Clarisse Loughrey’s Show of the Week column spotlights a new show to watch or skip. This week: Seth Rogen’s Hollywood satire The Studio is the real deal – a show for hardcore cinephiles.
Any modern satire about the entertainment industry can be judged by how it treats the world of social media. It separates the artists with their fingers on the pulse from those you suspect haven’t left their compound for a few months. The Studio, under that light, proves itself the real deal.
Matt Remick (Seth Rogen), recently promoted as head of Continental Studios, arrives at the Golden Globes alongside his embittered predecessor, Patty Leigh (Catherine O’Hara). As they walk the carpet, they brush past Charli D’Amelio, a TikTok influencer whose entire schtick is performing minimally choreographed dances with a maximum amount of elbow thrusts.
But, she doesn’t get any lines. She isn’t allowed to launch her acting career. She doesn’t even perform one of her trademark routines. She’s onscreen for a moment before Matt and Patty walk away and he mutters, “The fuck is happening to this town? I remember when the red carpet for the Golden Globes actually stood for something.” Here’s a series that convinced one of the world’s biggest social media stars to make a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, with the sole purpose of cracking a joke about how aggravating influencers are at media events. It’s quite the flex.
And, yes, the bit requires you to know who D’Amelio is, while simultaneously being annoyed by her existence, but what’s great about The Studio is that it has no interest in pandering. This is a show about movies made for people are actually care about movies. Sure, Rogen’s a natural comic, and there are enough Curb Your Enthusiasm-style faux pas to keep people without Letterboxd accounts relatively entertained.
But, really, this is a show for the hardcore cinephiles, the ones who will relate to the scene where Matt is introduced to his girlfriend’s (Rebecca Hall) co-workers, all in the medical field, and looks genuinely distressed when none of them have heard of Ari Aster. More pointedly, it’s about how cinephilia is a dying delusion, and how people like Matt—who casually drops references to Paul Dano’s Wildlife, I Am Cuba, and Touch of Evil in conversation—still naively believe in the sweet spot between art and commerce.
Of course, his boss Griffin Mill’s (Bryan Cranston and, yes, it’s the same name as Tim Robbins’s character in Robert Altman’s studio satire The Player) first demand is that Matt make a Kool-Aid movie. And, while he’s initially convinced he can deliver a critical AND box office smash á la Barbie (Get Wes Anderson! Guillermo del Toro! He starts listing auteurs in a panic), we then spend the rest of the season watching those dreams slowly die.
His best friend and fellow executive Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz) only cares about seeming cool to his kids; his former assistant Quinn Hackett (Chase Sui Wonders) is too fixated on making a name for herself; and his marketing head Maya Mason (Kathryn Hahn) whips up a video of a dancing Kool-Aid Man and calls it a day. Eventually, the Kool-Aid Movie starts to look a lot less like Barbie and a lot more like the new Minecraft film.
But, while The Studio is certainly cynical about Hollywood’s bleak future, what separates it from HBO’s The Franchise or Netflix’s The Bubble is that its takedowns are never self-satisfied. Co-creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez are also behind the series) made their names in mainstream comedies back when the genre was treated with a modicum of respect; they’ve seen the dramatic shifts first hand, have dipped their toes at both ends of the filmmaking pool, working on a small and big scales, and have arrived at this series with a sincere investment in creating a healthier filmmaking landscape. Unlike most industry satires, you actually want Matt to win.
I imagine that spark of fragile optimism made it easier to tempt over the show’s exhaustive list of celebrities, from Dave Franco to Ron Howard, all of them willing to poke fun at their own personas (particularly sharp is Zoë Kravitz’s lampooning of her “chill girl” vibes).
It also explains why The Studio looks so damn good. Matt’s cinephilia is splashed all across the screen, from the “oner” episode in which director Sarah Polley attempts a long, unbroken shot at magic hour, to the episode about a missing film reel on the set of an Olivia Wilde film noir, shot with turned-up raincoat collars and introspective voiceovers. Sure, The Studio was explicitly made for people who get what “she’s gone full Fincher” might mean—but, hey, it’s hard out there for a cinephile. We deserve a little love. Did I mention Martin Scorsese is in this?
