State and MainMovies like State and Main
- Key Features:
- Filmmaking, Small town, Hollywood, Satire, Moral compromise, Ensemble cast, Culture clash, Creative process, Black comedy, Romance subplot
- Tone:
- humorous, satirical, witty
- Target Audience:
- Comedy fans, Film buffs, Those interested in Hollywood satire
- Emotional Arc:
- Optimism → Disillusionment → Acceptance
State and Main

A movie crew invades a small town whose residents are all too ready to give up their values for showbiz glitz.
State and Main
Sportswriter Andy Farmer moves with his schoolteacher wife Elizabeth to the country in order to write a novel in relative seclusion. Of course, seclusion is the last thing the Farmers find in the small, eccentric town, where disaster awaits them at every turn.

Tracy Flick is running unopposed for this year’s high school student election. But Jim McAllister has a different plan. Partly to establish a more democratic election, and partly to satisfy some deep personal anger toward Tracy, Jim talks football player Paul Metzler to run for president as well.

From the once thriving tobacco warehouses, to the current run-down and closed shops of Five Points, a diverse group of residents and their respective life changes when outsider Gus Leroy brings something new and potentially dangerous into their quiet town.

College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.

Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos.

A Democratic political consultant helps a retired Marine colonel run for mayor in a small, conservative Wisconsin town.

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

Hollywood beckons for recent film school grad Nick Chapman, who is out to capitalize on the momentum from his national award-winning student film. Studio executive Allen Habel seduces Nick with a dream deal to make his first feature, but once production gets rolling, corporate reality begins to intervene: Nick is unable to control a series of compromises to his high-minded vision, and it's all he can do to maintain his integrity in the midst of filmmaking chaos.

A director struggles with a difficult sex scene between a young actor and actress who can't stand one another. Aided by her loyal assistant, she is hell-bent on getting the scene right without compromise.

In the midst of a nasty public breakup of married movie stars, a studio publicist scrambles to put a cap on the escalating situation as the couple's latest film has found it's only print kidnapped by the director.

A divorced writer from the Midwest returns to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, who's now married with a family.

A US president who has retired after two terms in office returns to his hometown of Mooseport, Maine and decides to run for Mayor against another local candidate.

Small-town bartender Owen Peadman goes to Los Angeles to raise money to help save his father's Minnesota restaurant. He tries to find a way into Hollywood society, where he meets socialite Lisa and her uptight actor boyfriend. Can he balance his growing feelings for Lisa with surviving the sordid lifestyles of the Hollywood elite?

As a writer named Mike struggles to shepherd his semi-autobiographical sitcom into development, his vision is slowly eroded by a domineering network executive named Lenny who favors trashy reality programming. The irony, of course, is that every crass suggestion Lenny makes improves the show's response from test audiences and brings the show a step closer to getting on the air.

Joanna Eberhart comes to the town of Stepford, Connecticut with her family, but soon discovers there lies a sinister truth in the all too perfect behavior of the female residents.

The possibility of Oscar gold holds the cast and crew of an independent film in its grip after the performance of its virtually unknown, veteran star generates awards buzz.

Filmmaker Alan Smithee finds himself the unwilling puppet of a potentially bad big budget action film, for which he proceeds to steal the reels, and leaves the cast and crew in a frenzy.

Celeste Talbert is the star of the long-running soap opera "The Sun Also Sets." With the show's ratings down, Celeste's ruthlessly ambitious co-star, Montana Moorehead, and the show's arrogant producer, David Seton Barnes, plot to aggravate her into leaving the show by bringing back her old flame, Jeffrey Anderson, and hiring her beautiful young niece, Lori Craven.

A loser of a crook and his wife strike it rich when a botched bank job's cover business becomes a spectacular success.

A group of actors and their casting agents try to find a direction in their lives whilst coming to terms with their personal problems and relationship conflicts.

A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood.

During the course of an ordinary week in Hollywood, movie producer Ben must navigate his way through shark-infested waters as he struggles to complete his latest projects. A demanding studio boss demands extensive changes to a movie starring Sean Penn, while another chief won't greenlight a project unless star Bruce Willis shaves his beard. Meanwhile, Ben tries to reconcile with his wife and maintain a relationship with his young daughter.

A low-budget film crew working in New York City find themselves being preyed upon by a sexually conflicted serial killer.

In the old west, a man becomes a Sheriff just for the pay, figuring he can decamp if things get tough.

A no-nonsense cop has a flair for fashion and a celebrity takes revenge on the paparazzi in a collection of comedic sketches.

In the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and murder.

A series of interconnected short films are the backdrop for a maniac screenwriter who pitches insane storylines featuring some of Hollywood's biggest and brightest.

A New York writer on sex and love is finally getting married to her Mr. Big. But her three best girlfriends must console her after one of them inadvertently leads Mr. Big to jilt her.

A frustrated, unemployed teacher joins forces with a scammer and his girlfriend in a blackmailing scheme.

Aspiring filmmakers Mel Funn, Marty Eggs and Dom Bell go to a financially troubled studio with an idea for a silent movie. In an effort to make the movie more marketable, they attempt to recruit a number of big name stars to appear, while the studio's creditors attempt to thwart them.

A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.

Porter Stoddard is a well-known New York architect who is at a crossroads... a nexus where twists and turns lead to myriad missteps, some with his wife Ellie, others with longtime friends Mona and her husband Griffin. Deciding which direction to take often leads to unexpected encounters with hilarious consequences.

A midwestern teacher questions his sexuality after a former student makes a comment about him at the Academy Awards.

A journalist suffering from burn-out wants to finally say goodbye to his office – but his boss doesn’t like the idea one bit.

A reality TV director copes with a spoiled celebutante and a show gone haywire when a masked killer starts bumping off the crew in this slasher-movie satire.

Set in Middle America, a group of teens receive an online invitation for sex, though they soon encounter Christian fundamentalists with a much more sinister agenda.

A rascally nearing-retirement man juggles a workers' compensation suit while secretly working for his nemesis and flirting with his nemesis' young wife. As his estranged son returns, he faces new family responsibilities, while a banker plots to evict him from his home.

A novelist fed up with the establishment profiting from "Black" entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.

In May of 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico.

In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.

A straight-laced pharmacist's uneventful life spirals out of control when he starts an affair with a trophy wife customer who takes him on a joyride involving sex, drugs and possibly murder.

Spoof of romantic comedies which focuses on a man, his crush, his parents, and her father.

A town—where everyone seems to be named Johnson—stands in the way of the railroad. In order to grab their land, robber baron Hedley Lamarr sends his henchmen to make life in the town unbearable. After the sheriff is killed, the town demands a new sheriff from the Governor, so Hedley convinces him to send the town the first black sheriff in the west.

Rattled by sudden unemployment, a Manhattan couple surveys alternative living options, ultimately deciding to experiment with living on a rural commune where free love rules.

The recently deceased Mona Dearly was many things: an abusive wife, a domineering mother, a loud-mouthed neighbor and a violent malcontent. So when her car and corpse are discovered in the Hudson River, police Chief Wyatt Rash immediately suspects murder rather than an accident. But, since the whole community of Verplanck, N.Y., shares a deep hatred for this unceasingly spiteful woman, Rash finds his murder investigation overwhelmed with potential suspects.

A movie producer who made a huge flop tries to salvage his career by revamping his film as an erotic production, where its family-friendly star takes her top off.

A small New Mexican village discovers a severed hand that is considered a miracle of God, when it actually belongs to a murdered spouse with a husband in search of it.

In this surrealistic and free-form follow-up to the Monkees' television show, the band frolic their way through a series of musical set pieces and vignettes containing humor and anti-establishment social commentary.

The eclectic residents of a small, picturesque island town must navigate a sensational murder and the discovery of a million dollars, leading to a series of increasingly bad decisions which upend the once-peaceful community.

Amy, a naive college graduate who believes she's destined to be a great poet, begrudgingly accepts a job at a sex shop while she pursues a mentorship with reclusive writer Rat Billings.

A trip to New York for a job interview turns into a trip to hell for a small town couple.

A naive business graduate is installed as president of a manufacturing company as part of a stock scam.

Ray Pluto has many problems. He is satirized in the tabloids as the "loser cop." His partner is starting to seem suspiciously attracted to him. A pair of screenwriters across the hall keep bugging him for help. The superintendent of his building is stabbed by hoodlums hired by his own rebellious daughter. To top it off, a sexually aggressive chiropractor may just be Ray's undoing.

British artist Colin Ware discovers that his fiancée, Vera, is going to marry another man. Distraught and despondent, he gets on a plane for America and ends up in the tiny town of Hope in New England. At first, Colin is depressed, but he soon finds more than a shoulder to cry on when his innkeepers introduce him to Mandy, a beautiful nurse. All's going well and Colin has almost forgotten his old flame until Vera shows up with a surprise of her own.

A teacher reconnects with an old student who is now an attorney representing a family who is suing the school for graduating their son who still cannot read or write. Amid the daily chaos of teaching in an inner city school, Alex Jurel tries to decide if he will lie at his deposition to protect the school or tell the truth and risk throwing away his career.

When a straight-laced couple that has fun with a rowdy couple on vacation in Mexico return to the States, they discover that the crazy couple they met in Mexico followed them back home and decide to play tricks on them.

A sex-addicted con-man pays for his mother's hospital bills by playing on the sympathies of those who rescue him from choking to death.

A group of 30-year-olds who have been friends since high school attempt to throw an end-of-summer orgy.

Hard-to-crack ex-CIA man Jack Byrnes and his wife Dina head for the warmer climes of Florida to meet the parents of their son-in-law-to-be, Greg Focker. Unlike their happily matched offspring, the future in-laws find themselves in a situation of opposites that definitely do not attract.

A top Hollywood talent agent finds his cushy existence threatened when he discovers that his wife is cheating on him and that his journal has been swiped by a reporter out to bring him down.

At the Mêle sur Sarthe, a small Norman village, farmers are affected by a crisis. Georges Balbuzard, the mayor of the city, is not one to let them down and decides to try everything to save his village...

Richard Clark has just left the well-known Wellington Academy to teach at Marion Barry High School. Now, he will try to inspire the D-average students into making good grades and try to woo a fellow teacher.

When a presidential candidate dies unexpectedly in the middle of the campaign, the Democratic party unexpectedly picks a Washington, D.C. alderman as his replacement.

A clique of four young teachers at a high school looks critically at their colleagues. To avoid falling in the same routine, they bring new ideas into the school lessons and play little games and pranks in their spare time -- sometimes get even more childish than their pupils. When they get opposition from the other teachers, they play tricks to get rid of them.

In the sleepy town of Centerville, the lives of a number of interconnected characters are disrupted by the undead.

An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important.

A young lunatic director and his devoted cult of cinema terrorists kidnap a Hollywood movie goddess and force her to star in their radical underground movie.

The discovery of a corpse and the ensuing probe by an idealistic journalist threatens to unravel a bumbling local politician's campaign for governor of Colorado.

Frustrated when network brass reject his sitcom idea, producer Pierre Delacroix pitches the worst idea he can think of in an attempt to get fired: a 21st century minstrel show. The network not only airs it, but it becomes a smash hit.

In the 1940s, a small Mexican town has seen its last three mayors assassinated in rapid succession. A naive janitor is recruited to become the new mayor, and he believes he will modernize the little town and usher in a reign of peace. But the system corrupts him very quickly, and he takes to abusing his power while associating with an unscrupulous assortment of opportunists, hypocrites and criminals.

A group of self-absorbed actors set out to make the most expensive war film ever. After ballooning costs force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they encounter real bad guys.

The intersecting stories of twenty-four characters—from country star to wannabe to reporter to waitress—connect to the music business in Nashville, Tennessee.

Doug MacRay is a longtime thief, who, smarter than the rest of his crew, is looking for his chance to exit the game. When a bank job leads to the group kidnapping an attractive branch manager, he takes on the role of monitoring her – but their burgeoning relationship threatens to unveil the identities of Doug and his crew to the FBI Agent who is on their case.

When a Conservative TV crusader threatens to shut down beloved brothel, the Chicken Ranch, proprietress Miss Mona Stangley and her girls won't go down without a fight.

After an anonymous hacker begins leaking the private data of thousands living in a small American town, the townspeople spiral into madness, with four high school seniors at the center of the maelstrom.

A spoof of buddy cop movies where two very different cops are forced to team up on a new reality based T.V. cop show.

Broadway producer Max Bialystock and his accountant, Leo Bloom plan to make money by charming wealthy old biddies to invest in a production many times over the actual cost, and then put on a sure-fire flop, so nobody will ask for their money back – and what can be a more certain flop than a tasteless musical celebrating Hitler.

Labor Day in a small Kansas farm town. Hal, a burly and resolute drifter, jumps off a dusty freight train car with the purpose of visiting Alan, a former college classmate and son of the richest man in town.

Two rebellious youths, Ralph and Scott, find themselves struggling with adulthood as the Vietnam War rages. Feeling trapped in their small town, Scott battles with his conservative veteran father, Cliff, and Ralph deals with his desperately sexual mother, Ev. When tragic news arrives from overseas, the entire town, inspired by Ralph and Scott's antiwar efforts, reevaluates its attitude toward the war.

A day in the life of a group of men and women in Hollywood, in the hours leading up to a friend's birthday party.

The story centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shop girl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man.

Feeling pressured to become more sexually experienced before she goes to college, Brandy Klark makes a list of things to accomplish before hitting campus in the fall.

When a Soviet submarine gets stuck on a sandbar off the coast of a New England island, its commander orders his second-in-command, Lieutenant Rozanov, to get them moving again before there is an international incident. Rozanov seeks assistance from the island locals, including the police chief and a vacationing television writer, while trying to allay their fears of a Communist invasion by claiming he and his crew are Norwegian sailors.

Believe it or not, even Smalltown USA still has people who are unfulfilled and unrelieved in the midst of plenty. Levonna and Lamar could have the perfect relationship, were it not for Lamar's obsession with rear entry.

One-man armies, meet-cutes, casual strolls away from huge explosions — stars and industry insiders toast and roast these cinematic chestnuts and more.

When a young couple buys their dream home, they have no idea what the sweet little old lady upstairs is going to put them through!

On the verge of bankruptcy and desperate for his big break, aspiring filmmaker Bobby Bowfinger concocts a crazy plan to make his ultimate dream movie. Rallying a ragtag team that includes a starry-eyed ingenue, a has-been diva and a film studio gofer, he sets out to shoot a blockbuster featuring the biggest star in Hollywood, Kit Ramsey -- only without letting Ramsey know he's in the picture.

A small town girl and a city boy meet on the Sunset Strip, while pursuing their Hollywood dreams.

The accidental shooting of a boy in New York City leads to an investigation by the Deputy Mayor, and unexpectedly far-reaching consequences.

Anne and Bob, a well-to-do American couple, have just moved to a beautiful manor house in romantic Paris. To impress their sophisticated friends, they decide to host a lavish dinner party, but must disguise their maid as a noblewoman to even out the number of guests. When the maid runs off with a wealthy guest, Anne must chase her around Paris to thwart the joyous and unexpected love affair.

Two rival politicians compete to win an election to represent their small North Carolina congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.

During the final weeks of a presidential race, the President is accused of sexual misconduct. To distract the public until the election, the President's adviser hires a Hollywood producer to help him stage a fake war.

A subversive tale that interlaces five stories set in Los Angeles, where no taboo is left unexplored as each character careens toward a dark and often comic fate

Naive Midwestern prep student Jonathan bonds with his more worldly roommate, Skip, who takes the small-town boy under his wing. At Skip's urging, the inexperienced Jonathan is emboldened to seek out older women in the cocktail lounges of nearby Chicago, where he meets and beds the alluring Ellen, who unfortunately turns out to be Skip's mother. The division between the friends is further deepened when a cheating scandal engulfs the school.

An ethical Baltimore defense lawyer disgusted with rampant legal corruption is forced to defend a judge he despises in a rape trial under the threat of being disbarred.

Earl and Baby, two young lovers with a plan to escape their small Texas town. But when Baby's dim-witted cousin Junior gets tangled up in a whole heap of trouble, Earl has just 48 hours to save the day, rescue Junior and keep his promise to get his Baby to Los Angeles in time for sweeps.

When lawyer Charlie is sent to a small Nevada town to file a continuance request for a client, his actor friend Richard turns up to throw a surprise bachelor party celebrating his upcoming marriage to the boss's daughter. When Charlie is too hung-over to make it to court for the hearing, Richard fills in, inadvertently committing felony fraud, and Charlie is left with no choice but to coach the clueless Richard through the whole trial.

The tension is palpable, the excitement is mounting and the heady scent of competition is in the air as hundreds of eager contestants from across America prepare to take part in what is undoubtedly one of the greatest events of their lives -- the Mayflower Dog Show. The canine contestants and their owners are as wondrously diverse as the great country that has bred them.

