Low on budget and high on quirkiness, this comedy of the early 90s independent film boom at first feels like another commentary on the movie business in which a wannabe filmmaker fights to make his masterpiece, but NOPE. For director and co-writer (with Tim Kissel) Alexandre Rockwell, that’s only a springboard to crack jokes about the artist as an undeveloped and wildly pretentious (and very broke) young man, as played by Steve Buscemi. More than anything, this is a film about friendship and how a few life lessons can help let out some of the young genius’s hot air. Those lessons come courtesy of Seymour Cassel, a vaguely crooked charmer who’s got money to throw around and a desire to give a break to a starving artist. Or has Cassel just found a clever way to hook a desperate character into helping him out with some shady schemes? Rockwell’s heart is in the right place here and he gets off some great moments, but the constant parade of oddballs, the neverending irony, the funhouse mirror view of life on the low side, wearies the soul after awhile. The roughshod black-and-white look helps out. It gives the impression that this a promising director’s early blurt, though the insider cameos (Jim Jarmusch, Carol Kane, Rockets Redglare, Debi Mazar) might have you hoping for more than that.