If you’re a movie buff, of COURSE you’re loading up that trial subscription to Apple TV+ to catch “The Studio,” a cinema-loving and best-joke-on-set-wins silly spin on the messy way movies are made and the sniveling, lying cowards who make them.
Not the directors and actors, mind you. They have their “vision,” their talent, their “genius” and their box office appeal to lean on.
No, “The Studio” is focued on the “talentless, faceless empty suit(s)” who make the decisions — or in the case of series co-creator and star Seth Rogen, playing an “idealistic” and ars gratia artis (MGM’s slogan) studio chief, not making decisions.
One aide and surbordinate after another shouts at new Continental Studios chief Matt Remick “That’s your ONLY job” about tough budget calls, “notes” to actors or directors about changes and his need to stand up to the Big Boss, the smarmy, less clueless than he seems CEO played by Bryan Cranston.
But movie-lover Matt, finally in the job he dreamed of since taking the Continental Studios tour as a teen, can’t make himself do it. He equivocates, flatters to the moon and beats around the bush rather than demanding this film be cut or that “franchise” idea — featuring the Kool-Aid man — be abandoned.
“Why do you keep lying?” is the only question that matters. And “The Studio” makes plain that the only answer that fits is cowardice. Everybody here is getting rich doing something they figure “matters,” that the one good movie they might make out of 23 “will last forever.” They will lie to every face they see to cling to that status and that illusion.
“The Studio” is a well-cut, well-cast sitcommy riff on Robert Altman’s “The Player,” a film that calls attention to its own long-take shots (“The Oner”), the obsession with “magic hour,” the insecurity that makes “suits” fret when they aren’t invited to Charlize Theron’s party, the actors — some of whom know more than we credit — who take on “producer” mantles and still refuse to grow the spine that the suits lack to make hard decisions.
Telling Ron Howard his “Alphabet City” is killed by a long, dull anticlimax, telling that studio CEO that Kool-Aid is a worthless piece of “IP” (intellectual property), enduring the unfiltered haragangues of the “I can’t SELL this s–t!” marketing chief (Kathryn Hahn, straight up “delulu,” first scene to last) are all part of that “one job.”
Matt just wants to be loved — by talent, in front of and behind the camera. But he quickly learns, with a CEO pushing hard on this Kool-Aid idea, with Martin Scorsese pitching a pricey “Jonestown” epic starring Steve Buscemi, a film with its own “Kool-Aid” problems, the ousted studio chief (Catherine O’Hara, “You made me curse! You know I quit!”) angling to keep her own career going, that “loved” isn’t happening.
His “best friend” and right-hand man exec Sal (Ike Barinholtz) can’t temper his enthusiasm, even when Matt wants to make suggestions on a tense “magic hour” long take day on the set of a Sarah Polley picture starring Greta Lee.
Scene after scene has a familiar ring as the scripts tie into Hollywood lore and Hollywood accepted wisdom. “Ron Howard is the nicest guy in Hollywood.” “Bookends” and “long takes” and “magic hour” matter only to serious cinephiles. And yes, 115 years after its colonization, Hollywood is still laughably, disproportionally Jewish.
“And they say there’s no more Jews working in Hollywood,” roars David Krumholtz, an ultra abrasive and unfiltered “What Makes Sammy Run?” agent that Jewish Matt and Jewish Sal need to make their deals.
We glimpse the “power” these convertible-drivers insist they have, and see them talked back to by projectionists, production assistants and even parking lot security. Ego, pretension, fear and cynicism fuel the people who drive the business just as surely as this week’s trendy smoothie or small batch…vermouth.
Apple plugs, Netflix shots, “this is NOT an A24 movie…not for a bunch of pansexual mixologists living in Bed-Stuy,” “Studio” is a series for people who love movies and stream them by the barrel-full.
Matt’s solitude is played up — it’s lonely at the top, in the hilltop houses that look down on greater LA, dating is a tad…fraught in his cash and status range. His status jumps about, from episode to episode, even as his confidence doesn’t. He’s driving a vintage MGB convertible in “The Promotion,” the first episode, visits a set later in an upgrade — a Triumph Herald convertible — a ’53 Corvette comes up later, a ’70s Alfa Romeo Spider, etc., all as Matt struggles with his sheepishness as he tries to learn to throw his weight around.
Rogen plays a self-aware version of himself here. The Rogen on TV chat shows or that journalists like me have interviewed laughs a lot — nervously. That insecurity is on open display here, a guy confident he can do the job until the instant he gets it, struggling to be “liked” when he’s fated to enrage Ron Howard, make Martin Scorsese cry and never ever get invited “back” to a Charlize Theron party, chuckling and chuckling through the fear and pain. With a side dose of paranoia.
The knowing winks about “shooting on film,” the play-acting of film-as-art poseur in charge of a studio, add texture and connect the series with Hollywood gossip. The laughs come from cringy twists on accepted wisdom about how movies are made and the sorts of filmmakers — foot fetishist Tarantino jokes, Olivia Wilde making “enemies” on a set, a sketchy version of Zac Efron — who have “reputations.”
Matt may play-act a film noir private eye when a crime happens on set. And Rogen makes us feel that genuine terror, for any interloper — exec or extra or journalist allowed to make a “set visit” — that you’ll ruin the take and earn the wrath of a director, an even more tantrum-prone producer or worst yet, a highly-strung star.
The idea is showing the viewer how so many mediocre movies get made, and so few great ones. Filmmaking by committee, when veto power lies in the hands of a few sniveling cowards, all of whom assume they know more than the “artists,” guarantees it. Ageist egotists who fear ageism themselves, power and promotion coveting execs who tremble at being thought “old,” “passe” or “lame” in a trend-chasing industry, no one here deserves a Get Out of Therapy Free card.
“The Studio” may not offer much in the way of surprises, but that crackling cast delivers rat-a-tat funny dialogue. Rogen, front and center in front of and behind the camera, learned his craft from Judd Apatow and Paul Feige, so “best joke on the set wins” banter abounds. It’s every bit as entertaining as the pitch and the trailers led us to expect.
If there’s a fault, it’s that it lacks the inside knowledge “edge” that TV’s “Flacks” or “Hacks” offer up. The crises are all in the heads of people with inflated attitudes about what they do and how important it is.
Krumholtz’s grating and archetypal agent is as close as this series ever gets to “touching that third rail,” to saying “the quiet part out loud,” that Hollywood might be the way it is because it’s as incestuously Jewish as it’s always been, for good or ill. More “what your Jew said” what from Krumholtz would have been edgier than anything served up here.
But if you love movies, here’s a laugh-out-loud confirmation of what you’ve heard or believed about how “the magic” is made, often in spite of the worst impulses, instincts and failings of those who make it.
Rating: TV-MA, profanity
Cast: Seth Rogen, Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barenholtz, Catherine O’Hara, Chase Sui Wonders, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Sarah Polley, Charlize Theron, Greta Lee, Anthony Mackie, Steve Buscemi, many others
Credits: Created by Alex Gregory, Evan Goldberg, Peter Hyuck, Frida Perez and Seth Rogen. An Apple TV+ release.
Running time: Ten episodes @:25-46 minutes each
