Mamet, Macy make mirthful \'Main\'

Here's how I imagine the conversation took place at Kerasotes World Headquarters (located on a small asteroid in geosynchronous orbit above the Midwest):\nKerasotes Guy #1: "Hey, it's been about four months since "State & Main" got a nationwide release. There haven't been any TV ads for months, and everyone's probably forgotten about it. If we put it in Bloomington this weekend, no one will notice, and it'll be gone in time for "Pearl Harbor".\nKerasotes Guy #2 (while stroking his Van Dyke beard): "Excellent."\nYes, David Mamet's newest film, "State & Main," has finally made it to local theaters. Mamet has been spreading his wings stylistically since the late 1990s, proving in "The Spanish Prisoner" and "The Winslow Boy" that he could make an intelligent movie without a single "F" word, and "State & Main" is his first foray into out-and-out comedy. It's an unparalleled success, and the funniest movie about filmmaking since Truffaut's "Day for Night." The plot concerns a troubled Hollywood production that comes to a small town in Vermont to shoot. The perpetually beleaguered director (William H. Macy) is joined by the intellectual playwright-turned-screenwriter (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who insists his script is about "the quest for purity," the borderline-sociopath leading man with a predilection for underage girls (Alec Baldwin), and the not-the-sharpest-tool-in-the-shed actress (Sarah Jessica Parker), who finds religion and decides she doesn't want to do the nude scene -- unless they can pay her another $800,000.\nWacky hijinks ensue as the movie people and the sleepy Vermont townspeople interact. The town was chosen so they could shoot at its historic old mill, but when they get there they find the mill burned down in the 1960s. This forces the screenwriter to find a way to rewrite a movie called "The Old Mill" so they don't have to shoot at an old mill. Meanwhile, Baldwin is seduced by a young lolita (Julia Stiles), and the director has to figure out a way to stick a dot-com product placement in a film set in the 19th century.\nThis movie features some of the greatest character actors of our time, and they're all having a blast. Everyone is parodying his or her typecasted image -- Macy gets even more hapless grimaces than in "Fargo," Baldwin and Parker send up the brainless Hollywood sex symbol and David Paymer chews scenery as the high-powered producer who threatens someone that "you, your children and your grandchildren will die in poverty."\nMamet avoids annoying plot contrivances that would have bogged down a lesser movie. Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet's wife and a mainstay in his recent films) plays the director of the town's local drama club. She becomes involved romantically with Hoffman's screenwriter, but when she comes to see him at the hotel, she finds Sarah Jessica Parker naked in his bedroom. When the flustered Hoffman tells her that Parker had just barged in and stripped, Pidgeon takes his word for it (it also happens to be the truth). There's no fight, no misunderstanding; instead, the film gets to move on. It's a breath of fresh air from the standard, excruciating romantic comedy nonsense.\nWith his last few movies, David Mamet has proved that he can write and direct a wide range of material, and now comedy can safely be added to his resume thanks to "State and Main." In another year of teen gross-out comedies, it's smart, fun and refreshingly free of bodily fluids.