Box of Moonlight & Notes from Overboard: A Film-Maker's Diary

Al Fountain, the main character of Box of Moonlight, is a driven, ambitious man whose determination to succeed has alienated him from his family, friends and work-mates. A chance encounter with a young drop-out, dressed in a purloined Davy Crockett outfit, changes his life irrevocably and rescues Al's humanity. Like one of the characters in Shakespeare's Arcadian comedies, Al enters the forest and is transformed. Tom DiCillo has mapped Al's odyssey in search of his self with a lightness of tone and a poetic touch that transcends the familiarity of the situation.
DiCillo's production diary, Notes from Overboard, charts his five-year struggle to get the film made - a journey that takes him to the Lido of the Venice Film Festival, and the snow-covered hills of Sundance.

Box of Moonlight is the third film from independent director Tom DeCillo, whose previous movies were Johnny Suede and Living in Oblivion. This book contains the complete screenplay of Box of Moonlight as well as an 80-page diary by DeCillo about the making of the picture. Living in Oblivion was a movie about the difficulty of moviemaking; the even more autobiographical Notes from Overboard is another take on this subject, brimming with the caustic humor and ironic sensibility that is characteristic of DiCillo's film work.