Radio, Film & Television

• The Movies: When Tinsel Town Meets Small Town --
     State & Main, Written & Directed by David Mamet

• Radio & TV: Are You Tempted by Temptation Island?

• Links to Radio, Film & Television On-Line: Local TV

.

The Movies:  When Tinsel Town Meets Small Town ...

State and Main {in theatres}
   Review by Laura Wisniewski

Macy & Hoffman Director & Different Direction

In the movie State and Main, a Hollywood movie crew arrives in the fictional town of Waterford, Vermont, like the circus coming to town.  They’re there to shoot a movie about purity. Of course, Hollywood did in fact come to a small town (actually in Massachusetts) to shoot State and Main, which is about so many things it makes your head spin. 

It’s about second chances, commercialism, breasts, integrity, love, fiction, film, the electoral college, itself … and The Lack of Purity.  Written and directed by David Mamet, it’s funny and fast and complex and provocative.

The characters in State and Main tumble into the plot like clowns coming out of a Volkswagen. They all have funny lines -- even the two guys who hang out at the local diner: 

“It takes all kinds,” says one.

“Oh," says the other.  "Is that what it takes?  I always wondered what it takes.”

They’re all caricatures with a twist. And they’re all -- every last one -- played brilliantly by a talented ensemble cast. In fact, the film tied for first for the Best Ensemble among the 2000 National Board of Review for the year 2000. 

William H. Macy, who has mastered playing shallow characters, plays the shallow, hypocritical, heartless director. He holds the show together like a ringmaster, cell phone to ear, shooting out one-liners that leave no American institution standing. Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has “sensitive man” down, plays the sensitive writer who can only type on a manual typewriter and who is forced to rewrite his screenplay -- The Old Mill -- to work without the old mill.  He falls in love with the folksy bookstore owner with an edge, played to the edge by Mamet’s wife, Rebecca Pidgeon. Alec Baldwin, known for playing pretty, but not-bright, does it perfectly here as the leading man who likes fourteen year old girls: “Everyone has to have a hobby,” he explains. Sarah Jessica Parker plays a sex symbol who refuses to “bare her breasts,” unless she gets paid an extra $800,000. Yes, a pattern.  Mamet has his cast caricaturing themselves as well as their characters. 

As Vermonters, we’ll recognize the details of this small town with one foot in the past and two in the present.  There’s the old country doctor, the little bookshop, the town play:  “You people have to make your own fun,” says the director. “If you don’t make it yourself, it’s not fun; it’s entertainment,” snaps back Mary, the bookstore owner.  But in this movie about The Lack of Purity, we find out that there’s as much hypocrisy, greed and shallowness in the townsy townfolk as there is in the single-minded movie crew. The town still does hold some things sacred, though, like the stained glass window of the firehouse, the mysterious Huskies sports team, even the defunct town newspaper with its tagline: “Do not bear false witness.” Thus, some of the drama and humor of the film turn on what the invaders from Hollywood will be able to destroy or corrupt.

Like many of Mamet’s films, State and Main seems more staged than shot. The characters often deliver their lines as if they were doing Shakespeare. In other Mamet films, this stylized direction adds weight and a sense of timelessness. But in State and Main, Mamet seems to be satirizing his own style. Just when you start to think something serious is being said, the joke is on you. And you usually laugh out loud. Then, right after that, you begin to wonder if you just missed something serious being said.

In fact there are serious questions posed, if not answered, in the film. There is the ongoing theme of second chances. The romantic characters believe that we can get second chances to do IT the right way. The cynics believe, as the buddies in the diner do, that “the only second chance you get is the chance to make the same mistake over again."  

The Question of Purity is tied to another:  At what point does compromise become sellout?  Certainly we can’t avoid wondering what Mamet would say about his own “pure” creativity, developed in the late sixties at Vermont’s Goddard College.

In a 1997 interview with Salon, Mamet said:

... Nonetheless, we don't have a tradition of film as art. As the media gets more and more powerful, film as mass entertainment, which is to say solely as marketing of the consumer product, that tradition gets much, much stronger. The job of mass entertainment is exactly the opposite of the job of art. The job of the artist gets more difficult. On the other hand, maybe that's always been the case … Films started out as a carnival entertainment.  I was just reading [French director Jean] Renoir talking about them and he says they came from the baraque foraine, the fair booth. They seem to be wanting to get back there.

Certainly in State and Main, the circus has come to town.  There’s the juggling director with too many balls in the air. There’s the escape-artist producer who can maneuver out of any situation.  There’s the magical Mary who can solve everything with the wave of her wand.  But mainly there are clowns -- making us laugh and laugh at something that is really very sad …but (let's admit it) incredibly entertaining.

.

*******       *******

If you would like to submit something for The Movies feature, or if you simply would like to suggest something you think we ought to cover, e-mail us at ...         

            radiofilmtv@downstreetmagazine.com.

*******       *******

If you would like to advertise in this section, or throughout the magazine, please visit our Advertising Info Pages ... or call, write, or e-mail ads@downstreetmagazine.com.

*******       *******

   Phone                                (802) 453-5124
    Fax                                    (978) 428-6335
   ... or e-mail
   Advertising:                              ads@downstreetmagazine.com
   Articles & submissions:        submissions@downstreetmagazine.com
   Subscriptions:                          subscribe@downstreetmagazine.com
   ...    

All material copyrighted © 2000-2001.  All rights reserved.
Citations should follow standard conventions.
Please contact us for reprint permissions.
DownStreet Magazine is a registered trademark of Fern Hill Services.
Lou Colasanti, Editor & Laura Wisniewski, Associate Editor
.                                                                                                 .