‘I got into all of this ’cause, you know, I love movies, but now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them…’
This was always going to be a slam dunk for me. Seth Rogen. Cameos from Hollywood royalty Martin Scorsese, Bryan Cranston and Steve Buscemi. 30 minute episodes. Check, check and check. While I often feel like Hollywood isn’t great at making films about itself (and there is an argument that the satire could be a little more cutting here), The Studio succeeds at exploring the clash between studio heads who want to make money and artists who want to make art (or vice verse as is often the case)…
We begin with Matt Remick (Rogen) being unexpectedly made the new head of Continental Studios after the ousting of Matt’s mentor, Patty Leigh (Catherine O’ Hara). Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz) serves as Matt’s vice president of production and confidante, and Kathryn Hahn plays Maya Mason – Continental’s head of marketing.
Yes, there is satire here (one of Continental’s biggest upcoming pictures is a film version of the Kool-Aid Man), but The Studio is mainly a love letter to the movies. It’s a spiritual successor to Damien Chazelle’s Babylon without ever being as unhinged or sprawling, with the stories told in various books and documentaries about movies serving as a key inspiration (the show feels like akin to Peter Biskind’s seminal film tome, Easy Riders and Raging Bulls).
Rogen employs every trick in the Hollywood playbook to ensure that we are seeing pure cinema on the small screen including a one-shot episode, scenes at the Hollywood Sign and more celebrity cameos than any show since Curb Your Enthusiasm wrapped, and while The Studio is rarely laugh-out-loud funny, it’s always smart and entertaining and accurate in its depiction of Hollywood filmmaking. While it is perhaps slightly undeserving of the praise currently being heaped upon it, there is no denying that it’s a lot of fun – especially for film geeks like me.
