State And Main

By EWAM McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * * )

A film crew comes to Waterford, Vermont, to make a movie. They left another small town in New Hampshire because it didn't have an old mill that could be used as a location. That's what they say. It was really because the star, Bob Barrenger (Alec Baldwin, above), likes high school girls. Too much.

The director, Walt Price (William H. Macy), has his share of headaches: the townspeople, who are not all ecstatic about their unwanted fame, temperamental stars, a neurotic screenwriter (Philip Seymour Hoffman).
Charles Durning and Patti LuPone play the mayor and his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker is an actress who unexpectedly refuses to do a topless scene (even though, Barrenger notes, the nation could draw them from memory).

David Paymer is the producer, forever trying to find more money. Hoffman and Rebecca Pidgeon, owner of a local bookstore, suddenly fall in love, even though she's engaged. Julia Stiles is the local teenager who will probably seduce the star before he seduces her.
David Mamet, the genius screenwriter and director (Glengarry Glen Ross, Hoffa, Wag the Dog, The Winslow Boy, Hannibal) knows film inside and out, and smalltown life as well.

His satire is full of plot and subplot: the jilted fiance tries to shake down the production company. The company tries to cover up a scandalous car crash. The filmmakers try to figure out how a camera can move through a priceless stained-glass window. All this and more, in a gentle, dry and witty gem.

Rental video, DVD: Today

• DVD features: audio commentary by David Paymer, William H. Macy, Clark Gregg, Patti LuPone and Sarah Jessica Parker; theatrical trailer.