Waiting for Guffman (1996) on Netflix
In Blaine, Missouri, Corky St. Clair stages Red, White and Blaine, a musical about the town's past, with local amateurs. He tells his cast a Broadway producer may attend the opening.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.4/1034,097 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
Blaine, Missouri, calls itself the home of the first UFO landing and the stool capital of the world, and its residents are preparing a 150th-anniversary celebration. Its centerpiece is Red, White and Blaine, a musical history of the town written and composed by Corky St. Clair, a former off-off-off-off-Broadway man who leads the Blaine Community Players. Lloyd Miller, a high school music teacher, is the musical director. The cast includes Ron and Sheila Albertson, married travel agents; Libby Mae Brown, who works at a Dairy Queen; retired taxidermist Clifford Wooley as narrator; mechanic Johnny Savage; and Dr. Allan Pearl, a dentist. Corky has invited Mort Guffman, a producer from New York, to review the show, and has led the cast to believe a good notice could send the production to Broadway.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Scott Williamsonas Tucker Livingston - Councilman
- James McQueenas Singing Auditioner (as Jim McQueen)
- Jerry Turmanas Raging Bull Auditioner
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Waiting for Guffman (1996)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Christopher Guest compared the film's largely improvised dialogue to jazz, saying he was "completely blank before the camera rolls" and had no idea what he would say. He shot roughly 60 hours of ten-minute improvised takes and then spent over a year editing it down to a 90-minute film.
- The movie was shot in Lockhart, Texas, a town 30 miles south of Austin, where Christopher Guest wanted to put a "Stool capital of the world" sign up over the town, but he was not granted permission to do so.
- As in the other mockumentary films created by Christopher Guest, the majority of the dialogue is improvised, and Matt Keeslar was the only cast member with no history of doing improvisational acting.
- In December 2022, Variety named Waiting for Guffman one of "The 100 Best Movies of All Time," praising it as "a comedy as touching as it is hilarious" that had become "the ultimate cult film for a newly liberated generation."
- Actress Jane Lynch has stated that her admiration of Waiting for Guffman is what made her want to work with Christopher Guest on Best in Show.
