Fans of Seth Rogen might be accustomed to a certain consistent comic presentation. Ever the hapless yet affable stoner-next-door, Rogen’s schtick involves a long series of characters motivated by—if anything—stasis rather than motion. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest, say the laws of physics and Hollywood, and woe to the actor who tries to break them.
And yet “The Studio,” Rogen’s new creation for Apple TV that has garnered 23 Emmy nominations in its inaugural season, gives us a new version of himself. Rogen, who created, directed and largely wrote the 10-episode first season with his longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg, plays against type as the ambitious and talented head of a movie studio seeking to balance the demands of commerce and art.
Viewers find themselves in a frenetic sendup of Hollywood’s idiosyncrasies and idiocies, one larded with self-aware celebrity cameos from beginning to end but also marked by action and motion—a point made time and again by the photography and camera work in every episode. It makes for entertaining viewing, even if one gets the sense that some of the inside jokes are not landing for many of us. It’s a smart show, one that not only spoofs “the industry” but sneaks in a lot of homages to cinema history throughout.
When we first meet Rogen as Matt Remick, he is an executive at the fictional Continental Studios who has made his mark in Hollywood but still resents the laser focus on profit and commercially viable movies. When his boss is fired and he is appointed studio head by the eccentric Continental C.E.O. Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston), Remick sees his chance to shake things up…until he discovers his first big project is making a movie about the Kool-Aid Man.
Oh yeah.
This setup isn’t all exactly new: Since the dawn of Hollywood, we have always had satires and takedowns of movie magic, from “Barton Fink” to “Ed Wood” to “Entourage” to “For Your Consideration,” that explore that tension between the artistic vision and the all-powerful bottom line. In fact, the name of C.E.O. Griffin Mill is a clear homage to fictional studio executive Griffin Mill from Robert Altman’s 1992 studio satire “The Player,” starring Tim Robbins.
That last film was based on a novel by the same name by Michael Tolkin, one of a long list of writers who have penned satires of Tinseltown, usually after getting burned by the industry. Several of Mario Puzo’s novels, including Fools Die from 1978 and The Last Don from 1996, memorably lay bare the corruption and pettiness of corporate Hollywood—Jack Woltz wasn’t the only movie mogul to be made to look ridiculous—and John Gregory Dunne’s 1994 satirical novel Playland exacted a similar writer’s revenge. And in his 1997 memoir of his and his wife Joan Didion’s experience trying to adapt a story for Hollywood, Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, Dunne had two words to describe The Walt Disney Studios: “Mouschwitz” and “Duckau.”
That’s dark—and also a reflection on the reality that Hollywood’s culture has broken far more careers than it has launched. As a comic commentary, “The Studio” is lighter—most of the time. When it is at its best, it is offering a lighthearted take on serious issues, dancing around uneasy questions.
For example, an episode about race gives a very funny treatment of the anxieties and pieties of rich white people about depicting diversity. Can the cast of “Kool-Aid” be all Black, or is that suggesting that Kool-Aid is a “Black drink”? If the cast is interracial, is the studio suggesting audiences won’t accept a Black family in 2025? If the cast is all white, is the studio ignoring the subject entirely? And most importantly, who’s gonna tell the actor they’ve chosen to voice Kool-Aid himself, Ice Cube? Everyone at Continental is a little afraid of Cube. Ultimately, it all becomes moot when they decide to make the whole cast of Kool-Aid characters with A.I. And that offends Cube.
(Probably NFSW, but click here if you want to see Ice Cube’s video for his actual 2010 song, “Drink the Kool-Aid.”)
Less weighty but equally entertaining themes include the ways sheer venality and caprice can have enormous and far-reaching consequences. “The Studio” portrays a world where deals are made and lost over the jealous hoarding of parking spaces, where a wayward burrito can destroy a film’s chances for financial success, where the triumph of one of your films winning a Golden Globe is ruined because you’re not thanked in the acceptance speech. Like any industry, the fights are petty; except it’s Hollywood, so the stakes are high.
In addition to Rogen, the series stars Catherine O’Hara as Patty Leigh, Remick’s former boss; Ike Barinholtz as Sal Saperstein, Remick’s consigliere and producer; Chase Sui Wonders as Quinn Hackett, the D-girl-turned-junior-executive; and Kathryn Hahn as Maya Mason, marketing guru. Notable cameos include Martin Scorsese, Steve Buscemi, Aaron Sorkin, Ron Howard, Zac Efron, the aforementioned Ice Cube and many many youngsters who are surely now stars but are strangers to olds like myself. And of course the uncredited guest star is Los Angeles itself, from the Hollywood sign to Cedars-Sinai Hospital to the Chateau Marmont to the backlots of my hometown of Burbank.
The show is up for a number of significant Emmy Awards this coming weekend, including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series, Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (for Rogen). A number of additional nominations in other categories—as well as the nine awards the show won last week at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards—could mean that “The Studio” is recognized by its Hollywood peers as much as by its audience for a banner year.
The only real problem with “The Studio” is that, frankly, there is just too much Rogen. He can’t always get away from his bungling stoner Everyman persona, and as a result he tends to chew the scenery even when the action doesn’t require it. He doesn’t exactly pull out a bong and start scarfing down Hot Pockets, but no one would watch this show and think him a plausible chief executive without the foreknowledge this is a spoof. In real Hollywood, Matt Remick works in the mail room and is as high as, well, Seth Rogen.
But not everyone can be Scorsese (who, natch, appears in the first 15 minutes of the show; Remick tries to get him to direct “The Kool-Aid Man” and later screws him out of his own high-art project). And when “The Studio” works, it works well. We can happily look forward to more, as it has been renewed for a second season. All in all, it is a show that can be a bit exhausting, a bit vertigo-inducing, just to sit through all of it—but that is certainly the point. So is Rogen’s Hollywood.
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