State and Main is a very clever comedy about a big-time
Hollywood film crew that sets up camp in a small village in Vermont
to shoot a period piece.
There's a lot of great performances. I loved William H. Macy as director Walt Price. Price gets a lot of great lines. In typical LA bigwig fashion, he's a real piece of work: blunt, pushy, driven, resourceful, cynical and more than a little insincere at times.
He needs all of these qualities to have a ghost of a chance of getting the movie shot. He and the even shrewder producer (David Paymer) have to neutralize an amazing (yet very credible) assortment of obstacles and disasters. They have to worry about money, humor the local politicians, motivate (and / or intimidate) the writer, play hardball with agents and hostile locals, guide the inept crew, and, of course... deal with the stars. The starlet (Sarah Jessica Parker) creates a major crisis when she suddenly refuses to commit to a topless scene. The male lead (Alec Baldwin) stirs up even more trouble with his appetite for underage girls.
Philip Seymour Hoffman has a very central part as Joe White, the novice screenwriter. Awkward, naive and idealistic, he's a perfect contrast to the bigwigs. He's put under a lot of pressure when it turns out the new location doesn't have an old mill, and there's no budget left to build one. He's obliged to rewrite the story (titled: The Old Mill) to accommodate what structures they do have.
He develops a surprisingly enjoyable romance with local bookstore owner, Ann Black (played by surprisingly enjoyable Rebecca Pidgeon). Ann becomes a major player as she quietly moves mountains, helping Joe through some tricky rewrites and a very difficult moral dilemma.
All the while, the crew scrambles to prepare the town for location shots for a script that hasn't been written, yet.
With it's numerous characters and storylines and it's movie-within-a-movie premise, State and Main is very ambitious, and it works! I enjoyed watching the whole story unfold, and I enjoyed watching all the players get put through their paces. I wonder: why can't all comedies be assembled this well?