T he Studio, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s affectionate take on Hollywood, revolves around movie exec Matt Remick, played by Rogen, an angsty film nerd who’s finally climbed to the top of the greasy pole only to learn that his make-or-break project is a Kool-Aid movie. Remick, who fancies himself an artist, pays Martin Scorsese millions for a script he’s written about the Jonestown massacre, where hundreds die after a cult leader compels them to drink a poisoned version of said powdered drink. But the concept is vetoed by his boss. In the end, Remick caves, buries Marty’s script, and opts for a movie written and directed by Nick Stoller (of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Neighbors fame), where the Kool-Aid Man hangs out with a box of Velveeta and Chef Boyardee.
Does all this sound preposterous? Not to Rogen. He divulges that the duo behind Superbad, Pineapple Express, and the TV series The Boys once had a meeting with director Ridley Scott about making a Monopoly movie. “He was a big fan of Pineapple Express,” says Rogen with his growly laugh. Scott had given it some thought; he pitched an opening helicopter shot of Central Park where all of Manhattan is a Monopoly board. “I told him, ‘I’m not sure we’re right for this,’” says Rogen. “‘We mostly do original stuff. ”
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The Studio proved to be the sedative we didn’t know we needed in this no-good, terrible year. Its characters aren’t the only ones longing for the singular entertainment experiences of yore while watching, zombie-like, Season 11 of some bland procedural on a streaming service that auto-renews for 20 bucks a month and slurping down a Lean Cuisine. We all want to be poets, but spend our days mostly cranking out our own version of Kool-Aid movies as we go from quiet-quitting to close-clutching our jobs.
Goldberg maintains The Studio’s broad appeal — it won 13 Emmys — is easily explained. “At its core, it’s a workplace comedy,” he says. “It is about a boss and his team.”
The show’s breathless reception is a level-up for two guys I first met in 2006, when they were barely out of their teens and working on Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up. At the time, the Canadian duo, childhood friends from Vancouver, were adjusting to L.A. life, with Goldberg confessing to me that his apartment flooded because he didn’t know his air conditioner had to be placed in a window. The following year, he and I met for a cheeseburger, and he told me of the original idea for their animated classic, Sausage Party. “It’s set in a grocery store, and the hot dogs are trying to fuck the buns,” Goldberg said. He was so excited.
With The Studio in mind, I ask Goldberg if they ended up pitching Sausage Party to studios that bluntly. “It was more like, ‘Toy Story, where the food secretly has a life,’” says Goldberg with a laugh. “And then after 20 minutes we’d say, ‘And then eventually they fuck.’”
The majordomo pushing Kool-Aid in The Studio is Bryan Cranston’s zonked-out Griffin Mill, a Robert Evans type still rocking 1970s turtlenecks. That is also the name of Tim Robbins’ feckless studio exec in The Player, legendary director Robert Altman’s acidic takedown of the film industry. The Studio’s take on Hollywood is gentler and more loving. To succeed, its characters must, yes, drink the Kool-Aid and convince themselves that all the pain and suffering is worth it.
“We wanted to show that my character and a lot of the other characters are actual ‘movie people,’” says Rogen. “Not everyone in Hollywood is a movie person, but these people are, and as frustrated as they are with the process, they ultimately believe in movies.”
I ask them which of their projects drove them as batty as everyone gets in The Studio. They answer in unison: The Green Hornet, the 2011 Rogen-and-Goldberg-penned adaptation with Rogen playing the comic-book hero. The film had many problems, including Columbia Pictures converting it to 3D in postproduction.
“Everyone thought everything was going to be in 3D,” remembers Rogen. (Friends, you may have noticed that did not happen.) “We kept saying the phrase, ‘We are on a runaway train that is hurtling towards a wall.’” Goldberg recalls reading about the Warren Beatty flop Ishtar during the production of The Green Hornet and wondering, ”Are we making the new Ishtar?”
In the end, the movie was released to not-so-boffo reviews and underwhelming box office. Both men learned a lesson that permeates every frame of The Studio and, well, work in general. “At the end of the day, you still have to make the movie,” says Rogen. “And you must make it as well as you can, even if you see it’s not going well, and you must make it within the bounds of art and commerce. To us, we’re artists, whatever that means. Still, our actual job is to finish this movie.”
Rogen and Goldberg maintain that it wasn’t until they both crossed into their forties that Hollywood types began taking them seriously as producers, a.k.a. people in charge of the money. They were pigeonholed for years as stoner jokesters writing one-liners before smoking their next bowl. (It’s an image the two steered into when creating Houseplant, their own weed and lifestyle brand.) Now, Goldberg says, they’ve heard from many studio execs who say The Studio gets Hollywood exactly right, while expressing astonishment that they noticed all the grimy details of moviemaking. “People thought we were just stoned, not paying attention,” says Goldberg with a smile. “What they didn’t realize is we were stoned and paying attention.”
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