It’s funny that Long Live the State, Matthew Perniciaro’s history of groundbreaking 1990s comedy ensemble the State, begins and ends in Austin.
After all, this is the definitional pre-millennial New York comedy story, and so the film fittingly debuted this week as part of NYC’s Tribeca Festival. But it is topped and tailed with footage of eight of the original 11 members of the comedy troupe wrapping up their first ever national tour as part of the 2024 Moontower Comedy Festival.The only reason the tour happened was because of the series of strikes affecting the TV and film industries, and so as WGA and SAG members they all had the spare time to hit the road. Actually, that’s not the only reason. The other reason, as founding member Kerri Kenney-Silver explains, is that they’d wanted to do it for years, but everybody had been so busy that no one’s calendar was empty long enough. After all, if you’re trying to schedule rehearsals and dates for an ensemble that requires constantly in-demand comics and actors like Michael Ian Black, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, and Ken Marino to be free, and have Kevin Allison hang up the headphones on his iTunes-topping podcast Risk! for that long, it’s an impossible demand.
That so many members of the troupe have become household names with long-running careers and a host of beloved and influential series (Stella, Reno 911!, Party Down) and movies (Wet Hot American Summer, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, the Night at the Museum films, The Baxter), and that they keep working together, and still like each other, that’s something special.
Their shared filmography is the heart of Long Live the State, and the secret to its name. There is a difference between The State – the TV series they created for MTV – and The State – the comedy troupe that assembled at NYU in 1988 as the New Group and bulldozed its way to some kind of success. Perniciaro focuses on the latter, looking at how a bunch of freshmen playing with absurdist comedy happened, by complete accident, to change the comedy game. Eventually.
Perniciaro’s story is of everything happening one day, some day, often well after the fact. It’s elegantly and hilariously told with a soundtrack that’s basically a 4AD/Matador greatest hits mix tape over a massive trove of archive footage and contemporary interviews. It’s astonishing that he wrangled all 11 members (including Robert Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann, Michael Showalter, and David Wain) for the documentary, but it’s also not that hard because they’re still the State, and people still care.
Take a step back (far enough to see the whole unruly gang in one go, as mega-fan Perniciaro does) and it’s obvious why the tour was inevitable. This wasn’t one of those “one last time” cash grab reunions. Even though the State technically imploded in 1996 after a catastrophically received CBS special that dared take on their nemeses over at Saturday Night Live, it’s never gone away. Even the members of the State that didn’t come back for the 2024 tour didn’t do it because they didn’t like the show or their friends, it’s that they didn’t want to do a live tour again. It’s clear on all sides that there are zero hard feelings because they’ll work together again.
True, Perniciaro cuts a few corners, as is inevitable. The history is too huge, too ungainly, to possibly fit into 100 minutes, and so story elements that fans may feel essential are left out. There is, for example, no mention at all of the “lost” album, Comedy for Gracious Living, recorded after the film’s timeline suggests they were all done with the brand, or the book they wrote after the “split.” Moreover, there’s no mention of the near-miss 2008 reunion they were developing for Comedy Central (which, ironically, was scuppered rather than enabled by a WGA strike).
Yet talking about failed projects would arguably divert from the core point: Yes, The State was a niche show that most people hated in the first season, but finally everyone came around and it’s now regarded as an influential classic. It gave them all astonishing careers and lifelong friendships, as indicated by the constant gushing tributes they provide for each other. The only criticisms ever leveled of fellow castmates are at Marino (being that talented, that funny, and that handsome should be illegal) and Lo Truglio (who, by consensus of his peers, has committed the unforgivable sin of being genuinely the nicest, kindest, most likable person on the planet). Any real castigation is of the self-inflicted variety, as the cast work through the damage their own egos and insecurities wrought.
There is maybe a more brutal version of this film to be made. Indeed, after the Monday night screening, Allison said they had been approached by another director at the same time as Perniciaro but went with him because he seemed to like them. After all, that’s really what this is: a portrait of friends who made themselves – and finally the rest of the world – laugh. They may be a little softer, a little doughier these days, and the wordplay sketches may come easier than the physical comedy, but as Lo Truglio stands, beaming and drenched in sweat at the Paramount, it’s not hard to see why the State is still alive.
Long Live the State
Spotlight Documentary, World Premiere
Thursday, June 12, 2:15pm, Village East by Angelika
Sunday, June 15, 8:30pm, SVA Theatre
This article appears in June 6 • 2025.
