Summary
In Episode 9, The Studio delivers a near-lethal dose of chaos, with superb guest performances from Dave Franco, Bryan Cranston, and Zoë Kravitz.
The fact that Las Vegas is nicknamed “Sin City” should probably be a clue that hosting anything important there is a bad idea, especially if that important thing needs a lot of egoists to sell it. But welcome to moviemaking. CinemaCon, the annual exhibition put on by the National Association of Theatre Owners, is essentially an extravagant reassurance that the film industry is still solvent. It’s a place for studios to convince theatres by way of clips and trailers that they’re all going to stay rich at the small cost of artistic integrity. And this means it’s the perfect place for The Studio Episode 9, the first half of a two-part finale, to host Matt Remick’s most complete and self-destructive unravelling.
To be fair to Matt, he’s far from the only person unravelling in this episode, which will probably be divisive because of how manic it is. I loved it, personally, both for how ably it emulates the powerlessness you feel in the vice-grip of a bad trip and how brilliantly everyone – especially the guest stars – rise to the occasion. But it’s quintessential Matt either way. The contagiousness of Vegas excess has led him to throw an all-timer party in his suite on the eve of a monumental slate revelation for Continental Studios. His need to be cool and liked has threatened to sink individual movies throughout the season, but here, it might just detonate the entire company.
And the company is doing well! There’s a great shot when Matt and the gang arrive in Vegas of all the posters for Continental’s recent output, which includes an awards darling, Ron Howard’s Alphabet City, and the centrepiece, Nick Stoller’s The Kool-Aid Movie!, which has presumably overcome its racist casting conundrum and AI scandal. The event should be a slam-dunk for the company, which is just as well, since a sullen Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston returning for the first time since the premiere and stealing the entire show in every scene he’s in) informs Matt that the Continental’s board are debating selling the studio to Amazon and the only way to avoid the acquisition is to nail the CinemaCon presentation.
This is the point where anyone in their right mind would cancel the extravagant “old school Hollywood” party they’ve planned for the night before, especially since it features a “buffet” of mushroom-laced chocolate that Matt, being almost teetotal in a funny meta nod to Seth Rogen’s famously prolific weed consumption, has completely misunderstood the strength of. But Matt Remick needs to be cool more than he needs to be employed, so the party goes ahead, and then very quickly goes wrong.
Seth Rogen and Zoë Kravitz in The Studio | Image via Apple TV+
The Studio Episode 9 thrives on how wrong the party goes. Almost immediately, everyone is much higher than they should reasonably be, including Griffin, whom Matt worriedly learns is in his 80s and might not survive the intensity of the trip. Dave Franco is having the time of his life. Zoë Kravitz arrives fresh from her Golden Globe win, determined to stay fresh for the next day, and unknowingly imbibes so much of the mushroom chocolate that she has to be sequestered in a bedroom for her own safety. It’s brilliant fun.
For the audience, that is. For Matt and the other Continental staffers, all of whom are confusingly high themselves, it’s a nightmare. After Franco hilariously recounts a brief story of Griffin eating nacho cheese with his hands before leaving the suite at the Venetian, the gang has to track him down through the casino where he’s trying to buy in to a blackjack game with half a stolen lobster. He eventually ends up on a gondola, and climbs ashore to find a sober Patty, evidently still smarting from her unceremonious firing, ready to sell him out to Hollywood insider Matthew Belloni, the host of industry podcast The Town.
It’s quite remarkable just how preposterous Rogen and co. have convinced so many A-listers to be in this episode. It doesn’t have any of the clever, insider-y jokes or structural flourishes of the season’s very best stuff, since it trades all that craft in for weapons-grade anarchy, but it’s so dense with hilarious chaos that it doesn’t really matter. The whole thing’s hysterical, but more to the point is builds to such a wild tempo that the next day’s presentation – to be featured in the upcoming finale – is almost certain to be a disaster. For the Continental, that’s probably bad news. But for us? I, for one, can’t wait to see it.
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