The latest favorite show of Film Twitter has to be Apple-TV’s The Studio. Their enthusiasm and high rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the much lower audience rating had me curious. Which is it? Good or bad?
I could have written to Apple and begged to see the rest of the episodes, but as of now, I’ve only seen the first two. I am in agreement with the audience on this one, but it’s also easy to see why the critics gave it such a high score. It’s made for them. One might even call it FILM TWITTER: THE MOVIE. It reflects the ethos of modern day film critics — that mixture of socially conscious types and movie nerds. What they have in common is exactly what makes The Studio not very good: they all want to be seen as “good,” even the protagonist who could best be described as the “piece of shit the world revolves around.”
Apple-TV is like Netflix. They have so much money and power that they don’t have to answer to anyone. They only have to deliver content for their subscribers, win some awards, and all is right in their world. There is no market pressure, no ratings pressure. It’s a perfect little world that doesn’t really need you. As long as they obey the rules, they can do whatever they want.
Here is how The Wrap describes The Studio:
What is “The Studio” about?
“The Studio” centers on Matt Remick, the newly appointed head of Continental Studios. Matt legitimately loves movies, but realizes pretty quickly that sometimes he purely has to make decisions on films from a business standpoint.
As the official synopsis reads: “As movies struggle to stay alive and relevant, Matt and his core team of infighting executives battle their own insecurities as they wrangle narcissistic artists and craven corporate overlords in the ever-elusive pursuit of making great films.
“With their power suits masking their neverending sense of panic, every party, set visit, casting decision, marketing meeting, and award show presents them with an opportunity for glittering success or career-ending catastrophe.”
What is amazing about this show is that it attempts to come off as self-aware yet it exists in the Hollywood they want to exist, not the Hollywood that does exist or even the baseline reality. They must depict their utopia and then show all of the sad white people who flail around within it (usually men) — all problems solved. Women directors are the new normal, on par or the equals of their male counterparts. Everything is intersectional and compliant. None of this is ever addressed, of course, even much of their anxiety revolves around the thing they all know is killing their brand.
By the second episode, we’ve met the necesary requirements of DEI. There is a woman director (Sarah Polley) making a movie about a lesbian love affair with a woman of color in the lead. It would be funny if they were allowed to joke about that — because that is how the majority of the normies out there see what Hollywood has become. But they’re not allowed because they always must project the idea that this is just how it is now. They changed it. Everyone must accept it and if you say one thing about it, if you ask a single question, if you get curious about the why of it you are called a racist and a sexist and a homophobe, etc.
It’s wild to see. But this is what it’s like inside the bubble. It exists for itself. It tells stories for itself. But it isn’t good, to my mind, because it isn’t rooted in truth, but aspirational truth. There are some funny lines. It’s crisply written and well-directed.
Sarah Polley as the female director would have been hilarious if they could acknowledge that she is a female director and therefore no one is allowed to depict her as bad at her job or flawed in any way. No person of color will be allowed any complexity either. They exit to tick off a necessary box. The character development will only be afford to the white characters. The others will have to be elevated, and seen as of higher status. It’s all very strange and almost no one in Hollywodod would dare to touch it.
Martin Scorsese is funny in it, and kind of jokes about his $200 million budget. But here too they play it way too safe.
Apple-TV released Martin Scorsese’s very costly Killers of the Flower Moon but only after a signficant rewrite and reinterpretation of the film that, some might say, ruined it, in order to tell the story from the point of view of Native Americans. Rather than comment on that, as a smart writer would do in a more daring production, they have Martin Scorsese say “I should have sold my script to Apple” in a nice reach-around.
They also keep associating Jonestown with Kool-aid when, in fact, everyone knows it was Flavor-Aid and Martin Scorsese would surely know that if he was pitching it. Maybe it doesn’t matter but it would have been funny to leave that in. “Can we change the name from Flavor-aid?”
I imagine the back-patting only gets worse. It’s kine of like watching Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night which had the exact same problem. How to be an accepted and liked insider while trying to tell some kind of truth.
The only person, at least in the first two episodes, who comments on any of it is Bryan Cranston as evil studio overlord Griffin Mill when he says “diverse” and “not white.” In other words, the only person allowed to address the elephant in the room is the villain. That tells you all you need to know.
I take personal offense to their use of the name Griffin Mill as a nod to Robert Altman’s The Player, one of my all-time favorite movies and a movie that absolutely could not be made today. It was uncomfortable, dark and there is no chance Altman would have bowed to the dictates of some office telling him he has to obey all of the strident rules of the new utopian Left.
The Player is about a craven studio head, true, but Griffin Mill in The Player saw himself as sophisticated. He would never have gone with Kool-Ad to begin with. That these are the only villains the writers could come up with is sad. It’s true that Hollywood puts out junk to save money. It’s true that they make movies based on franchises. All of that is true.
Speaking of Oners:
The Player worked because it was rooted in truth. It was about the guy who screws over the decent people to rise. It was about the sociopathy in success. No way Altman would have backed off how a social justice ideology has overtaken Hollywood and now dictates content.
The Studio desperately wants to be about appreciating great movies and great movie makers. Yet they, like everyone else, doesn’t have the courage to address the thing that is standing in the way of art now: dogma.
Oh how I yearn for the days when art scratched in the places most of us couldn’t reach and exposed truths no one dare says out loud. Those days are gone, brother.
The Studio about as good as it gets within the confines of the new rules. Kind of like how some Christian Rock bands can also be good within the confines of the genre. They’re just not allowed to ever step outside of it. And if that doesn’t bother you because it makes you feel good about the world then you will love this show.
