Sunday, July 6, 2008 East Central Illinois

10th Annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival 2008

Writer-director dedicates screening of 'Delirious' to absent film critic

By: Melissa Merli
Friday, April 25, 2008

CHAMPAIGN – The "disastrous distribution history" of his film "Delirious," which opened the second day of Roger Ebert's Film Festival on Thursday, left writer-director Tom DiCillo "dumbfounded, lost and bewildered."

So much so that he e-mailed five questions to Ebert, whom he had never met. The critic replied to every single one.

"I have to tell you, it helped me," DiCillo said from the Virginia Theatre stage before his film was shown. After pausing while he nearly broke into tears, he went on to say he always had thought it was stupid for someone to dedicate a screening to someone.

"Well, this one's for you, Roger," he said to the absent critic, who is in Chicago recuperating from surgery following a hip fracture.

Even though the movie received strong reviews upon its release in 2006, Peace Arch Entertainment pulled "Delirious" from theatrical distribution after its opening weekend because its box-office take was not comparable to Hollywood films, DiCillo said. It is available on DVD.

"Delirious" is not only a hilarious satire of celebrity and fame but also a psychologically astute film about friendship and how fame separates people.

The movie follows the New York paparazzo Les, played by the brilliant character actor Steve Buscemi. Les reluctantly takes in the homeless Toby, movingly played by Michael Pitt, after the younger man begs to be his assistant. The handsome Toby eventually gets caught up in the life of and falls in love with a young pop singer (Alison Lohman). After a casting agent (Gina Gershon) takes Toby on as a client, he is cast as the lead in a reality show and achieves instant stardom.

Chicago film critic Richard Roeper, co-host of "At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper," and Lisa Rosman, a film writer and editor and the Ebertfest blogger, joined DiCillo onstage after the screening.

DiCillo told them the script for "Delirious" came to him in a series of ideas as he pondered the recent astounding and horrifying trends regarding fame and celebrity.

"Why is it as human beings that we attribute so much importance to people who aren't important or who are no more important than we are?" he wondered.

The movie ends with Toby disappearing into white light at a party scene, surrounded by photographers and publicity agents.

While some viewers interpret the shot as Toby entering paradise, DiCillo views it as Toby "disappearing from the human plane."

DiCillo, who worked on the script for seven or so years, wrote it with Buscemi in mind. After he sent the actor the screenplay, he didn't hear from him for three weeks. Finally, Buscemi told DiCillo he didn't want to do the film, as he had found the character of Les too intense.

DiCillo tweaked his screenplay, and a year and a half later, Buscemi accepted the offer. One reason is a scene in which Les and Toby visit Les's parents, who are not impressed that their son made $700 for a tabloid shot of a celebrity. They tell Les to get the trash out of their home and to get a real job.

DiCillo said some of the lines, including "get a real job," in that scene were improvised by the actors who play Les's parents, and that Buscemi's reactions indicated to the director that the actor had a similar relationship with his own father.

In fact, Buscemi asked DiCillo to cut the scene. The director politely refused. Roeper said the scene helps the audience build sympathy with and want to follow Les.

In contrast, Toby is honest and innocent. Even though his mother cut her son in the face, Toby tells Les he loves his mother but just can't be around her.

"Delirious" has won several film-festival awards and one from the Catholic Church in Spain, which flabbergasted DiCillo, who said he is not religious. He asked the panel of Catholic judges why it gave him the honor.

"Because in this film you have a damaged human being (Toby) reach out to heal another human being," DiCillo related. "That touched me."

After "Delirious," Eric Pierson, a film scholar at San Diego University and an alumnus of the University of Illinois College of Communications (now Media), introduced Sally Potter's movie, "Yes."

Pierson described the love story between a Catholic woman and a Lebanese surgeon now working as chef as a "powerful film about love, desire, religion, race, class, politics and raw emotion and all those fragile places in the middle of that."

Potter, who is directing a new film, was unable to attend Ebertfest. "Yes" executive producer John Penotti and producer Christopher Sheppard were to discuss the film.

The last movies shown Thursday night were "Citizen Cohl: The Untold Story," a 10-minute short film tribute to Dusty Cohl, a longtime friend of the Eberts, and director Joseph Greco's "Canvas," a loving look at the impact of a mother's schizophrenia on her family, based on Greco's own childhood experiences.

Other festival stories