Waiting for Guffman

Waiting for Guffman centers on Corky St. Clair, a stage director with more ambition than ability who returns to his hometown of Blaine, Missouri. The town is preparing to celebrate its 150th anniversary, and Corky takes charge of an original musical about its history. His performers are ordinary residents rather than professionals: a local dentist, a travel-agent couple, a waitress and a mechanic, among others. The production becomes their shared obsession, and excitement builds when word arrives that a Broadway theater agent named Mort Guffman may attend the premiere. The hope that his presence could bring them recognition drives the cast to throw themselves into the show.

Christopher Guest directed the film, his second feature after The Big Picture, and wrote it with Eugene Levy, who also appears as Dr. Allan Pearl. The cast includes Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Michael Hitchcock and Larry Miller, with Guest himself playing Corky. Produced by Karen Murphy, the film runs 84 minutes and falls within the comedy and music genres.

On a budget of about 4 million dollars, the film took roughly 3 million dollars worldwide. Its audience rating on TMDB is 7 out of 10 from 289 votes, while its critics' rating stands at 7.8 out of 10 from 55 reviews, suggesting reviewers responded to it more strongly than general audiences did at the time.