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The Hindu
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Seth Rogen's The Studio and its ambitious usage of the ‘oner'
In a promotional behind-the-scenes interview conducted on the sets of the Apple TV+ comedy series The Studio (co-developed by and starring Seth Rogen), actress Kathryn Hahn says, 'Seth (Rogen) and Evan (Goldberg) had this really ambitious plan to shoot most of the show as 'oners', y'know, one-shots, long uninterrupted takes with no cuts. As an actor, it makes everything more challenging but also more beautiful because with every scene you feel like you're in a play.' Rogen plays the lead character Matt Remick, a perpetually hassled studio head. He is genuinely in love with the movies but tries to balance that impulse with the bottom line-driven demands of his corporate paymasters. The show has been universally acclaimed not only for its satire but also, as Hahn points out, the ambitious usage of 'oners'. Essentially, Rogen and Co. have expanded the scope of the Aaron Sorkin-esque 'walk-and-talk' sequences popularised by 2000s TV mainstays such as The West Wing, Scrubs and Boston Legal (all 'workplace stories' like The Studio). The walk-and-talk typically takes place in a narrow corridor (at the hospital, law firm, etc.) and focuses on the lead characters. As they walk towards the camera, other characters flit in and out of the frame. The Studio executes the same idea, only the camera isn't right in the leads' faces, like it would be in a classic 'walk-and-talk' 20 years ago. The camera is equally interested in showing us the world around Matt and whoever he is talking to in a scene, weaving and bobbing in and out of the characters' immediate vicinity. After all, a movie set is a more colourful workplace than a hospital or a law firm or, well, the White House. The Studio's oners utilise this rather well, all the way through the show's 10 episodes. The second episode, in fact, is called 'The Oner', and follows Matt as he attempts to help Sarah Polley (playing herself) shoot a oner for her (fictional) film in the show. In the here and now The oner has, historically speaking, been a point of prestige for filmmakers and actors, a show of strength that underlines the technical skills of everybody involved. Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) is considered one of the first major films to deploy the oner. In those days, a single reel of film was only capable of carrying around 20 minutes of footage. Four reels, four oners — Hitchcock used lighting and editing tricks to make it look like the film consisted of four long takes. The story follows two friends who kill a mutual acquaintance and then host a dinner party with the corpse hidden in the house. The oners elevate the sense of tension the audience feels, watching two murderers trying to get away with it, while the corpse rests right under their noses. Orson Welles' A Touch of Evil (1958) famously begins with a oner, where we see an unidentified man placing a bomb inside a car. Martin Scorsese takes the audience on a oner-trip through the Copacabana nightclub in his mob classic Goodfellas (1990) (Scorsese, incidentally, plays a tragicomic version of himself in the first episode of The Studio). Robert Altman, John Woo, Alfonso Cuaron et al — in every era, major filmmakers have used the oner to emphasise the 'here and now' nature of specific scenes, or just as a showcase for technical virtuosity. The last decade of oners, however, has been inspired by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman (2014) — the film has been shot and edited in such a way that all of it looks like one big oner, a 110-minute shot if you will. Leading up to 'Adolescence' Other than The Studio, there have been two TV shows this decade that have used the oner in inventive, formally ambitious ways. The first is the Marvel TV show Daredevil (2015), where the first season features several hand-to-hand combat scenes shot as oners. The pick of the lot is a hallway fight scene where Daredevil/ Matt Murdoch rescues a kidnapped child after fighting his way through a corridor jampacked with goons — the lighting is inspired from a famous scene in Park Chan-wook's Oldboy (2003), where the protagonist beats up a corridor full of goons with a hammer. The second TV innovator in this context is the recent, excellent British miniseries Adolescence, about a 13-year-old boy arrested following the murder of a girl from his school. Each of the four episodes of Adolescence is shot like a oner — no editing tricks this time, just a single uninterrupted take. There's a 12 Angry Men-like unreliable narrator edge to the drama in Adolescence, and at their best, the long takes amplify the audience's unease. I love the first and second episodes' usage of the one-shot but also feel that by the time the fourth episode winds down, the novelty value of the device wanes. Oners are great when done expertly, but because of the technical task at hand, creators run the risk of focusing too much on shot-mechanics and too little on the narrative. Thankfully, The Studio understands this only too well and takes care not to use its signature device indiscriminately, or without a clear purpose. The writer and journalist is working on his first book of non-fiction.
Forbes
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘The Studio' Parodies Diversity Casting In Hilarious New Ice Cube Episode
The Studio The Studio is easily one of the best shows on TV at the moment, and the latest episode is no exception. While my favorite episode of the season remains 'The Oner' which was just so clever on so many levels, this week's episode, 'Casting', takes aim at contemporary social issues, and it's genuinely hilarious. The series follows bumbling new studio chief of Continental Studios, Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) as he embarks on a series of misadventures in his first months on the job. Whether he's disrupting a sensitive movie shoot, getting into a pissing contest at a charity fundraiser, breaking Martin Scorsese's heart, or throwing down with the surprisingly mean-spirited movie director, Ron Howard, Remick can always be counted on to put his foot in his mouth in spectacular fashion. The show blends slapstick comedy with a series of really poor choices into one of the best parodies of modern Hollywood out there. Fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm should take note. Spoilers for Season 1, Episode 7 follow. In 'Casting' we return to the Kool-Aid Movie that we first learned about in the season premiere. Remick and his colleagues are excited about the positive feedback its poster has received. But their enthusiasm is short-lived when marketing director Maya Mason (Kathryn Hahn) has a moment of doubt. She wonders if casting Ice Cube as the voice of Kool-Aid Man is playing into racial stereotypes. (The meta-joke of Ice Cube playing an anthropomorphic beverage is never mentioned by the characters). Remick and executive producer Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz) aren't convinced at first, but soon all three are in full panic mode. They take their concerns to junior executive Quinn Hackett (Chase Sui Wonders) because she's not white, and she tries to assure them that it's not a big deal. She's never viewed Kool-Aid as a black person's drink, she tells her colleagues, but rather a 'poor person's drink' which obviously only makes matters worse. Next, they turn to social media manager, Tyler (Dewayne Perkins) who reassures them further, saying it would actually be racist to not cast a black person as Kool-Aid Man, but then adds he doesn't want to be the voice of 'all black people.' From here, things keep going from bad to worse. Guest stars Ziwe and Lil Rel Howery tell them that Kool-Aid Man should, indeed, be black, but then voice concerns that his wife isn't also black. After recasting Mrs. Kool-Aid, they realize that solving one problem has created a new one: Now the entire animated Kool-Aid family is black, while the live-action Parch family is all white. The 'segregation' of the cast leads them into another panic, so they decide to make all the characters black. The original cast for the Kool-Aid Movie included Ice Cube, Sandra Oh, Josh Duhamel and Jessica Biel. A perfectly diverse cast that, in a sane world, could never be seen as problematic. But the paranoia and delusion of the producers leads them to remove all the actors who aren't black, and prompts Remick to utter the truly preposterous phrase that this could be 'our Hamilton.' But when they take this to director Nick Stoller, he says this will require major rewrites, and his writing team decides that they need to quit since none of them are black and don't feel comfortable writing from that point of view. Stoller says he can rewrite the film on his own, but at this late stage, he'll need to use some AI animation services to stay within the budget and timeline. You can pretty much see where this is going. The spiraling continues as Remick and Sal and Maya go through a laborious and absurd attempt to breakdown the racial population of America so that it can be exactly represented in the movie. Meanwhile, Quinn informs them that making the entire cast black actually brings them back to square one, playing into the very racial stereotypes they were concerned with in the first place. Finally, Remick talks to Ice Cube directly, albeit awkwardly, and is reassured once and for all that everything will be okay. All of this takes place just before the Anaheim Comic-Con where Remick is set to reveal Ice Cube as Kool-Aid Man. But once the pair of them are on stage, the first question they receive isn't about race or casting at all: It's about about a leak that the movie is using AI to replace actual animators. Led by a furious Ice Cube, the crowd devolves into shouting and uproar. 'Thank god they didn't mention race,' Maya says from the sidelines. 'We dodged a bullet,' Sal agrees happily. Matt stands on the stage alone, head hung in defeat. This was a terrific episode, clocking in at just 24 minutes, and I'm thrilled to see a show even tackle this issue in the first place. We've entered a phase of the culture wars where the constant state of backlash and rancor makes actually discussing issues like tokenism and problematic casting next to impossible, at least with any kind of nuance. It's refreshing to see a show like The Studio poke fun at just how ridiculous the whole thing is behind the scenes, where out-of-touch executives, even with the best intentions, often make matters worse. Apple, meanwhile, continues to have some of the best streaming options out there, with shows like Severance, The Studio and Your Friends & Neighbors at the top of my 2025 TV list, just to name a few.
Telegraph
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Studio, Apple TV+, review: Seth Rogen's superb comedy both skewers and celebrates Hollywood
A comedy written by and starring Hollywood types that simultaneously celebrates and satirises Hollywood while rolling out star cameo after cameo sounds kind of narcissistic, right? And Seth Rogen 's The Studio (Apple TV+) is certainly that. But its mix of screwball capering, toe-curling cringiness and razor-sharp one-liners is so laugh-out-loud funny and brilliantly performed, any notion that this is simply Hollywood eating itself ends up hitting the cutting room floor with a satisfying thud. The action opens with Rogen's character Matt Remick, a variation on the David Brent school of neediness yet somehow much more likeable, finally landing his dream job as head of Continental Studios, a Hollywood outfit of the old school, now under pressure from the rise of the streaming giants. Matt's mission is to save proper movies from being snuffed out by algorithmic number crunchers. Which looks like making him the King Canute of the silver screen. As he blunders his way from one self-inflicted disaster to another in a set of immaculately crafted set-pieces played out in real time, Matt's dream is only ever one shot away from turning into a nightmare. You don't have to be a movie buff to revel in The Studio's on-the-money evocation of showbiz shallowness, but it might help. Episodes that take down awards show chicanery, directorial self-indulgence and AI's role in job-destroying carry the sting of authenticity thanks to the cast Rogen has lined up. Ron Howard, Anthony Mackie, Zoe Kravitz, Ice Cube and, man of the moment, Adam Scott are just some of the famous faces clearly revelling in settling scores with the Hollywood game. But The Studio is no hatchet job; a palpable love of the world it's poking fun at shines through in every scene. Rogen's supporting regular cast, from Catherine O'Hara as Matt's acerbic former boss to Kathryn Hahn's manic hair-twirling marketing exec, are exceptional, with the lesser-known Ike Barinholtz as Sal Saperstein, Matt's slippery right-hand man, a masterclass in oily self-preservation. While The Studio has an overarching story, the episodes also cleverly serve as stand-alone comedies. Best of all is The Oner, a perfectly formed farce built around the art of the continuous take, itself filmed as a single shot. It's worth a comedy Oscar of its own. But Matt's team tying themselves in knots over box-ticking in Casting – 'Does their gayness mitigate their whiteness?!' – runs it a close second. But enough gushing. Time to get the popcorn in.
The Guardian
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Studio: Seth Rogen's triumph of a Hollywood satire is absolutely stuffed with career-best acting
The Studio has some notes for Hollywood. Like in The Oner, the second episode of Apple TV+'s new industry comedy (out Wednesday 26 March) from the Superbad team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The incoming head of Continental Studios, Matt Remick (Rogen), is careening through the Hollywood Hills in his convertible, racing to the set in time to catch the director's virtuoso oner. That is a scene filmed in one single, continuous take, which – in this case – must also be completed in 'the magic hour' before sunset when the light is just so. As Matt and fellow executive Sal (Ike Barinholtz) make their clumsy entrance (patronising a PA, offering unwanted feedback, debating whether the oner really is 'the ultimate cinematic achievement' or 'just a director jacking off'), it becomes clear that the episode will itself unfold in a oner. Very clever. Did you already know all about oners? Perhaps you have an opinion on the Goodfellas tracking shot v Roger Deakins's Oscar-winning work on Sam Mendes's war movie 1917? If so, you are very much The Studio's target audience: an unabashed cinephile who bemoans the never-ending churn of bankable 'IP' while wishing for a return to the days of classics such as Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Woody Allen's Annie Hall or, as Matt ruefully reflects, 'some great film that wasn't directed by a fucking pervert'. You are, in fact, quite a lot like Matt, a man whom corporate big boss Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston) suspects of unsuitable instincts: 'You're obsessed with actors and directors liking you, rather than being obsessed with making the studio as much money as possible.' Griffin's got Matt bang to rights there, as we see in another episode when Matt delegates, delays and otherwise weasels his way out of delivering a necessary note to famous nice-guy director Ron Howard. Unlike Matt, though, The Studio has plenty of constructive criticism to offer, with a point of view on every live industry issue, from overlong running times to gender parity. All the episodes zip along like an assistant in a golf cart crossing the lot on an emergency coffee run, but all contribute something interesting to the big picture. Because Matt's personal dilemma is also the dilemma at the heart of cinema: are we making art here? Or are we making money? Is it possible to do both? And if it is, can you do so without turning into a total lying, scheming scumbag, who'd sell your grandmother for an awards speech shoutout? Rogen and Goldberg seem to be managing, at least judging by The Studio's crammed cameo list, which overflows with the friends they've made – and kept – along the way. I mean, they managed to get Scorsese for the first episode. And let me tell you, no one plays 'Martin Scorsese' like Martin Scorsese. This guy's got talent! Indeed, every cameo in The Studio is a career-best, and every supporting actor is perfectly cast. It's a treat whenever Kathryn Hahn enters a room as marketing maven Maya, giant adult sippy-cup in hand, to ream out Matt for even aspiring to cool ('Who are you? The fucking Fonz?'). Or when ex-studio head Patty (Catherine O'Hara) turns up to reminisce – very respectfully, mind – about some dearly departed dick ('He had a package like a caramel leather sofa … rest in peace'). One evergreen criticism is that, like La La Land or Entourage, The Studio is another example of the industry's self-obsession which risks alienating the average audience member, who's never set foot on a soundstage nor sampled the delights of on-set catering. Not even a single M&M. But, as Maya could tell you – might scream in your face, in fact – not everything needs to be relatable, Matt. Whatever happened to being awestruck by glamour? This is Hollywood, baby, the town where, actually, magic hour lasts all day. Or all decade, back in the 70s; that era of Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, which the Continental team are subconsciously, sartorially reaching for in every scene. But wait, maybe the glory days aren't over just yet, because The Studio is a triumph! You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll pre-order the Blu-ray. Two thumbs up. Five stars. No notes.
