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Deliciously Mamet
The writer/director serves up a juicy satire of Hollywood with a capable cast in State and Main.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 11, 2001
[Photo: Fine Line Features]
Alec Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker star in David Mamet’s State and Main.
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Hollywood's deepest wounds are always self-inflicted. Nothing that politicians or watchdog groups can do compares with sharp filmmakers satirizing the process they're practicing.
David Mamet's State and Main takes deliciously verbose swipes at Hollywood arrogance, starting with the invasion of a tiny Vermont town by a film crew. The filmmakers expect full cooperation since, well, they're from Hollywood. The people of Waterford are starstruck, then suspicious.
Who can blame them? The director (William H. Macy) is a liar -- he calls it "a gift for fiction" -- and the star (Alec Baldwin) is a pedophile with designs on a 15-year-old waitress (Julia Stiles). His co-star (Sarah Jessica Parker) is feuding with producers about exposing her breasts, although, as a crew member notes, "Everybody can draw them from memory."
The movie they're making is called The Old Mill, but Waterford's mill burned down 40 years ago, something location scouts neglected to learn. Maybe the script can be doctored, but the rookie screenwriter (Philip Seymour Hoffman) lost his typewriter and muse. A bookstore clerk (Rebecca Pidgeon) can provide both while her ambitious boyfriend (Clark Gregg) puts the squeeze on The Old Mill's producer (David Paymer).
There's more, much more, to discover about State and Main. Few filmmakers can lay out as many threads and braid them together as neatly as Mamet does here.
From those subplots spring the juiciest show biz satire since The Player, and a romantic vibe sweeter than anything Mamet has conceived before. We're used to his profane morality plays such as Glengarry Glen Ross and Wag the Dog, and his quieter dissections of human nature in Oleanna and The Winslow Boy. State and Main softens Mamet's cynicism, but not his dexterity with words.
Something about Mamet's dialogue excites actors into doing their best work. You can see it in their eyes, so convinced that their characters would say precisely what Mamet wrote for that exact moment. Dozens of actors have speaking parts in State and Main, and each line counts. This is what ensemble acting is all about, a sharing of riches provided by a gifted writer.
Macy is a poker-faced delight, shifting from desperate to despot in a wink. His role is the fulcrum of State and Main's teeter-totter action. Macy, a frequent collaborator with Mamet, wriggles through the responsibility with appealing smarm. Baldwin does a fine job lampooning the ego we suspect he possesses in real life. Parker plays it a bit too broad, and Stiles' role is perfunctory. Paymer nearly steals the show with his vicious verbal volleys.
The bonus of State and Main is the refreshing wit of its romantic angle, with Hoffman adding another facet to his gem of a career. I'm beginning to believe there is nothing he can't do as an actor. He's an unlikely lover, more like a benchwarmer than homecoming king, but Hoffman's eager goofiness is irresistible. His stammering as a blocked writer is reminiscent of young Jack Lemmon, and his potential is just as great.
Pidgeon matches Hoffman with one of the best-written comedy roles for a woman in recent memory. Ann the bookstore clerk is calmly confident and astonishingly intelligent, a mover not a shaker. Pidgeon (who is married to Mamet and has worked only in his films) possesses an inviting face and drop-dead timing, making one wish she would do more movies.
Another wish would be for more movies as smart and entertaining as State and Main.
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State and Main
- Grade: A
- Director: David Mamet
- Cast: Alec Baldwin, William H. Macy, Sarah Jessica Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, David Paymer, Julia Stiles, Rebecca Pidgeon, Charles Durning, Clark Gregg, Patti LuPone
- Screenplay: David Mamet
- Rating: R; profanity, sexual situations
- Runing time: 94 min.
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