Lisa Picard Is Famous

Waiting for Guffman raised the bar on fake documentaries so high in 1997 that this comedy about show business, the quest for and the entrapments of fame feels like a thin retread. Griffin Dunne stars as a filmmaker who selects an aspiring actress (Laura Kirk) as the subject of his latest documentary on the chance that she may soon make it big. He can then chronicle the changes in her life down to the way she walks that celebrity walk and talks that celebrity talk. Her only companions are a nerdy boyfriend and a gay actor (Nat DeWolf) who launches a one-man way off-Broadway show about homophobia. The sometimes smug, sometimes amusing story features cameos from Carrie Fisher, Mira Sorvino, Sandra Bullock, Charlie Sheen and the dog from There’s Something About Mary as themselves.