Waiting for Guffman Waiting for Guffman Waiting for Guffman is a 1997 American mockumentary comedy film written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, and directed by Guest. The film's ensemble cast (who improvised their dialogue based on Guest and Levy's story) includes Guest, Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard, and Parker Posey. The film's title is a reference to Samuel Beckett's play "Waiting for Godot". As in the other mockumentary films created by Guest, the majority of the dialogue is improvised. Because the film is about the production of a stage musical, it contains several original musical numbers written by Guest, Michael McKean and
Waiting for Godot on as a ringmaster—but Beckett dissuaded him: "I don't in my ignorance agree with the round and feel "Godot" needs a very closed box." He even contemplated at one point having a "faint shadow of bars on stage floor" but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called "explicitation". In his 1975 Schiller Theater production, there are times when Didi and Gogo appear to bounce off something "like birds trapped in the strands of [an invisible] net", in James Knowlson's description. "Because the play is so stripped down, so elemental, it invites all kinds of social and