‘The Studio’ Season 1 Finale Behind the Scenes With Matt Belloni

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Speaker 4 I'm Sean Fennessy, and this is the Prestige TV podcast.

Speaker 4 I'm here with Craig Horlbeck, producer of the Town podcast, and I'm here with the host of the town, Matt Bellany, also the star of the series The Studio, which is the show we'll be talking about today.

Speaker 5 Star. Yes.
Put Star in scare quotes, please. Appropriately put that into context.
I am not the star. I appear in exactly two scenes as myself.
I am on,

Speaker 5 you hear my voice a lot more, but I am actually physically only in two scenes.

Speaker 4 Well, we're going to talk about episodes nine and 10, the final two episodes of this Apple TV Plus streaming series.

Speaker 4 We talked about the show earlier this season with Bill Simmons and Joanna Robinson, and then Craig and I recapped the next five episodes.

Speaker 4 And so we're here to talk about the end of this series, which has been a lot of fun. And I think the accuracy and ideas of the show are something we'll dig into.

Speaker 4 But Matt, even if you're not the star of the show,

Speaker 4 you've had a pretty damn significant role for a journalist on a series like this. I know a lot of people in my life have been like, what the hell? Matt is really on the studio.

Speaker 4 This is not a fake thing.

Speaker 6 Well, and the joke is that.

Speaker 6 I would say most people, 99% of the people watching the show, assume Matt is probably an actor and that the town is a fake podcast.

Speaker 4 Yes. Well, especially because of his striking good looks and, you know, that deep voice.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Yes.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 It was just as weird to me as it is to everybody else. It started with Seth just saying, we want your voice.

Speaker 5 We thought it would be funny if my character listens to the town and if you kind of talked about him as I often talk about studio executives on the town, sometimes critically, sometimes I will criticize their choices that they're making.

Speaker 5 And they thought that would lend an air of authenticity to the show. He told me that they were going to have dozens of real life.

Speaker 5 cameos in the show and that this would just add to the realistic aspect of it, which made sense to me.

Speaker 5 The surprise was about a month later after Craig and I had sent over some audio recordings was he then came back to me and said, actually, you know, we're thinking that you might be in this world as yourself.

Speaker 5 And that to me was a little more surprising.

Speaker 5 But then as they explained that the the final two episodes would take place at Cinemacon and that there would be this whole fear of being busted by someone, that it made sense that they had set me up earlier in the show as kind of this watchdog type, that they would bring me back and I would physically be there.

Speaker 6 And we should say, we just had the town just had Seth and Evan on, whenever you're listening, we had it on a two-parter on May 22nd and May 23rd, where they talk all about the behind the scenes nature of the studio.

Speaker 6 So definitely go listen to that. But yeah, Seth was basically like, I wanted it to feel real.
And Matt is the one who I would be most afraid of to see in that situation.

Speaker 6 So we just asked Matt to be there.

Speaker 5 Which is hilarious because like Seth is one of the good guys. Like I've always loved Seth.
He has made great stuff since he was 18 years old.

Speaker 5 Like their company, Point Gray, is doing really cool things, everything from the boys to like trying to do theatrical movies like Joyride. And they did blockers, which I really like.

Speaker 5 So Seth is not someone that I would ever really criticize. He doesn't do dumb stuff, but whatever.

Speaker 4 It's funny. It's not Seth.
It's Matt Remick. That's the thing.
And Matt Remick is a complete and total buffoon, as we learned.

Speaker 4 I mean, just before we start talking about the show, Matt, I mean, you're giving a performance. You're asked to act in this.
Do you have any acting experience?

Speaker 4 Like, what was it like being on set, being asked to do that work alongside Catherine O'Hara and Seth Rogan and Chase Suey Wonders? Like, real, real actors.

Speaker 5 That was the freaky part, honestly, because I have never acted before outside of like my college summer camp Friday night plays and things like that.

Speaker 5 I do a lot of TV, just talking head stuff where I go on and commentate. And, you know, that I'm like not afraid of the camera, but playing myself, like, come on, I can do that.

Speaker 5 You know, I, I, the biggest pain in the ass was I had to get there to Vegas from, I was in South Carolina with my family for vacation.

Speaker 5 I had to go there twice during the summer and be there in living in the hotel with all of them.

Speaker 5 They were there for like 16 days, I think, in a row, living at the Venetian and working all day and night there. And if they went outside, it was 110 degrees in the summer.
So like,

Speaker 5 they're the real heroes. I was only dropping in and out a couple of times.

Speaker 6 Well, and it was harder for you as an actor because as Seth and Evan were saying on the town, I'll stop mentioning it after this, but

Speaker 6 the average take, Seth said, was about 16 takes per oneer. But because the casino situation was so chaotic and they kind of couldn't really do that, with Matt's scenes, they only got four.

Speaker 6 So Matt had to nail it in one-fourth of the time as most of the other actors.

Speaker 5 But I was four times more impatient than most actors. I was like, all right, we got it.
We got it. Right.
No, one more time. Okay.
Like, I can't even imagine doing this stuff 15 times.

Speaker 5 Like, it's just, it would be infuriating. But I've had producers text me.
I was one specific producer who was just like, I can't believe they did this.

Speaker 5 I can't believe they shot a comedy in this style because it's so hard to set up shots like this and not have something fuck it up in each one.

Speaker 5 And then when you add in that you're trying to capture comedic timing of all of these different actors.

Speaker 5 And there are sequences where they're all running down the hallway and you got to catch, you know, something funny that Catherine Ahera slips in.

Speaker 5 You got to catch something, you know, a facial expression by Ike or someone lobbing in a line from the side or Cranston with his underwear on. All of that stuff has to work in the take.

Speaker 5 I can't imagine how difficult that is.

Speaker 4 Well, you made it look easy. I was very impressed by your performance.

Speaker 4 You know, when Craig and I last spoke about the show, we were talking about sort of the direction that it was heading, and Craig had watched ahead. I had not.

Speaker 4 And I had been wondering whether the show was going to try to circle the square thematically on anything, or whether this was just going to be more of a curb your enthusiasm style show, where we're sort of like there's buffoonish figures at the center of it, and they're constantly being stymied.

Speaker 4 So, in this final two episodes, the entirety of it, as you said, takes place at Cinemacon in Las Vegas, which is an annual trade show that the theater owners of the world put on with the studios.

Speaker 4 The studios present their wares to the theater owners and they talk about the future of the business. The three of us were just there together recently.

Speaker 5 We sat next to each other during these wonderful presentations where after each one, I would literally, gladiator style, put my thumb up or down on the movie.

Speaker 4 You did. It's a fun show.
I remember vividly telling Bill Simmons that I was going to go to Cinemacon, I think back in 2018, and he literally was like, what the fuck is that?

Speaker 4 Lo and behold.

Speaker 5 Well, that's why it works, honestly, on the studio, because I was telling Seth this, it's one of the only places where the studio executives are the stars.

Speaker 5 They are expected to sing and dance and jazz hands their way through these presentations. And it does matter.

Speaker 5 Like these theater owners, they are evaluating these movies and the media is all sitting there. Oh, back in the day, it was just a big backslapping operation for studio heads and the theaters.

Speaker 5 Now, the media is judging these trailers immediately and posting on social media. And there is consequences

Speaker 5 if you so-called flop at Cinemacon. The famous example I saw was the initial Wonka footage that they put out of Timothy Chalamet singing.
And it was bad. And out of context, it just did not work.

Speaker 5 And they had to work really hard to recover. from that bad footage.
They did and the movie opened a year or two later. But like, there are consequences if you do it.

Speaker 5 So it's the perfect setting for something like the studio because nobody knows what it is and they can immediately set it up as being this huge deal.

Speaker 6 And I would say the presentation was more or less the Continental Studios presentation like was kind of more or less what it is.

Speaker 6 I mean, it was much shorter than a usual studio's because, you know, it had to be, but I thought it was pretty accurate. You know, it's an actor coming out, teasing a clip.

Speaker 6 They show a clip and then somebody else comes out.

Speaker 6 I thought they, the actual presentation itself, they didn't really get into like the other parts of Cinemacon, which is like 10,000 white guys walking around casinos.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but I thought going to steak dinners

Speaker 5 and perusing the latest innovations and hot dogs and ices.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they seemed, maybe they made it seem a little more sexy.
Are celebrities staying and partying up in the penthouse or no?

Speaker 5 I mean, we went to the A24 party.

Speaker 5 Were there celebrities there? Not really.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you, Matt. What are you talking about? You're the star of the studio.
There were not chocolates there. I don't know.

Speaker 5 There was no old-school Hollywood buffet at the A24 party.

Speaker 4 No, but if that is the extent of the outlandishness that was portrayed, it's pretty modest.

Speaker 4 I mean, this show kind of through and through 10 episodes, I think, often eerily nailed the nature of the business, even though the circumstances that Remek and his crew found themselves in seemed ridiculous.

Speaker 4 There was a level of accuracy to the way that they executed on the show.

Speaker 4 Just the fact that they shot this in Vegas, likewise with the Golden Globes episode, shooting it where the globes take place, the idea of kind of filtering in the celebrity talent while also having this kind of Herculean production style, I thought it was like pretty amazing as an accomplishment of TV making.

Speaker 4 The show itself, I was wondering if you guys feel that the show kind of lived up to the promise of what it was meant to be, which, you know, when Bill was talking about the show at the early stages of it, he was saying like, oh, it's like the player, the Robert Altman film, or Larry Sanders as some comp points.

Speaker 4 And then as Craig and I were talking, we were really more locating it more in the vein of like, curb your enthusiasm, like a little bit more of a cringe comedy, maybe some Nathan Fielder in there as well.

Speaker 4 This idea that like there's no real hero at the story. So when we get to the end of the first season, like Craig, did you feel like

Speaker 4 it delivered on what it was being sold as?

Speaker 6 I think it kept in line with the direction the show was going in. I actually appreciate that they didn't suddenly shift to some emotional arc or some character resolutions.

Speaker 6 It kind of stayed, they just cranked up the absurdity,

Speaker 6 went full screwball, full physical comedy, which to me, based on the prior eight episodes, is what I wanted. And they just turned that up to 12.

Speaker 5 I thought from the first couple episodes that it would be more of a through-line show, where the whole season would be the ups and downs of the Kool-Aid movie and him putting together his slate, and there would be a lot more office intrigue and people backstabbing and things like that that you might expect to see on more of a sitcomy style show.

Speaker 5 They really went episodic with it, where every episode was another vignette in the life of someone who would run a studio. And I mean, Seth and Evan said this to me.

Speaker 5 They're like, Yeah, we wanted it, we want every episode to have an idea. This is the episode where this happens, and it was all based on their experiences.
And that, to me, does make sense.

Speaker 5 I like that the final two episodes sort of bring it all together.

Speaker 5 You see characters that have been in previous episodes, all the movies that have caused them such problems over the whole series are now like being marketed and set up.

Speaker 5 And they're talking about, you know, their big tentpole property Kool-Aid that everybody six episodes ago was freaking out about and there's no mention of how the casting might be racist which we saw them debating and like all of that is just sort of smoothed over and forgotten and now they are in full sell mode which is completely accurate about the business is that at a at a selling moment like this cinema con that's the focus like that it's all there One of my favorite takeaways from the final two episodes was the very clear delineation between executives and folks who work behind the scenes and the talent.

Speaker 4 And what we saw in the ninth episode was that the talent, Dave Franco, Zoe Kravitz, both very, very funny in these two episodes, get incredibly high.

Speaker 4 One on purpose, one accidentally, but they both get incredibly high and are asked to do the same thing that Matt Remick and Griffin Mill and the marketing team are asked to do, which is perform for the theater owners.

Speaker 4 And even though they're out of their minds off of mushrooms and alcohol, they both nail their performances. And when it comes to the executives,

Speaker 4 they're kind of buffoonish and they have to kind of like grit their teeth and power through it, which, you know, I think is in some ways a very self-satisfactory way for Seth Rogan to tell this story as a performer himself.

Speaker 4 And yet, like, I think he's kind of right on, which is like the power of Hollywood in many ways is driven by who you want to see and whether or not they can do the job effectively in front of the camera.

Speaker 4 What did you guys think about the way they frame that?

Speaker 5 Does this make you wonder how many of the people we saw at Cinemacon were high on mushrooms?

Speaker 4 It's in play, right? Like, there's got to be at least one.

Speaker 6 Everyone at the Superman presentation, I think.

Speaker 4 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 5 No, the best part about the studio was the Cinemacon presentations were short. I mean, no executives interviewing talent, which is just like a dagger in the heart.

Speaker 5 You can't endure that. But I don't know.
I appreciated that

Speaker 5 the talent ultimately wins on this show. And that's sort of one of the through lines.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's like Seth and Evan are making sure everybody knows that the talent is still the most important part of all of this and that they're the ones who nail it when you need them to.

Speaker 6 And I love that, I love the little subtle note of the, of Catherine O'Hara's character, Patty Lee, being like, I only speak with a teleprompter. I wonder if there are executives who are like that.

Speaker 4 Oh, of course.

Speaker 5 And she gets out there and she forgets the movie that made her want to get into the business.

Speaker 4 Well, the best part about that joke is that the star that she loves has the same last name as her protege, Lee Remick and Matt Remick. That was just a genius stroke of writing in that episode.

Speaker 4 I think I was just generally astonished by how close they got to Cinemacon, you know, that this thing that, and consistently throughout the show, I think they showed us things that the three of us having a little bit more access living in Los Angeles or being proximate to the business know are as commonplace, but that you get really get thrust into this world in a really

Speaker 4 a much closer way than you would, honestly, just reading your newsletter, Matt, or reading the trades or something like that.

Speaker 4 Like the idea of visualizing this world, authenticating it in some way, I think people really like that.

Speaker 4 And when we talked about whether or not like Joe TV Watcher was going to care about the show, my take on that was that they would like it the same reason that they like hospital shows and that they like legal dramas because you are just plunged into this environment.

Speaker 4 Sure, they're using lingo and they're saying names you may not be familiar with, but as long as the action is moving forward and you're invested in the characters and what they're doing, it's going to work.

Speaker 4 I don't know. What did you think about that, Matt?

Speaker 5 There's a lot that the show gets right.

Speaker 5 There's some things that someone who watches this stuff very closely you would quibble with the globes for instance yes they use the beverly hills international ballroom at the beverly hilton at the actual globes the tables are much tighter together that is a much more packed room that the globes would never let you put a speech into a such a specific niche complaint it is not a complaint i'm just saying the the the globes would never let you put a speech into a teleprompter we were wondering about that yeah the main award shows would never do that.

Speaker 5 They want spontaneity. Maybe some of these bought and paid for shows where

Speaker 5 they're not real shows. That would never happen.

Speaker 5 Most production, as we know, and we write about a lot, most production is not in LA.

Speaker 5 So a low-budget indie movie like the Sarah Pauley movie probably wouldn't be shooting at a big fancy house in the hills, but whatever, maybe it would. We don't know that.

Speaker 5 You know, there's lots of little things. Cinemacon is at Caesars, not at the Venetian.
Yeah. But whatever.
They don't have canals at Caesars.

Speaker 6 The broad strokes of it, I think they nailed it. It's a delicate balance of like it being episodic.

Speaker 6 I kind of think even with the final two episodes, you could kind of just watch those two and still generally get a sense of what the show is.

Speaker 5 Oh, for me, think about me filming it. I had no idea what the entire season entailed, and yet I was in these final two episodes and I pretty much got it.

Speaker 5 I got that they were there to sell their movies and these were all the movies from the season and,

Speaker 5 they had to protect themselves from me or else they would get sold. Like that's that's the premise.

Speaker 6 And I do think the average movie and TV fan is more literate now, just for a multitude of reasons about like the goings on in Hollywood.

Speaker 6 So a lot of the like broader topics that I think the show crafts episodes around, I think they're pretty understandable.

Speaker 6 I mean, you're really, you're probably not watching the show unless you care about movies and TV at least a little bit.

Speaker 6 And if you do, I think they do a pretty good job of making everything seem somewhat approachable and understandable.

Speaker 5 It's broad enough, for sure. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I generally agree. I was wondering, Matt, if you could diagnose something that Craig and I also discussed, which is sort of what is Continental, the studio that's at the center of the story.

Speaker 4 The pushing narrative at the end of this season is that Cranston's character, Griffin Mill, reveals to Matt Remick that Amazon is circling Continental Studios for a potential acquisition.

Speaker 4 They're about to be MGM'd, as he says in the show.

Speaker 4 So.

Speaker 4 You know, my read on this was that it was sort of a Paramount style studio, kind of an old studio.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you could say it's Paramount. They have the big traditional lot.

Speaker 5 They actually filmed it on the Warner's lot and they took over the Warner Brothers television offices and then recreated it in that kind of Art Deco style.

Speaker 5 So that building does not actually exist as it is portrayed, but they use the Warner television. area.

Speaker 5 It's a mix of Paramount and I might say something like Lionsgate,

Speaker 5 which is funny because Lionsgate is the studio on the show. They produce it for Lionsgate Television and Apple TV, but only because Lionsgate could soon be sold.
They just split off from stars.

Speaker 5 They are now their own entity. And the goal of doing that is to convince some tech company or some other to buy the studio for its library and production capabilities.

Speaker 5 But I think they want us to think that it's more like a Paramount, a once great studio that is part of the original Hollywood legacy of the 20s and 30s that has kind of fallen into tougher times.

Speaker 6 And Catherine O'Hara's character has that great line to open the final episode where she's like, so all of Continental will become a branch of a tech company.

Speaker 4 It's like all the self-references.

Speaker 5 And you're watching it on Apple TV Plus.

Speaker 4 Yeah. It's, yeah.

Speaker 5 I know. It's pretty fun.

Speaker 5 I guarantee the Apple people probably winced a little at that.

Speaker 5 But I love also that they tried to convince Seth to put Tim Cook into the show instead of Ted Sarandos from Netflix, which would have been so bad.

Speaker 4 It's a wonderful tidbit that I think reveals honestly Seth and Evans' power, the fact that they were able to overrule that and keep Sarandos in this show, which is so fascinating because not only are Apple TV Plus and Netflix competing in some ways, though I guess maybe Netflix is pretty far out front.

Speaker 4 Apple would love that.

Speaker 4 The idea that

Speaker 4 I have a little bit of an issue personally as a movie freak with Seth and Evan taking their extraordinary power and creativity and dumping it into a streaming service show about how much they love movies.

Speaker 4 But also, I understand that there's probably no movie studio that was going to make a $50, $75 million movie about a movie studio. And so no way.

Speaker 6 There weren't many TV studios. They said HBO passed on it.
They could hardly get the TV show made. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And it doesn't get made unless Seth is starring and that cast is attached. Like nobody is going to, because this is not a cheap show.

Speaker 5 I mean, trust me, I was there on the set. It was a full freight TV show, shot like movie style.

Speaker 5 And they probably spent, I mean, I don't know the actual numbers, but they probably spent 10 to 12 million dollars per episode on this show.

Speaker 1 Hi, it's Ava Longoria. And let's be real.
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Speaker 6 One of the other potential inaccuracies I wanted to ask you guys about. I mean, if a studio was potentially getting sold, the CinemaCon presentation would not matter at all.

Speaker 6 No matter how good the presentation was, that would not prevent or increase the likelihood of a sale.

Speaker 5 No.

Speaker 5 No. But if a movie was a massive hit, like a Barbie style hit, maybe they wouldn't.

Speaker 6 A trailer and a sneak preview is not going to change anything.

Speaker 4 It's not, but I mean, just to use Matt's example of Lionsgate, for example, there was not a preview of the forthcoming Hunger Games movie from Lionsgate at CinemaCon, but there was a lot of energy and discussion around the forthcoming adaptation.

Speaker 6 They did announce a logo.

Speaker 4 They announced a logo.

Speaker 4 And they've spent the last six weeks in.

Speaker 5 Which got a thumbs down for me.

Speaker 4 But they've spent the last six weeks announcing casting.

Speaker 4 And one of the reasons why I think they're doing it this way is they're trying to identify the value of the property under the banner of the studio, which is ultimately what I think those characters are trying to do in this episode.

Speaker 4 Is Blackwing actually

Speaker 4 a future franchise for a studio that could be acquired by a streaming giant?

Speaker 5 Well, that's the funny part: Craig, you said it wouldn't matter.

Speaker 4 Would that make it more likely to be sold?

Speaker 5 I was going to say, a great slate coming up could be a reason they get sold because they're trying to pump up the value of

Speaker 5 whoever's going to buy them.

Speaker 5 They want to make it seem more valuable than maybe it is. Lionsgate did that all the time.
They've been talking about the John Wick universe and Warner's is doing the same thing right now.

Speaker 5 They did all these deals for Lord of the Rings movies that may or may not happen. They're talking about making Harry Potter's for the next 10 years.

Speaker 5 This is all so that people out there looking at the value of these companies might say, oh, maybe we should pay that extra billion to acquire Warners.

Speaker 4 Which it would be a funny way to start season two if they found out that Amazon hated the presentation and thought it was a disaster and are no longer going to acquire them yeah it would be a smart way to show us matt's continued naivete though that thinking he would nail his slate would somehow avoid being acquired when in fact obviously it would benefit him well then you might end up into like a producer style situation where they're trying to make bad movies in order so that they don't get bought yeah that does seem that

Speaker 4 hits that feels very season two to me Speaking of that, like what do you guys expect? Obviously, the show's been renewed. It's coming back.

Speaker 5 Would they dare start making a show about what happens when a streaming service buys your movie studio i think that's a season three or four type scenario they got a little bit more to go with being independent i think um seth said they want to do a film festival episode with me maybe because we were joking when we were on set about how we were at the venetian and he's like oh what if we went to the real venice um

Speaker 5 And they, what did he say? He wants to do a test screening episode

Speaker 5 about test screening.

Speaker 4 And, you know, they haven't.

Speaker 6 There's a lot of singular topics still left that they can have as like these little contained episodes. You can do a strike.
You can do the talk.

Speaker 6 Seth mentioned like theme parks for a movie IP and a premiere, the Oscars. There's still a bunch of stuff you can do.

Speaker 5 Yeah. The

Speaker 5 stars, obviously, they can get whoever they want now. He said that Spielberg reached out.
He knows him from the Fablemans. So there will probably be a Spielberg episode.

Speaker 6 I would love a Tom Quinn, who's the head of Neon, a Tom Quinn-like character, like when they're in Venice or Cannes or whatever, the self-righteous film lover kind of out-cinephiling Matt and making him jealous.

Speaker 6 It's like this guy's the actual guy trying to save cinema.

Speaker 5 And it could actually be Tom. He's pretty funny.
And he's won the Palme d'Or five years in a row. Like, this could be like, you fucked me.
You're winning the Palme d'Or. You're taking it away from me.

Speaker 6 And, like, I want the, like, it's like the bizarro Seinfeld crew where it's like, I want like a neon version of the Continental crew, but they all actually love like saving movies.

Speaker 5 Oh, like, the action news crew and Anchorman, like their rival, their rival news crew.

Speaker 6 Yeah, for a Mexican standoff? Yeah.

Speaker 4 With respect to Continental, Lionsgate has, I don't think, ever competed for the Palm Dorrit. And so I'm not sure if that would be totally realistic.

Speaker 5 No,

Speaker 5 they did win Best Picture for about 17 seconds with Lala.

Speaker 4 That is true. That is

Speaker 4 true.

Speaker 4 That would be a lot of fun. So, okay, we're at the end of this season.
I think we all agree it's broadly been a success and a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 And it was for me a little bit different than what I was expecting, but they delivered from the beginning to the end on celebrity cameos, from Scorsese and Charlize and Buscemi in episode one all the way through till the finale.

Speaker 4 Craig, did you have a favorite? Who did you think did the best job as themselves in this show?

Speaker 6 In terms of performance or who was playing themselves the most accurately?

Speaker 4 Well, why don't you do both?

Speaker 6 I think the performance, I think you have to give it to Zoe Kravitz for just like the amount she had to do. She was really.

Speaker 4 She peed herself.

Speaker 6 She peed herself.

Speaker 5 Like, drop the mic. You're getting the Emmy.

Speaker 6 Yes. I mean, actually, but Cranston also is a front run.
I mean, Cranston in his underwear, getting drunk.

Speaker 4 Cranston was not playing himself. He wasn't playing himself.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Cranston is by far my favorite character in the entire show.

Speaker 6 And Cranston is like a great physical comedic actor, and he did sitcoms. So I would definitely give Zoe for like doing the most.
And

Speaker 6 I think it's just like the best look for her as an actor. It's always a great look when people do stuff like this.

Speaker 6 Cameo that I thought was probably the funniest was...

Speaker 5 Franco's pretty funny.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Franco, it's funny because I feel like usually Seth's the buffoon and Franco's trying to hold him together, and this is they kind of switch it. Um, yeah, give it to Franco.

Speaker 6 I, Charlize has a great one-line, Dion Waiters,

Speaker 6 get the fuck out of my party. Just

Speaker 4 it's so good, Matt. Were you surprised by how good anyone was as themselves, or anybody who Scorsese?

Speaker 5 I know Scorsese has done guest acting before,

Speaker 5 but that episode does not work unless he is believable at being super pissed off about the Jonestown movie. And that one scene where he's like,

Speaker 5 that's a furtive look. I know furtive.
That is a furtive look. That is an amazing scene, and it only works because he's great in it.

Speaker 4 The story that I had heard was that

Speaker 4 Seth and Evan had not met Scorsese until the day they shot that. And that when he came in, they were prepared for anything going in any direction.

Speaker 4 And that he came in and just crushed it in their style of filmmaking that you were describing earlier.

Speaker 6 It's funny because so many of the people in the cameos in the show are people who have relationships with Seth and Evan. Dave Franco, Charlize.
They did the, you know,

Speaker 6 Seth and Charlize did a movie together. They've never done anything with Scorsese.

Speaker 6 And I don't know if it's like an Apple symbiotic relationship thing where Scorsese makes movies with Apple, but it's interesting that he was the major director that they got.

Speaker 4 Well, it was convenient that Martin Scorsese's new five-part documentary, directed by Daniel Day-Lewis's wife, Rebecca Miller, is coming out on Apple TV Plus.

Speaker 5 And Apple also dramatically overpaid for his Killers of the Flower move. Hey, hey,

Speaker 4 settle down. Settle down on dramatically overpaid, Matt.
All right. Let's take it easy here.

Speaker 5 That was a movie that was rescued from Paramount. Apple took it over because of the budget.

Speaker 6 You can't overpay for art.

Speaker 4 Craig knows I agree with that. So

Speaker 4 what about Olivia Wilde? I wanted to ask you both about her.

Speaker 4 I thought I found her decision to do it fascinating to skewer herself in the aftermath of the controversy around Don't Worry, Darling, her last directorial effort. Matt, what'd you make of that?

Speaker 5 Good on her for doing it. That was actually one of my least favorite episodes.

Speaker 5 The conceit of it, I get it, the whole kind of Chinatown-esque, mystery-esque, funny conceit, just didn't have as many laughs as I would have wanted.

Speaker 5 And the ultimate payoff with her, like, was pretty obvious from the beginning that she was the one who stole the reels.

Speaker 5 Big ups to her for doing it. I think that of all the people in the show, maybe she didn't get the boost that some of the others may have.

Speaker 5 I don't hear her name discussed around town very much about doing it, but I'm glad she did it. It's funny.

Speaker 6 Her role is the least funny. I mean, she's playing a villainous character, but you have to give her credit.
I was pleasantly surprised. I thought she was great.
I didn't think she's a good actor.

Speaker 6 I thought she was really good in it.

Speaker 5 Yeah. That's the thing is they picked filmmakers that are also actors.
Sarah Paulie. Paulie, great actor.
became a filmmaker. Olivia Wilde.
Even Scorsese had done some acting.

Speaker 5 There was another filmmaker.

Speaker 4 I told Craig Owen Klein. Oh, Brett Klein's son was an actor.
He was a child actor who's a director now.

Speaker 4 And so even in the filmmakers they were picking, they had had acting experience, which is just really smart.

Speaker 5 Totally.

Speaker 6 I always think it's a great career move when celebrities do stuff like this.

Speaker 5 Yeah. And I like that the cameos all had a reason for being.

Speaker 5 Like you can, a lot of these Hollywood shows, they often feel like stunts where you're just, oh, look at that.

Speaker 4 It's Mark Wahlberg. You can say Entourage.

Speaker 5 All right, yes, Entourage. I brought that up with Seth and Evans, and they're like, dude, we've never seen Entourage.

Speaker 5 But these all felt purposeful. Ron Howard was purposeful.
He's known as the nicest guy in Hollywood. What do we do if we have to give him a horrible note that calls into question his entire movie?

Speaker 5 Great premise. And Ron Howard going nuts and making Seth fall over is great.
Like that, that made sense. Having

Speaker 5 someone like Zoe Kravitz go completely nuts on drugs, like that made perfect sense. And they talked about it.
In the Ringer Oral History, that was very good.

Speaker 5 They talked about how they initially thought that would be some big action star like John Cena, which would be funny if they had to like tackle him in his hotel room.

Speaker 5 And then Zoe was like, no, it should be me. Like, that's funnier.
And they were right.

Speaker 4 Craig, any closing thoughts on this series? I've never seen you more hyped for a TV show in all the years that I've known you.

Speaker 4 You came out of the chute, you watched like 10 episodes in one evening, and you were like, this is the best thing I've ever seen. How are you you feeling?

Speaker 5 I know you liked it more than I did even, Craig, because we watched this early because I was very nervous about me being in it. And the second they went on the press site, I told Craig about it.

Speaker 5 I'm like, oh, God, I got to watch this. And I liked it.
It's very good. But Craig was like over the moon for it.

Speaker 6 I think it's a combination of one, it's just wonderful to have Seth and Evan back doing something.

Speaker 6 It's been a while since there's been like a big, you know, Seth Rogan facing, Seth and Evan directed project.

Speaker 6 Combining that with, I love things about Hollywood.

Speaker 6 I loved Entourage. I love the player.

Speaker 6 And it's honestly what I think what I respect the most about it is I did think it was going to be much more character driven, emotional storylines, and it's just straight curb. It's screwball.

Speaker 6 And when talking with Seth and Evan on the town,

Speaker 6 they even say like they're not even really sure how much they're really trying to say about Hollywood. They don't have these deep messages that they're trying to get out.

Speaker 6 They're just having fun and they know about this industry more than anybody. I mean, for 20 years, they've been in it.

Speaker 6 They've started as writers, become movie stars, and now they're executives and producers.

Speaker 6 So they're basically just like telling a slapstick comedy as the most experienced insiders in a particular industry, which is why I love it so much.

Speaker 5 And on set, they were laughing. Like, in my scene where Cranston tries to bet a lobster at the blackjack table, like I could hear off, off in the background, like,

Speaker 5 like the Seth laugh, because he was just laughing at it. He thought it was funny.

Speaker 4 It really was funny. I was really happy with it.
It was not at all what I was expecting. I think I was expecting what you were just describing there, Craig, something with like a really

Speaker 4 a biting point of view on how terrible things have been for them in 20 years trying to get stuff made. And they seemed ultimately disinterested in that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I just appreciate sometimes, you know, when we did the Star Wars rewatchables and I was researching it and George Lucas was like, if there's one thing you take away from Star Wars, I want the word to be fun.

Speaker 6 I just want people to have fun. And Seth and Evan, God bless them, are still just like, I just want people to laugh.
And whatever medium we're doing it in, I just want people to laugh.

Speaker 5 George Lucas said that about the prequels, about the tax routes and the hour-long

Speaker 4 A New Hope. Oh, okay.
Yeah. The thing he said about the prequels was he wants them to be boring, and he really lived up to that promise.

Speaker 5 Tedious, I think, was the word.

Speaker 6 I think, you know, you guys say that, but people my age like those movies.

Speaker 5 Oh, my God. Maybe they're just super wonky about tax routes and shipping, shipping complexities.

Speaker 4 Matt, final question for you. When you go to Cinemacon in 2026, do you expect to be hailed as a conquering hero?

Speaker 5 I do, actually. I hope they have a special fake award that they give to me.
That's the thing about Cinemacon is they give fake awards to people.

Speaker 5 And like Kevin Costner will get up there and accept the like movie star of the millennium award and he'll start crying and tell everyone all the theater owners how meaningful it is to him.

Speaker 5 I would like something like that.

Speaker 6 I do think they need to do an entire episode around the standing ovation at Cannes and Matt Remick trying to get the longest one he possibly can.

Speaker 5 Oh, that's a good idea.

Speaker 4 Great idea. They should double that.

Speaker 5 And me making fun of it, and how all the different outlets are clocking it at a different time, and it doesn't matter, anyways, because the people in the room are what generate the ovation, not the movie.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, guys, this has been fun. The studio is a lot of fun.
If you haven't seen it, you should probably check it out if you're a fan of movies and television.

Speaker 4 Thanks for listening to the Prestige TV podcast. Thanks to Matt Bellany.
Thanks to Craig Horlbeck. Listen to the town podcast.

Speaker 4 Listen to their conversation with Seth and Evan if you want to hear more about the making of that series. We'll see you soon on this feed.