This listing is for State and Main VHS Video Tape.

Actors: Michael Higgins, Michael Bradshaw, Morris Lamore, Allen Soule, Clark Gregg

Language: English, Italian

Director: David Mamet

Run time: 1 hour and 45 minutes

Release date: October 23, 2001

Studio: Warner Home Video

"State & Main, directed and written by the legendary playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, is a very fine film much more punching on how Hollywood works and how it is fun and painful to watch how the fat-cats and the locals of Waterford, Vermont conflict in trying to make a film based on a play called, "The Old Mill."

Going to the film without any pre-existing awareness, it was probably one of the most recent and best experiences I have had in watching films lately. The largest thing that stood out for State & Main was the chaotic scripting and large cast featuring some very funny and intriguing, archetypical roles from William H. Macy as the frustrated director, the award-winning P. S. Hoffman as a nervous screenwriter, Alec Baldwin as a perverted actor, and the beautiful Rebecca Pidgeon as a friendly actor and a local. A whole lot goes on in the film (financing, getting a permit to film, trying to film at a firehouse, an actor getting arrested and in a car accident, a love affair, a tempered local politician, an actress intimidated by nudity) but for those who work in the industry, the humour will be much more potent and evident.

The writing scheme of it, while elaborate and very much sounding like ad-lib or throwabout, is genuinely executed with a glaring craft not found recently since Quentin Tarantino written and directed Pulp Fiction. The film's sense of wonder about how things go kaput when things do not go according to plan is most intriguing especially from the eyes of the timid Hoffman character, Joe White, who has an affair with Pidgeon's character, Ann Black. It is sweetly done and that bit stood out from all the chaos. Even with its positives, there is hardly anything wrong about the film aside from a short ending and some of the humour in it being a bit fairy-tale (but given Mamet's sense of direction, it is probably more driven on satire than anything). If anything, I would definitely recommend this film to a film student, a film fan, an upcoming screenwriter, and anyone who loves the "tale of two cities" concept. There is so much going on and the way it is executed is without boredom or lack of confidence. It is all finely tuned much more than the 2007 Barry Levinson film, What Just Happened, which focused on the life of an executive film producer.

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