Director: David Mamet
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, David Paymer, Julia Stiles, Rebecca Pidgeon, Charles Durning

The first advice given to any aspiring writer searching for a topic is always this — write what you know. David Mamet, easily one of America’s finest yet most brutal playwrights and screenwriters of the last fifty years, has known little in the last decade save for the absurdities of the movie industry, and ‘State and Main’ is the unexpected result — a gleeful, jaunty outpouring of incredulous observations and in-jokes.

Haven been driven from small-town New Hampshire while filming his latest opus ‘The Old Mill’, director Walt Price (William H. Macy) stumbles across the idyllic Vermont town of Waterford, complete with an authentic old mill and a bona fide Main Street USA. As the show business cavalry roll in, the town’s only hotel is transformed into a chaotic production office, and the locals abandon their local theatre productions to scramble for parts in the movie. Inevitably, hilarity ensues.

A David Mamet film would not be the same without the crackling dialogue which is his trademark, and buoyed by an incredible ensemble cast of wonderful, natural character actors, ‘State and Main’ bubbles along at a wonderful pace, throwing out perfect one-liners at a healthy rate. When heartthrob leading man Bob Barrenger (Alec Baldwin) reveals a penchant for 14-year-old girls, the crew are justly worried about what he might get up to with the local kids. Macy’s director, however — a classic Mamet character — is nonplussed: “he can’t have a 14 year old, get him half a 28 year old”.

As the locals begin reading ‘Variety’ and the producers wonder how to squeeze a product placement for a computer company into a story set in the 1890s, it comes as little surprise that Mamet, still writing what he knows, pushes the innocent young screenwriter into the role of romantic hero and moral centre. Joseph Turner White (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a renowned young playwright making his first foray into the Business, and his flowering relationship with a local bookstore owner (Mamet regular Rebecca Pidgeon) lies at the core of Mamet’s story. Hoffman’s screen presence is growing in stature with every film he steals from those billed higher than him, but it is a testament to inspired casting that he fits so easily into the sweet, innocent lead role. When he becomes the only person who can protect Barrenger from the consequences of a liaison with a local teenager (Julia Stiles, showing just how good an actress she can be when kept away from schmaltzy scripts), his moral dilemma exposes the schism between the moralities of Hollywood and Anytown America.

Mamet is an actors’ director, and a writers’ director — great dialogue and powerful ensemble dynamics are given precedence over flashy camerawork and Hollywood gloss. ‘State and Main’ is nothing more than a simple little film, the polar opposite of what ‘The Old Mill’ lampoons. From his films, such as ‘Homicide’, ‘Oleanna’ and ‘The Winslow Boy’ to plays such as ‘American Buffalo’ and ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ and screenplays for ‘The Untouchables’ and ‘Wag the Dog’, it is Mamet’s ability to hit you in the face with harsh, brutal truths that makes his words linger long after you’ve left the theatre. ‘State and Main’ takes a turn away from this starkness and for this, it is unique — Mamet has only gone and made a film which plasters a smile on your face for its duration.

One day, audiences will tire of Hollywood churning out so many satires of itself, as if the only interesting thing in the world is the process of making a movie. Where so many recent showbiz satires have failed to get beyond the one-joke precept that showbiz is, like, crazy, Mamet’s sweet, delightful comedy is carried by the strength of an ensemble obviously having great fun, and his own razor-sharp pen, as eager as ever to poke out the eye of any deserving target.