State and Main

David Mamet (The Spanish Prisoner) wrote and directed this amusing fable about greed, idealism and compromise. A film crew invades a sleepy Vermont hamlet to make a 19th-century costume drama called The Old Mill. A spate of suspicious fires in the 1960s left the village without its historic mill, but this is minor compared to an actor’s (Alec Baldwin) appetite for underage girls and an actress’ (Sarah Jessica Parker) sudden refusal to bare her breasts. The excellent cast includes Philip Seymour Hoffman (Almost Famous) as a writer who strikes up a romance with the local bookstore owner (Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet’s wife) and is struggling with the demands of the film’s director (Panic's William Macy) and producer (David Paymer).