VIDEO LOCO ON LOCATION 'STATE AND MAIN' SATIRIZES (TOO) TYPICAL HOLLYWOOD BEHAVIOR.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

``It's not a lie. It's a gift for fiction.''

And with that line, director-screenwriter David Mamet pretty much captures the Hollywood zeitgeist in his delicious satire ``State and Main,'' out this week on DVD and video. On the other hand, as much as we all like to knock Hollywood, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Mamet cleverly implies that - given the chance - most of us would be showing off our ``gift for fiction,'' too.

``State and Main'' follows a big-budget film crew as it invades a small New England town to make a movie called ``The Old Mill.'' Unfortunately, the town's dated tourist literature failed to note that the old mill, for which the burg was famous, had long before burned down. Macy (who speaks the ``gift for fiction'' line), as director Walt Price, wants to simply rewrite the script even though screenwriter Joe White (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is crazed by the fact that the mill is central to the movie (and more crazed since his beloved manual typewriter has been lost).

Starring in the ``Mill'' are Bob Barrenger (Alec Baldwin), a superstar with a taste for underage girls (``Everyone needs a hobby''), and Claire Wellesley (Sarah Jessica Parker), an insecure bimbo-esque actress who is suddenly becoming uneasy about baring her breasts for the camera (although everyone agrees those are her best assets).

Wellesley goes into histrionics about the nude scene, throwing Price and producer Marty Rossen (David Paymer) into fits as well. A mere $800,000 extra assauges her conscience and opens her blouse. (Oddly, in real-life Parker has a no-nudity rule, but the name Halle Berry should ring a bell.)

Meanwhile, the film company is out to use the town as much as it can with the least amount of payment. But the townsfolk prove to be as scheming as the the moviefolk, implying that all Hollywood is small-town USA blown up to a tawdry grand scale.

Even practiced predator Barrenger meets his match in Carla Taylor (Julia Stiles), the teen-ager whose family caters the film crew's meals. Stiles (whose ``Save the Last Dance'' is also out on video and DVD this week) is a young actress to watch, and she makes a marvelous transformation from prey to aggressor. In some ways, ``State and Main'' is a play dressed up as a movie, but doesn't that describe a lot of films once you take away the special effects?

DON'T TAKE THEM LIGHTLY: For those of you who are vampire-philes, ``Ultraviolet,'' the sleek, classy miniseries from England, will be out Tuesday on DVD and video. The 1998 six-part series, which played on the Sci-Fi channel last fall, offers an interesting twist on the idea of the undead among us. Rather than having some supernatural reasons behind the existence of vampires, the film offers that it's the result of a type of virus. A special virus does seem to give the vampires some extraordinary abilities as well as make them susceptible to the old bugaboo of not being able to be seen in mirrors. (A conceit taken further in that they also can't be photographed or recorded and their voices can't be transmitted over phonelines).

Starring Jack Davenport (``The Talented Mr. Ripley'') as a police sergeant who's recruited into a special government agency (a sort of anti- vampire SWAT team armed with garlic tear-gas grenades and carbonite bullets and led by a priest) that fights the evil undead, ``Ultraviolet'' creates a world that is not a simplistic idea of good vs. evil. The vampires present themselves as merely another lifeform trying to survive on a planet where the human population seems to be wiping everything out, including whole ecosystems. Except for Davenport, who has his doubts, the elite unit views the undead as purely the enemy. In fact, vampires (leeches, as they are called by the team) are treated as a health risk, a virus to be wiped out before an epidemic occurs.

``Ultraviolet'' has some very good acting from Davenport along with Susannah Harker, Idris Elba and Philip Quast, and very good scripts from writer-director Joe Ahearne that - unlike with most vampire tales - don't underestimate viewers' intelligence.

``State and Main'' (New Line) is available for rental on VHS and is $24.98 on DVD, which includes feature-length commentary and script-to-screen screenplay.

``Ultraviolet'' (Palm Pictures) is $34.95 for the two-disc DVD set and $24.95 for the two-tape VHS set.

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Photo:

Lonnie Smith, left, and William H. Macy check out the small town that is besieged by a major motion-picture crew in David Mamet's ``State and Main,'' new on DVD and video.