DiCillo developed his second feature, the comedy "Living in Oblivion" (1995), after his original plans for a different second film fell through five times. As a fallback, he shot the first third of "Oblivion" as a short in hopes of gathering financing for the second two parts, (a tactic Jarmusch used to complete financing on "Stranger Than Paradise"). The result was a keenly observed, comic critique on the horrors of shoestring filmmaking with strong central performances by Steve Buscemi as the harried director and James LeGros as the "hip" selfish star of the film-within-a-film.