‘The Studio’ Episode 4: we’re going full Fincher
If only I watched this on 35mm...
This post contains spoilers for Episode 4 of The Studio on Apple TV. Watch it then come back!
Have you ever watched something on 35mm? 70mm? 16mm if you’re lucky? Do you know what a nitrate screening is? Do you even care about keeping film alive?
Matt Remick very much does in Episode 4 of The Studio, titled The Missing Reel, and Seth Rogen prevails as Hollywood’s king of silliness in this beauty of a half-hour. If you're a real cinephile, then you'll know how important it is to independent studios to ‘film on film’ and preserve the graininess of their visions.
This is how the episode opens: albeit, with Remick forcing his admiration for the medium on the poor studio projectionist. Remick's admiration is even funnier considering that the projectionist is so staunchly anti-film, preferring digital copies of films so he can just stand in the booth twiddling his thumbs instead. Two minutes in and we’ve already got some scathing satire.
The Plot
This episode follows a new fictional film called Rolling Blackout, which is a neo-noir film starring Zac Efron, directed by Olivia Wilde. It's clear that the theme of the first three episodes is still pushing on into the fourth, with Matt Remick still so desperate to be liked and recognised for his self-assessed artistic eye.
If anything, this episode is a lot of fun. There isn't much pushing forward of the story. There isn't much focus on Continental Studios.
It's just Apple TV, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg having a lot of fun with a big budget and even bigger ideas, complemented by the biggest cameos. Sure, it's fun to see Martin Scorsese in the opening episode playing himself, but watching Zac Efron and Olivia Wilde play caricatures of bad cast and crew members makes us feel like the keepers of industry secrets.
There's some great commentary on Hollywood niceties and formalities again, with Olivia Wilde being laughed at for calling her crew a “family” and treating Matt as a friend when everyone knows no one likes Matt: because he's the studio head, the denier of wrap parties, the diminisher of budgets.
Matt is especially proud of Rolling Blackout film because it's being shot on 35mm and he can't wait to be celebrated for greenlighting a Kool-Aid film whilst keeping arthouse film alive at the same time. So, when he hears from Olivia that a reel of the film has gone missing, not only is he up in arms about keeping it under wraps, not filing the insurance, and making sure that he solves the mystery of the missing reel, he finds an opportunity to go all out on his fantasies: donning a detective costume, meandering around the alleyways of the Chinatown set, all set to the comically suspenseful 50s snare beat music.
We're well-versed in Remick’s self-catastrophizing, even when complemented by the obvious consolations of his colleague Sal, but even Sal can't manage to recuperate Matt's worries as he begins to realise that if he doesn't recover this reel of film, he'll be known as the man who killed it.
The rest of the episode is spent in a farcical chase, a back-and-forth tennis match between Zac Efron, Olivia Wilde, Sal and Matt as they aim to uncover the mystery of the missing reel, realising the inconsistencies, deceit and downright stupidity of Hollywood’s processes and personalities along the way.
The Point
There's quite a poignant moment towards the end of The Missing Reel episode where Remick confides in Sal that his studio head job has made him feel isolated and lonely. Remick is very aware that Efron hates him for cutting back budgets on a wrap party, that Wilde hates him because he wouldn't give her the chance to re-shoot the reel of film that went missing, and that Patty hates him for taking her place, even though it was out of his control.
There's something to be said about the burdensome nature of being a studio head, which is somewhat self-inflicted by contributing to the trickle-down nature of the film industry as we know it. We feel sympathy for Remick, but at the same time, we don't pity him at all.
He's pretty inept, he's not that useful, and if anything he's an obstacle to filmmaking 90% of the time.
Yet still, when Sal somewhat stabs him in the back and attends the wrap party without telling him what's going on, when Zac feels sorry for Matt and gives him a wrap hat, you tend to feel that Matt deserves better thanks to his unadulterated passion to make movies. Sadly, passion isn’t profit at the end of the day, and Matt presses on regardless.
Passion also isn’t power, and the episode calls into question the balance between studio heads and directors in a very similar way to the last one, where we had Ron Howard crossing paths with Matt's profit-making intentions.
Efron accuses Wilde of going “full Fincher” during the reshoots of Rolling Blackout which has made him hate working with Wilde, hate his time on set, and non-committal to reshoots.
In the process of unravelling our little mystery of an episode, The Studio comments on the work ethics of some Hollywood directors; whether that be too method, or too controlling, or too perfectionist. Maybe there's an art to letting go and letting things fall to risk, especially when shooting on film. Maybe that's what makes the grain of our 70mm and our 35mm screenings so special, because when each take is worth so much time, effort, and money, yet still chosen as the medium for such a risky piece of art, it makes the art that little bit more special.
Maybe that's why when we watch Olivia Wilde throw that reel of film down the road and we watch Matt's face fall in despair as that piece of media is lost, we understand Matt's love for film, we understand the cinephilia at the heart of what Matt is, and we see ourselves reflected back in him, even if we are a bit cringed out at the similarities between us and what we see on our screen.
I’m in love with this show for the near future and I’ll be posting full reviews of each weekly release, just like this one. I’ll also be doing short video reviews on my Instagram and TikTok if you’d like to keep up to date there.
As always, I’d love to hear what you thought of the third episode - let me know in the comments.