. Johnny Suede opened and closed in New York in a single week. There needs to be what is called a tipping point where suddenly the film is nudged into acceptance and people go, "Yeah, that film has validity" and they go see it. In some of the reviews of Delirious, some of these critics are saying "DiCillo made this film 'Living In Oblivion' which is one of the best films about making an independent film." When the movie came out, people trashed it! They called it a one-joke film about filmmaking. I'll never forget it. I mean, what the fuck?

CITC: This is a real shame because Delirious should be making millions.

TD: I can't say that I disagree with you. Because it provides people with an entertaining way to watch a film but without feeling like you have to give yourself a lobotomy to enjoy it. It's entertainment. If you look at Delirious, every step of the way, the idea was to keep the audience guessing, to give them some moments of pleasure around every turn. The element of surprise, of delight, of fear sometimes.it's not one of these artsy fartsy things where you stare at an apple rotting for three hours. It's a human film and it's about real people but in a very larger than life, entertaining way.

CITC: How many drafts of the script did you write?

TD: I probably did about eight or nine drafts. The draft that shocked it into its current form was an amazing discovery for me. I realized that after four-and-a-half years, the only way this movie was going to get made was if I cut two million dollars out of the budget.

CITC: How do you do that?

TD: The only way to do that was by cutting the script. That was the only way to do it-I couldn't cut salaries anymore because everybody was basically working for nothing. I had to cut pages and pages.once I got over the anger and the fear of doing that, I ended up with a very, very concentrated script and it just kind of pulled it into the most efficient form. I'm pleased with it-I'm actually pleased that it ended up taking twenty five days to shoot because it forced us to be creative, to think in a very exciting ways. We never had a moment to get lazy. It was exciting.

CITC: Business travesties aside, you've made wonderful movies. I've followed you since 'Johnny Suede' and I've always admired and appreciated the great sense of humanity that's always present in your work.

TD: I appreciate that. The idiocy of pointing guns and killing people in movies-Jodie Foster is now standing in a movie poster holding a gun down by her crotch. Guns don't mean anything to me. The bravest thing Les can do at the end of the movie was to lower that gun. Toby's shaking his hand was infinitely more profound than pulling a trigger. And that's what I believe.

Tom DiCillo Filmography:

Delirious (2006)

Double Whammy (2001)

The Real Blonde (1997)

Box of Moon Light (1996)

Living in Oblivion (1995)

Johnny Suede (1991)

Further Reading:
www.tomdicillo.com
www.deliriousthemovie.com
www.myspace.com/deliriousthemovie

With warm thanks to Michelle at Space Baby