When someone accuses William H. Macy’s character, the slippery director Walt Price, of lying, his one-sentence response sums up the contradictory Hollywood dichotomy of business versus art: "That’s not a lie -- it’s a gift for fiction." This truth-is-where-you-find-it comeback neatly encapsulates the theme of David Mamet’s latest effort as writer and director, State and Main.

The story’s premise is that a film company invades a small and idyllic New England town to make a movie titled The Old Mill. The crew’s disruptive presence naturally turns their quiet way of life topsy-turvy. Yet the town’s citizens are, for the most part, delighted participants in their own exploitation. The film plays on Hollywood archetypes and gives them new spin: there are the self-indulgent movie star, the difficult actress, the suffering writer, the aggressive producer, and the director who will do whatever is necessary to move the project forward.

Comedic films about filmmaking have become a recognizable genre in their own right (The Player, and Living in Oblivion being two of the best) and few filmmakers have found anything new to say about it. But Mamet and his talented cast take these characters to the next level, and make them dimensional, if parodic, portrayals of film industry shortcomings.

Screenwriter Joseph White, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (and the closest person the story has to a main character), is the first to feel the bottom of Hollywood’s heel. The town of Waterford’s historic mill, lauded in their woefully out-of-date brochures, burned down in the ‘60s. As the mill, the central image of his script, is no longer available, and the production doesn’t have the funds to build one, he is forced to do a rewrite. Joseph’s example is merely one of many examples of how the crew must cope and adapt to constant and unexpected change. The town, a bastion of steadfast regularity, lies in direct opposition to the kind of radical restructuring needed to successfully make a movie.

This simple yet effective friction between two philosophies is the basis of the kind of classic comedy that Hollywood itself, ironically, seems reluctant to make anymore. With no gross-out gags ala Something About Mary, stupid-people situations in the vein of this month’s competing release Dude, Where’s My Car? or Jim Carrey-driven histrionics, Mamet’s movie is a welcome throwback to halcyon days of good-old fashioned American comedies in which situation and character were more important than only-funny-the-first-time jokes. In screwball comedy fashion, people rush into a room, deliver a manic line, then rush right back out only to be replaced by another character. This kind of chaotic movement is also, conveniently, the exact kind of thing that goes on in a real movie production.

Mamet is an uneven writer with as many hits as misses. His previous film as writer/director, last year’s ponderous The Winslow Boy, was his attempt at a Merchant-Ivory costume drama, and was eminently forgettable. Although Mamet is an award-winning playwright, he has often written screenplays with dialogue that sounds overly theatrical. My favorite Mamet efforts are sometimes his least appreciated, like his script for 1997’s Alec Baldwin/Anthony Hopkins thriller The Edge, directed by Lee Tamahori, or 1991’s William H. Macy/Joe Mantegna vehicle, Homicide, which Mamet wrote and directed. And Mamet is still mystified about how to create realistic female characters.

Mamet’s typically brisk style of writing lends itself perfectly to the kind of kinetic vehicle that State and Main provides, as he excels at creating snappy, ping pong-match style dialogue that leaves no room for monologues or pregnant pauses. Fast, furious, and funny, the story never gets mired down in the kind of navel-gazing that can often mar character-based comedies, and instead goes right for the jugular.