Ebert on Tom DiCillo as unsung indie icon
Roger Ebert writes a long piece today about how he believes writer-director Tom DiCillo, did not get a fair shake from audiences. "You have not seen ["Delirious"] You couldn't have, unless you were one of the few customers who contributed to its depressing $200,000 total national gross. It got enthusiastic reviews from both trade papers, the New York Times, Salon, the New Yorker and so on, but then it disappeared. It was written and directed by a legend in the indie film world, Tom DiCillo, who has made other movies I've liked ("Living in Oblivion," "Box of Moonlight," "The Real Blonde"). Yet it opened in two theaters in New York and Los Angeles, was supported by pitiful near-zero advertising, went to one theater in each city after a week, had brief one-theater runs here and there (in Chicago, at the Music Box), and disappeared. It did have the distinction of inspiring a review by Ray Pride of New City Chicago that reads like ol' Ray overdosed on Mean Pills. To criticize the great Buscemi for having skinny legs that look bad in black socks is over-reaching, I would say. I've never met DiCillo, but after the disappointing release of his movie I got an e-mail from him. "To give you some indication of how disoriented I feel at the moment," he wrote, "I am getting no real, tangible feedback from anyone. And so I'm kind of struggling on my own to make sense of how a film I put my soul into, that Buscemi put his soul into, a film that generated such strong, positive reviews, had no life in the market." [From the review referenced by Ebert: "Badly written with dreadful, aimless performances, "Delirious" is unattractive from almost every perspective, from costumes to hair to simple framing. Buscemi, looking ill and in his sixties, especially with stringy hair dyed black, is uncommonly aggravating as a delusional chatterbox, blurting nonsense and non sequiturs... (It’s hard to shake the shots of Buscemi displaying black socks beneath spindly milk-pale calves.) The character’s not only a cockroach, but also a dreary, deadly dull one, and the turn toward attempted murder in the story is unfathomable. "Retarded" and "fuckin’ retarded" are the most consistent words out of Les’ mouth, unless you include his relentless, skittish, insistent homophobia. Buscemi’s husk of a character is so empty he wouldn’t have a pulse in real life. "Delirious" bumps into things like a newly blind cat. If the movie had followed the soul of Les to its logical conclusion, it would have been the story of a suicide. (I would have liked that movie, especially if he died quickly and brutally.)"
