“The Studio,” the Hollywood satire from Seth Rogen, arrived at a moment when the declining domestic box office and the deflation of the streaming bubble have left all of us who work in the industry anxious about our relevance and viability. And unlike Griffin Mill, the soulless yuppie studio executive in 1992’s “The Player” — the Hollywood satire against which all others must be judged — Matt Remick, Rogen’s character, is an amiable doofus of a studio boss who genuinely loves good movies. He just doesn’t make them.
As he states woefully in the first episode, “I got into all this because I love movies, but now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.”
It’s a common conundrum in Hollywood. Mr. Rogen has recounted that a version of that line was said to him years ago by the studio executive Steve Asbell, who now runs 20th Century Studios. I’ve worked with Mr. Asbell, and I can confirm that, like many film-loving executives, he’s someone who’d rather nerd out with you about Howard Hawks or dissect the story minutiae of “Alien” than sadly inform you that the best line in your new draft won’t pass muster with his boss.
This raises an uncomfortable but unavoidable question, which “The Studio” helps to answer: If Hollywood is so full of enthusiastic, knowledgeable cinema lovers, then why aren’t the movies we make better?
Critics of Hollywood have identified many culprits, including an addiction to franchises based on familiar intellectual property, the intrusion of risk-averse executives and an industry more worried about managing decline than taking big swings. As someone who’s been told that an exciting actor “doesn’t move the needle,” only to see the same performer get showered with praise and offers a few months later, I can’t deny that playing it safe and following the herd are real problems. But “The Studio” offers a more radical answer: The true problem lies with you, the audience.
That’s right: I, a Hollywood professional whose last original movie currently sits at 31 percent fresh at Rotten Tomatoes, am laying the blame at the feet of you, the moviegoing public.
