Jump down to
That's
Show Biz
STATE
AND MAIN
David Mamet's Movie Comedy Is a Laugh and a Half.
With William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin,
Sarah Jessica Parker
Written and directed by David Mamet
WHO DO I HAVE TO SLEEP WITH to get you to see State and Main, David Mamet's wry and canny comedy about a movie company that arrives in cozy little Waterford, Vt., to shoot their film after getting thrown out of a cozy little town in New Hampshire for reasons apparently too shady to mention.
We've known for decades about Mamet's cutting sense of how people compromise themselves for illusory happiness and success, or how truth is nothing more than the torrent of words you shout to manipulate people into doing what you want. But while the persistently clever dialogue in State and Main retains some reassuring touches of his distinctive staccato rhythm, who knew that the poet of American vulgarity was this funny?
State and Main opens with a touch of small-town vaudeville and then traverses a culture's worth of styles, from brisk sit-com jokes and visual set pieces to cool, sardonic, intellectual humor sprinkled with touches of dark farce. It's at once a rout of Hollywood and an homage that takes on everything from the casting couch and bloated egos to the dreams and illusions that the flickers provoke in all the lonely people who make them and watch them.
As always in a movie-about-a-movie, the fictional movie at the center of the "real" story is a piece of crap that everyone involved pretends is something much more. In this case, it's called "The Old Mill," and it's written by Joe White (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a desperately sincere Clifford Odets wanna-be who can only compose on an old manual typewriter, and who believes he's written an impassioned screenplay (his first) about "getting a second chance."
Of course, that doesn't explain why a nun in his movie needs to take off her shirt, which suddenly has become a problem for the neurotic leading lady (Sarah Jessica Parker) whose tits are already so well known that most American can draw them from memory. Her leading man (Alec Baldwin) is a notorious (and recently acquitted) cradle-robber who effortlessly nails an aggressive teen-ager (spirited newcomer Julia Stiles) who waits tables at her father's diner.
The movie's director (William H. Macy) is an edgy, bipolar Hollywood player-cum-artist who can convince anyone to do anything. (What others call a lie, he calls "a gift for fiction.") His producer (David Paymer) is an oily Jewish lawyer who makes Harry Cohn look like Frank Capra and who believes money can solve any problem. (He's right.) And their Italian cinematographer so desperately wants to arc and glide his camera through a valuable stained glass window on the town's fire station that he's willing to become a common street hoodlum to do it.
Meanwhile, there's Waterford, with its sanguine mayor (Charles Durning), his faux-socialite wife (Patti LuPone), an ambitious local politician (Clark Gregg), and his bored fiancee, Ann Black (Rebecca Pidgeon), the copiously well-read owner of the town's book store who falls for Joe White, the increasingly manic-depressive screenwriter.
Mamet draws all of his characters so distinctively - giving each one touches of ambiguous charm and depth - that you won't want most of them to be as horrible as they really are. His movie is a breathtaking high-wire act of inside parody, social satire and good old-fashioned movie fun. (Watch for a recurring sight gag about matzos.) He winds his plot up so tightly that you can't imagine he'll get out of it so gracefully. And as always with Mamet, you won't want to take your ears off the screen: He wrote every word in the movie, including the lyrics to the closing song.
Many of the actors in State and Main have worked with Mamet for years on stage or film, so I barely need to mention how good they are. Hoffman continues to melt celluloid with his myriad range of expression; Parker and Baldwin parody 500 hundred of their closest friends; and the wonderfully sardonic Pidgeon is part angel and part agent. LuPone sings Mamet's blithe ditty over the closing titles - which you must sit still and watch, for they contains two of the movie's best jokes. So enjoy every moment of State and Main while you can, and don't count on seeing Mamet like this again any time soon.
Jump up to
LAKEBOAT
With Robert Forster, Tony Mamet, George Wendt, Charles Durning,
Denis Leary
Written by David Mamet, based on his play
Directed by Joe Mantegna
WHAT THE FUCK is happening lately to the playwright David Mamet? Earlier this year, the king of vulgar intellectual machismo showed new muscle with State and Main, a hilarious ensemble comedy that sent up Hollywood filmmaking. And now he’s made Lakeboat, a movie so uncharacteristically tender that any other character from any other Mamet play would probably swallow it whole and shit it back out.
In fact, Lakeboat isn’t new Mamet: It’s very, very old - the first play he wrote decades ago, after he spent a summer during graduate school working as a cook on a floating monster that carried steel through the lakes, rivers and locks of the upper Midwest waterways between the U.S. and Canada. So it’s somewhat appropriate in Lakeboat - if not entirely a good idea - that Mamet’s younger brother, Tony Mamet, plays the role of Dale Katzman, a graduate student in English lit doing just what the elder Mamet and future playwright did in his own real-life youth.
Because it’s based on a play, Lakeboat is an oral picaresque, its episodes coming through exchanges of dialogue between Dale and his shipmates, with a few effective flashbacks for dramatic emphasis. The most significant and recurring of these cutaways tells the urban legend of Guigliani (Andy Garcia), who lost his job on the boat because he got drunk or got rolled by a hot chick or got beat up by mobsters or went to his aunt’s funeral - depending upon who’s telling the story and how long they’ve had to revise it, embellish it, or just plain make up something better.
At times the characters in Lakeboat may remind you of Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross crew of working stiffs, or of the horny beasts of Sexual Perversity in Chicago (filmed as About Last Night. . .). But this is a kinder, gentler, earlier Mamet, written before he fully found his profane rhythm and filmed long after he got it out of his system. So the men of Lakeboat have a kind of dignity, melancholy and introspective resolve that you don’t find in Mamet’s other working-class men.
When the impishly handsome 23-year-old Dale arrives for work on the Seaway Queen, he’s wearing a yellow rugby shirt and tan chinos, and he’s carrying a backpack and a guitar. He screams "college boy," but nobody on the boat seems to give a damn. They just want him to cook their food and serve it to them while they tell their sea tales and grumble about whatever comes to mind.
On the bus to the dock Dale meets Pierman (Peter Falk), who’s going a bit dotty with age. That’s where Dale hears the first of many versions of the ubiquitous saga of Guigliani. The surprisingly metaphorical Skippy (Charles Durning), who has a seafaring quote from Kipling framed on his cabin wall, runs the boat, and the blustery Collins (George Wendt), who has little patience for fools, does Skippy’s bidding.
Fireman (Denis Leary) is a quizzical sap who watches four gauges all day long; silvery old Fred (Jack Wallace) spends his free time defending his movie hero (Steven Seagal) and giving Dale lessons about how to get laid (treat the woman badly); and white-haired old Stan (J.J. Johnson) is a contrarian who can turn anyone’s story, statement or life experience into an object of ridicule.
Most important of all to our young cipher’s rite of passage is Joe (Robert Forster, recently of Jackie Brown), a clandestine bookworm who likes his solitude and who ultimately shares with Dale his hidden passion - and his existential secret. It’s difficult to separate this intriguing character from any actor who might try to play him, so maybe Forster really isn’t that fine after all. But it sure seems like he is, and as Mamet elegantly unfurls Joe, Forster keeps him gently fluttering in the breeze of his humanity.
The rest of the acting in Lakeboat is so thoroughly prefect that Tony Mamet’s sluggish performance as Dale almost doesn’t matter in the end. He seems like a nice enough fellow, but you have to wonder whether director Joe Mantegna - the actor and frequent Mamet collaborator - actually wanted him in the role, or whether nepotism became a more powerful life force than art.
The first half hour of Lakeboat sets you up for a Mametesque journey into familiar territory with men who pass time by bragging, swearing, drinking and lying to each other about their lonely lives. But then the movie settles into the comfortable sound and pace of an elegy. It’s small, unambitious and very rewarding, a melancholy paean to a writer’s youth and to some old men who are probably all dead now, except in Lakeboat, where their ship sails on.