Seth Rogen plays a newly-minted studio boss in Hollywood comedy series The Studio. While satirical, it’s also earnest and auteur-ish, writes Dominic Corry, with an appealing idealism about the power of movies.
Into the long and sometimes glorious canon of fictional depictions of Hollywood comes Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s The Studio, a sometimes breezy, sometimes frenetic, often funny exploration of some of the most champagne-iest problems ever faced.
There are actually five credited creators of The Studio, with the other three being Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez. Those first two are storied comedy writers, both notably with credits on The Larry Sanders Show, the landmark 1992-98 series that marked a turning point in the way Hollywood skewers itself. The Studio isn’t nearly as savage as sometimes jet-black Larry Sanders, but the Garry Shandling-starring series is one of several identifiable influences on the new show.
Perez is an up-and-coming writer who previously served as Rogen’s assistant, which is a dynamic nicely reflected in the series, which begins with Continental Studios executive Matt Remick (Rogen) being promoted to studio chief, and Remick in turn promoting his assistant Quinn (Chase Sui Wonders) to creative executive.
Filling out the regular cast are Ike Barinholtz, who builds on the chemistry he shared with Rogen in the Bad Neighbours movies to play Remick’s best pal and fellow executive Sal, Catherine O’Hara as Patty, the Amy Pascal-esque deposed studio head Remick replaced and Kathryn Hahn in glorious form as Maya, Continental’s firecracker marketing head.
And there is of course a steady stream of celebrities playing themselves, including Martin Scorsese, Zac Efron, Adam Scott, a surprisingly large amount of Zoë Kravitz and past collaborators of Rogen’s like Charlize Theron, Dave Franco and Sarah Polley.
Beyond Scorsese, there are fun cameos from behind-the-scenes types also playing themselves, like Ron Howard, Netflix chief Ted Sarandos and Bad Neighbours director Nicholas Stoller, who recurs in several episodes and never quite refers to having worked with “Seth Rogen”, but it’s not hard to picture it happening.
I came to The Studio a big fan of Rogen and Goldberg’s work, especially the 2013 comedy This Is the End, which also featured a cavalcade of celebrities playing themselves. And I thoroughly enjoyed Rogen’s other Apple TV+ series Platonic.
The Studio is not nearly as extreme as (the non-fantastical elements of) This Is the End, and not quite as mellow as Platonic, but isn’t a million miles away from either endeavour.
Bryan Cranston shows up early as the owner of the studio, the guy who promotes Rogen, and his character’s name is Griffin Mill, a nod to Robert Altman’s 1992 Hollywood satire The Player, in which Tim Robbins played a devious studio executive named… Griffin Mill.
The Studio presents a more earnest idea of Hollywood than the The Player (and indeed The Larry Sanders Show) and is more interested in the absurdities of the movie business than its soullessness.
It also wants to show that at every level of the business, despite the perception of the superficial suits running Hollywood, there are people who actually love movies. I’m not sure I ever rose to the level of actually pitying these put-upon rich showbiz types, but I very much got the point that they cared, and that channelling that care into good movies is a very difficult task indeed.
I’m a longtime student of “fictional” films in projects about Hollywood, and The Studio isn’t really making a huge effort in this regard. But that also doesn’t seem to be the point of the show—it’s more about the people.
Most of the projects specifically referred to here are difficult to picture existing, let alone being funded by a “major” studio. The principal recurring film being developed throughout the season is a movie based on the classic children’s drink Kool-Aid, which isn’t terribly well-known outside America for anything beyond its association with mass suicide. Which is acknowledged in the show.
But while it’s hard to imagine there ever being an actual Kool-Aid movie, the project proves a decent vehicle through which to channel a lot of fun stuff regarding brand-driven movies, the perils of casting, and the generally ridiculous process of feature film development itself.
I always cite Entourage as a series that did a good job of coming up with “fake” movies, and it’s also a natural point of comparison for The Studio. The new show is (slightly) less interested in bro-tastic wish fulfilment, but it evokes Entourage in its inside-baseball Los Angeles location usage—key scenes take place at industry institutions like the Chateau Marmont and The Smoke House. Plus an entire episode takes place at the Golden Globes, as did large chunks of the Entourage movie.
It never really rose to the level of a proper feud, but back in the day there was mild sniping between Seth Rogen and the Entourage gang, and the series made some uneccessary cracks about Rogen’s appearance. At one point in The Studio, a “civilian” asks Remick if Hollywood really is like Entourage, and Rogen’s character cooly replies “Entourage was a show beloved by millions.”
There are moments in the new show that could easily have played out the same way in Entourage, and fans of the earlier series should find something to enjoy here, but The Studio appears to be going for something a little more auteur-ish leaning.
That’s especially evident in the show’s aesthetic—it’s probably gonna be overshadowed by Adolescence‘s use of a similar technique, but this is another series very much into the idea of oners, i.e. long single takes that track through a variety of spaces. An early episode commits to the idea for a whole episode, and that episode is about a director attempting to film a oner during a movie shoot. The meta layers just keep piling up on this show.
The ambitious oners also contribute to the show’s occasionally irritating sense of freneticism. Small tensions rising and rising throughout an episode is a recurring bit here, and it got tiresome at times.
But there is an idealism about the power of movies at the centre of this show that is highly appealing, and carried me through the lesser moments.
Some goodwill for Rogen and his general vibe will probably help, but this is required viewing for anyone who enjoys showbiz stories, and is a worthy addition to the canon of such narratives.
