As This Is Spinal Tap and its most successful offspring have proven, the mockumentary format works best when it finds a zone just a little off reality. The more outrageous the antics it portrays, the less believable and funny it's likely to be. It helps that the subject matter of Lisa Picard Is Famous, the world of struggling actors, gives it a wide zone of operations. Written by stars Laura Kirk and Nat DeWolf and directed by Griffin Dunne, the film follows the fictional alter egos of the writers, two low-level New York actors who remain best friends while finding fame, fortune, and not much else. Having tasted stardom, or at least notoriety, after appearing in a sensual commercial for Wheat Chex, Kirk attracts the attention of a documentarian (Dunne) hoping to chronicle someone on the cusp of breaking into the big time. As Kirk tries to secure a role in a pain-reliever commercial and waits for the première of the Melissa Gilbert TV movie A Phone Call For Help, hoping her small role in the film will break her into the big time, DeWolf promotes his unpromising one-man show about the struggles of being an openly gay actor. Despite a few forced moments early on, Lisa Picard largely succeeds in capturing the absurdity of its world, spicing up the fictional action with first-person accounts that only back up its points. In one segment, the unmistakably white actor (and Picard executive producer) Fisher Stevens talks about getting typecast as an Indian after appearing in the Short Circuit films, which makes Kirk's attempts to shake her image as a cereal pitchwoman seem less ridiculous. (A run-in with L.M. Kit Carson, reprising his role as mockumentary godfather David Holzman, further blurs the line between fact and fiction.) Both Kirk and DeWolf are convincing as earnest, often frustrating, and apparently over-caffeinated characters. Even in moments when it's not aggressively funny, Lisa Picard makes their plight believable, adding a touch of poignancy to the slight, sweet comedy. Whether they find fame or not, it seems likely to get the better of them, one way or another.