This movie, directed by Tom DiCillo, is a humorous look at the making of a low-budget independent film. It includes cleverly blended dream sequences that make use of shifts from color to black and white which symbolize what is reality and what is not. In addition, casting for this movie really makes the film stand out as a great piece of film art. Steve Buscemi as film director "Nick" does a great job playing the roll of an over stressed indie filmmaker with doubts about his ability to ever make a successful movie. Catherine Keener is also great in this film as she plays the star actress of the film dealing with her own doubts of ever becoming a huge movie star. Overall, this movie is an excellent satirical look at independent film making from many points of view.
The film consists of three major parts that make up the movies overall story. We first start out witnessing everyone arriving on scene at 4am to get ready for that days shoot. At this point, the film is in black and white and as soon as they start filming the movie is suddenly in color. This illustrates what is real and what is not to the viewer. Problems start to occur which include the boom microphone showing up in the frame, cameras going out of focus, and lights bulbs exploding. With all these distractions, the actors start to forget lines and not act as convincingly as they should. Then, the actress playing the mother strokes the star actress's hair and this reminds her of her actual mother which invokes a rush of emotion. While the crew is taking a break, the director has the actors run through their lines. With the sudden rush of emotion, the scene plays out exactly as the director wants and no one is filming! After Nick realizes this, he freaks out at everyone and makes himself look like a real jerk. He then awakens in his own bed to realize it was all a dream.
The next major part of this film starts with the viewer seeing that Wolf (crewmember) and the script girl are in a relationship with each other.
