Would you be surprised to hear that the very good and very funny Seth Rogen-led film-industry satire The Studio has a lot in common with The Wire?
We'll come back to that.
A 10-episode series for Apple TV+, The Studio stars Rogen as Matt Remick, the new head of Continental Studios. He got the job when his unhinged upper-level boss (an impeccably cast Bryan Cranston) fired his mentor, Patty (an impeccably cast Catherine O'Hara) and promoted Matt. Now, it's Matt's moment, and he's terrified. In the first episode, he learns that the studio got the rights to make a Kool-Aid movie, and in nailing down the talent, he's caught between the desire for an easy box-office win and a Barbie-like play for one of the auteur directors he admires.
It does not go well. But he tries.
Because Matt, for all his flaws — debilitating insecurity, indecisiveness, inflexibility, and did we mention debilitating insecurity? — loves the movies. He loves the movies. He loves directors, he loves actors, he loves sets, and he loves creative conversations. More than anything, he desperately wants creative people to like him. He really does want to make great work that he and the whole studio can be proud of. (And, yes, he wants to be recognized for it). As Patty tells him, if you make a really good movie, it's good forever – and that makes up for a lot of the misery and the compromises in a job like this.
Unfortunately, Matt's love of film is inconsistent with his real assignment, which is to make the most money possible while taking the fewest risks. And he believes in that, too, because he wants to keep his job and he loves the life it gives him. So in this world, the desire to make art and the desire to make money are in tension, but not because they put pure artists and mercenary suits on opposite sides. They are competing desires that exist inside the hearts and minds of many, if not most, of the people in the industry, just in different proportions.
Matt has a small team that surrounds him for most of his day: his top executive, Sal (Ike Barinholtz), who thought he might get the job until Matt got it; his former assistant, Quinn (Chase Sui Wonders), who's been elevated to a creative executive and who is immediately hustling hard to get her first movie made; and the head of marketing, Maya (Kathryn Hahn), who crashes into every room either very irate or very stoked about whatever she thinks is affecting the box-office potential of Continental's slate.
Many of the episodes have a common structure, which is that Matt starts out with a challenge, which he tries to tackle in a way that turns it into a larger and larger problem, until it eventually becomes a catastrophe. This is true in both of the first two episodes. In the first, he has to nail down a director for the Kool-Aid movie, and the minute you see the wheels turning in his head about a very (oh so very) ill-advised way he might approach this problem and land a major director, you cover your eyes in horror. And then it gets so much worse.
In the second episode, he visits the set of Sarah Polley's new film starring Greta Lee, and he just wants to hang around and be with the cool creative types. He is certain he can get them to really like him, because he is the cool boss, but he can't bring himself to do the only things they really want, the only things that will make them think he's a cool boss who gets it — like staying out of the way. And then it gets so much worse.
It's the darndest thing: This is one of the most brutally skewering comedies about Hollywood that Hollywood itself has produced, and also one of the most sympathetic to industry people. Of course, there are some horrible, empty monsters running around in this fictional world, but Matt is not one of them. He is a profoundly anxious man who has managed to land his dream job and now knows that he is at constant risk of being fired and forgotten. He is entirely dependent on directors and other creatives and has nothing without them, but he is forever telling them no and (mostly accidentally) sabotaging their work. He wants to champion art, but he also wants the power and the prestige that comes with the job he now has. Patty makes clear that this isn't really possible. In fact, as a fired executive who's now a producer, she has the kind of creative engagement with actors and directors that he says he wants. But she never had it when she was the head of the studio.
The secret, perhaps, is that the show is brutal about the system, but understanding about individuals. All of these people are stuck in a film industry much bigger than any of them that is, often, indifferent to art if not overtly hostile to it. They can use their gifts, they can try to elevate the best work, and they can try to support actors and directors and writers. But they cannot, with individual choices in individual meetings, change the nature of the industry, and so they keep hoping that they can make compromises and still get a good result. These compromises, of course, also protect their status.
Someone with some industry experience once told me that when they were younger, they'd wondered how big movies with enormous resources can be so bad. Now, they said, having seen things more up-close, they're surprised that any of them are ever any good. That, really, is what The Studio is about. With the system the way it is, it is actually an uphill battle for anything to be good, and Matt is fighting that uphill battle even though he's theoretically the boss. That's in part because you can go as high up as Matt, the studio head, and still be in the world of people who love movies as art. But Matt has a boss, too, and when you get up to that boss, the corporate boss, the one played by Cranston? That's another story. (Is it ever.)
And that's why there are echoes of The Wire, perhaps the best show we've ever had about how broken systems (economic sectors, government, schools, police) overwhelm people who are flawed but not wicked. Systems become far more malevolent and destructive than any one well-meaning person inside them can easily fix, and unless you change the whole thing, you will continue to get corruption, inequality, noncompetitive elections and the Kool-Aid movie. (Obviously the stakes are different. But it's the same idea.)
Don't misunderstand: The pleasures of The Studio lie, episode to episode, in riotous silliness, great scripts, grade-A comedy performances, and brilliant self-parody from people playing themselves (Polley, Scorsese, Adam Scott, Zoë Kravitz, Ron Howard, Anthony Mackie, Olivia Wilde, Zac Efron, and many, many others). The score, from jazz musician and composer Antonio Sánchez (probably best known for composing the score of Birdman) is playful and kinetic — it feels both contemporary and timeless, an energetic take on classic scores. Many long takes done with one camera make the show feel distinctive and cinematic. It is a comedy full of good jokes, sight gags, physical comedy, and witty edits, and it is fun.
But like a lot of good comedy, it's about something, too. Celebratory about people's love of movies if despairing about the current state of the industry, it is the most humane show you'll ever see about a man who makes Sarah Polley hate him and makes Martin Scorsese cry.
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