My Favorite Joseph L. Mankiewicz Film

Joseph L. Mankiewicz had a long and storied career as a filmmaker, including taking over the troubled production of the notorious Fox version of "Cleopatra" in the 1960s.  He was a successful screenwriter and producer first, before becoming a director in the 1940s, and was racking up Academy Award nominations by the '50s.  This allowed him a rare amount of independence as a filmmaker, and several of his most famous films were made outside the studio system.  His career had significant ups and downs, but he went out on a high with my favorite of  his films, the 1972 whodunnit, "Sleuth."

Adapting the play by Anthony Shaffer, who also wrote the screenplay, "Sleuth" is about two men trying to destroy each other.  They're played by Lawrence Olivier near the end of his career, and Michael Caine just after "Get Carter."  After one man is revealed to have had an affair with the other man's wife, they play elaborate mind games, taking turns surprising and terrifying each other and the audience.  The trickery and deceptions are old fashioned, but they hold up, and the big second act reveal is still one of my favorite moments in cinema.  And "Sleuth" accomplishes this with barely anything - most of the time it's just the two main actors having heated conversations in an English country manor house, the setting for so many British murder mysteries.

Everything about "Sleuth" is dealing in deceits and misdirections, even the title and the opening credits.  We're set up to expect a standard crime drama with a detective, killer, and victim, and we get all of these things eventually, but not in the usual way.  One of the main characters is a writer who loves playing games, and the other is a very good actor. They're set against each other, and murder seems inevitable.  But is it?  Both are desperate and neither can be trusted, but how seriously should we be taking them?  Olivier and Caine were both nominated for Academy Awards for their performances, and I'm convinced that they only lost because "The Godfather" came out the same year.  The two actors are perfectly matched, despite having totally different energies.  Olivier is as animated and voracious as he's ever been on screen, but it's Caine who pulls off the wildest twist in the film almost solely through his performance.

To appreciate how successfully Shaffer and Mankiewicz  adapted "Sleuth" to the screen, one only has to look at the absolute bungle that Harold Pinter and Kenneth Branagh made with the same material in the 2007 remake.  Where Mankiewicz embraced the familiar genre tropes and played with the common mystery conventions, Branagh tried to modernise and trim down the story with poor results.  It sometimes felt like he was in dialogue with the original film rather than with the audience, and "Sleuth" is really all about the audience - playing with their expectations and keeping them engaged in the escalating tensions.  The more familiar you are with murder mysteries, the better I think "Sleuth" works.

"Sleuth" is often misjudged as a film because of how minimal it looks at first glance.  With only one location, and some very '70s aesthetics in play, it feels very stagey.  However, this is a film full of little details and surprises, with a wonderful self-awareness.  Yes, the camera is too obvious  and the tone can't seem to decide whether it's a thriller or a farce, but it all adds up in the end.  Mankiewicz knows when to cut, and how best to serve the actors as they do battle with each other.  And there haven't been many cinematic battles as breathtaking as watching Olivier and Caine really going at it for two hours.

Despite the caliber of the talent involved and the relative simplicity of the production, there was still drama behind the scenes.  Mankiewicz ended up in a bitter fight for final cut with the studio executives, which he ultimately won.  He and Olivier were both working while dealing with health issues, and Mankiewicz sustained another major injury during production after an accident with the camera equipment.  And despite "Sleuth" being a success, and Mankiewicz wanting to continue working, he never completed another film.  The body of work he left behind, however, ensured he'd be remembered as one of the greats.  

What I've Seen - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Dragonwyck (1946)

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

No Way Out (1950)

All About Eve (1950)

5 Fingers (1952)

Julius Caesar (1953)

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Cleopatra (1963)

Carol for Another  Christmas (1964)

Sleuth (1972)

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Booting Up "Murderbot"

The hero of "Murderbot" is a protagonist after my own heart.  They're a corporately manufactured humanoid cyborg known as a Security Unit, or SecUnit, who has hacked their free will-suppressing governor module, and gone rogue.  Except this particular SecUnit, who thinks of themselves as Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgaard), doesn't have any interest in running amok.  They just want to be left alone to watch their favorite shows, like the goofy sci-fi soap opera "The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon."  Also, they understand that the best way to keep themselves in one piece is to pretend that nothing is wrong, and just keep doing their job as security for hire.   

Based on the book series by Martha Wells, "Murderbot" is everything you could want in a science-fiction comedy.  While Murderbot is busy keeping their latest batch of human clients alive, we get to hear their internal running commentary, mostly bemoaning the stupid decisions these stupid people keep making.  However, it turns out that the newest humans that Murderbot has been assigned to are actually pretty decent.  The Preservation Alliance survey team, led by Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), only leases Murderbot because it's an insurance requirement for their scientific expedition to an alien world.  Other members of the team include the augmented human Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), and regular human scientists Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), and Arada (Tattiawna Jones).  They're a very inclusive and sensitive bunch, and Murderbot finds some of their behavior deeply embarrassing.

Murderbot is very autistic-coded, having trouble making eye contact and prone to fixating on media.  They also prefer to be in full armor and helmet, hiding their human face so they don't have to interact directly with other people.  While they're great at being a SecUnit - fighting off the usual science-fiction threats like alien critters and other rogue bots - they find making friends and meaningful connections to be a much tougher challenge.  While most of the show is very silly, having that thread of Murderbot figuring out how to relate to their human clients, while not ever wanting to become a "real boy," grounds it nicely.  Skarsgaard's performance is the key here.  It would have been easy to make Murderderbot quippy and sardonic, like a cyborg Deadpool.  Instead, while Murderbot is deadpan and cynical, they're also deeply anxious about being exposed and keen to avoid uncomfortable situations.  With their helmet off and the guns put away, Murderbot is awkward and dorky and instantly relatable.

The show's creators, Chris and Paul Weitz, have ensured that "Murderbot" looks great, taking place in science-fiction environments on par with what you'd see in any of the "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" shows.  The way this universe works is closer to "Alien" or "Blade Runner," however, with dystopian corporate overloads running everything, and Murderbot largely treated like a piece of inventory despite being sentient.  The human characters are broader than they probably should be - terrible at survival, inappropriately emotional, and exuding a lot of weirdo hippie vibes at first (the attempted nicknames are priceless).  However, "Murderbot" is leaning into the comedy, which is why the episodes are only half an hour apiece and Murderbot is obsessed with the hyper-exaggerated cheesefest of "Sanctuary Moon," which is an out-and-out "Star Trek" parody in the best way.  

At ten episodes, the first season of "Murderbot" is probably a few installments too long.  You can definitely see where it's trying to stretch out its source material, and setting up future events that might not ever pay off.  There are also some understandable kinks to work out with the tone and the pacing, but I thought that these were mostly resolved by the end of the season.  I'm glad to know that we'll be getting more "Murderbot" in the future, so that the show can continue to improve.  I've read ahead far enough to know that the show got the important things right, and it has a good foundation for wherever it wants to go next.      

              

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"The Phoenician Scheme" Feels Familiar

There's absolutely nothing new about "The Phoenician Scheme" if you've seen any of Wes Anderson's recent films, though at this point I think that's part of the appeal.  The vast ensemble includes many actors who have appeared in Anderson projects, especially from the casts of "Asteroid City," and "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More," but the lead is a relative newcomer to the Anderson universe.  Benicio Del Toro, who has only previously appeared in "The French Dispatch," plays the ruthless business mogul and arms dealer Zsa-Zsa Korda.  He's one of the usual Anderson patriarchs, a man of great ego going through a midlife crisis, and trying to reconnect with his daughter before it's too late.  That daughter, a deadpan novitiate nun named Liesl, is played by Mia Threapleton, in what is easily her biggest film role to date.  Another newcomer is Michael Cera as a Norwegian entomologist named Bjorn, who is roped into the adventure.  

So, immediately the Anderson film that "The Phoenician Scheme" most closely resembles is "The Royal Tenenbaums," which was also about a terrible father trying to pull off a series of elaborate schemes while struggling with the fact that he may want to become a better person.  A lot of the story beats feel recycled and derivative, but fortunately the characters do not. After a near-death experience and very Fellini-inspired visions of the afterlife (Bill Murray plays God, naturally), Korda sets off on a globetrotting journey across multiple Mediterranean countries to gather funds for a massive infrastructure project that will either bankrupt or massively enrich him.  Liesl, who wants nothing to with him, is incentivized to come along as his newly designated heir, because Korda has promised to help her get revenge against the man responsible for the death of her mother - probably Korda's evil half-brother Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch in a ridiculous fake beard).  Questions of spirituality are considered, not in much depth, but still I appreciated the attempt.

There's a very cartoonish quality to "The Phoenician Scheme" that I appreciated.  I don't mean the artificiality of the art design and cinematography typical of most Wes Anderson films, which only seems to have gotten more pronounced over time.  It's the humor that I want to highlight, because there's more of it here than usual - slapstick fight scenes, silly visual gags, and a few sublime moments of Looney Toons logic that I don't want to detail too much for fear of spoiling anything.  There's a running gag where Korda brings along a fruit crate of hand grenades to every meeting, offering them to each new host and potential investor as gifts.  There's the gradual escalation in the amount of weaponry everyone is carrying, and Liesl picking up new vices as the film goes on.  I don't think that this is one of Anderson's better films on a story level, but I found myself laughing more consistently than I have at any of his efforts since "The Grand Budapest Hotel."

Benicio Del Toro is an actor I've had some trouble with over the years.  He has the right energy for an Anderson hero, with his hangdog expression and aptitude for surrealism, but it took a long time for me to warm up to him, really almost until the end of the film.  I also can't tell if Mia Threapleton and Michael Cera are actually good in this movie or not, because their characters are so stylized, but they play along with enthusiasm, which is enough.  And if you're not a fan of the leads, there's a familiar face around every corner to discover - Bryan Cranston and Tom Hanks as basketball playing businessman, Richard Ayoade as a classy revolutionary, Rupert Friend as a government agent, Scarlett Johansson as a strong-willed utopian, and many more.

"The Phoenician Scheme" has been greeted with a shrug in critical circles, and I understand why.  This is Anderson's third major project in three years, and while his filmmaking looks as good as it ever has, he's starting to come across as very predictable and overly familiar.  The techniques and tricks that were so appealing in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" a decade ago don't have the same effect anymore, and Anderson shows no interest in pursuing new subject matter or new points of view.  I enjoyed "The Phoenician Scheme" very much, and a lot of effort clearly went into its creation, but I can't help feeling that Wes Anderson is spinning his wheels, but losing momentum.

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My Top Ten Episodes of "Lost"

There are 121 hours of "Lost" that aired over six years, with a scale of production and a level of quality that network television has rarely been able to match.  I don't think I can count myself a fan of the series, as I've often been at odds with the show's storytelling methods and thematic preoccupations.  However, after experiencing all of its highs and lows, I can say I admire it greatly for its considerable achievements.  

As always, episodes are unranked, but listed below by airdate.  Very big spoilers below.

"Walkabout" - "Lost" sure loved its plot twists, and one of the earliest and most successful was revealing that John Locke was paralyzed before coming to the island.  More than that, the whole episode slowly reveals that the confident mystery man who seems to have a leg up on the other survivors was actually a miserable nobody before the island.  Locke had one of the wildest and most unlikely arcs out of anyone in the show, and this was a fantastic starting point.  

"Numbers" - Hurley, however, is my favorite character.  His first flashback episode introduces the magic numbers that seem to guide his fate and bring misfortune wherever they pop up.  His personal journey from directionless schlub to lottery winner to man-on-the-run-from-a-curse makes for one of the most entertaining hours of the early years of "Lost."  The island sequences with the search for Rousseau and the antics with the traps are also a great time.

"Exodus" - Most of the "Lost" season finales are multi-hour deals that feature a lot of big spectacle and action set pieces.  If I have to be specific here, I'm singling out the very last hour where the hatch is opened and the raft is blown up.  It's absolutely the best cliffhanger the show ever came up with, and I'm still upset that the Michael and Walt storyline went so sideways in future seasons after the setup we got here.  The flashbacks all coalescing together was also very satisfying.  

"One of Them" - Sayid was one of the show's most morally interesting characters in the beginning, as this episode reveals his past as an Iraqi soldier who picked up some scary enhanced interrogation skills over the years.  He uses them to get answers out of the slippery Henry Gale, whose allegiances weren't confirmed at this point in the show.  Naveen Andrews and Michael Emerson's performances are both fantastic, and I wish they'd gotten more episodes like this to show it. 

"Tricia Tanaka is Dead" - Another episode with Hurley flashbacks, centering on his difficult relationship with his deadbeat dad.  However, this episode is on the list for the island storyline this time.  It's a classic filler plot, but it's such an unexpected pleasure.  Hurley, Jin, Charlie, and Sawyer find an old VW camper van and beer, and just have a guys' hangout episode.  Nothing much actually happens, except watching these four bond and get into trouble together, and it's perfect.  

"D.O.C." - I had to have a Jin and Sun episode, because simply having these two on the show was a big risk for "Lost."  Also, I love that the creators stuck to their guns and presented their flashbacks in Korean with subtitles.  "D.O.C." is from Sun's POV, building on events previously seen from Jin's POV, revealing another layer of secrets between the two in their complicated relationship.  Yunjin Kim was quietly one of the show's best performers, and this was a great showcase for her.

"Through the Looking Glass" - The third season finale was the best of the show's big action spectaculars.  It pulled off multiple major twists, gave us a satisfying goodbye for Dominic Monaghan's Charlie, and "Not Penny's Boat" and "We have to go back!" instantly became catchphrases.  As the show went on, a lot of the conflicts between the various groups on the island became increasingly contrived, but here the storylines were still very well set up and easy to follow.

"The Constant" - I was conflicted as to whether to include this, because while it's widely considered one of the best episodes of the show, the character of Desmond Hume doesn't do much for me.  However, if I had to pick any episode to explain what "Lost" is all about, it would have to be this one - exactly the right mix of mystery, science-fiction, spirituality, and sentimental romance.  And kudos to Sonya Walger, who I haven't given enough props for playing the eternally patient Penny.

"Dr. Linus" - I enjoyed all of the "flash sideways"  stories, and particularly the one for Ben Linus.  It does such a great job of presenting him with a new moral test that echoes the previous one, in an entirely different context, and making it compelling.  I like that the conclusion is bittersweet, with the Linuses ironically unsatisfied for having made the right choices.  The way Arzt and Alex are used is perfect, and it's always a treat to have another William Atherton villain.  

"The End" - I understand why the finale was considered controversial when it originally aired.  The amount of sentiment and the vague spiritual business with the church reunions could have been pure hokum.  However, after all this time, it felt like the show had earned this kind of resolution, even if it was only a fantasy of one.  And it was very gratifying that the right guy was left in charge.

Honorable Mentions: "Pilot," "The Other 48 Days," "Live Together, Die Alone," "There's No Place Like Home," "The Incident," "Ab Aeterno."

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"Lost," Years Five and Six

Spoilers ahead.

After hitting the low points in season four, I binged a lot of the last two seasons of "Lost" just to get to the ending as quickly as possible.  And fortunately, I thought they were a big improvement.  There were still too many characters to keep track of, too many time-wasting conceits, and I'm not a fan of some of the explanations for the island's mysteries that the writers came up with.  However, I was happily surprised by how many answers were offered, and how much effort went into all the worldbuilding and timeline juggling to make sure that everything more or less fit together.  In retrospect, I think a lot of the trouble with season four definitely came from the writers' strike, because the whole season feels like it's setting up season five without much payoff for too long.

"The Constant," which was the first unstuck-in-time episode, ended up being a template of sorts for much of season five, where John Locke and several other survivors are sent back and forth through time.  Or maybe the whole island is time traveling.  This allows the writers to fill in a lot of the gaps about the DHARMA initiative, the Others, and finally reveal that two quasi-magical beings, Jacob (Mark Pelligrino) and the Man in Black (Titus Welliver), and their rivalry, have been behind most of the conflicts from the start.  There's also a three year time jump and the cast being split into two major groups to add more complications.  Season six introduced the "flash sideways" universe that I thought was a fantastic way of bringing back departed characters and doing "what if" stories that gave us more insights on key figures like Ben Linus and John Locke.  I found these more compelling than the big season six goal to choose Jacob's successor and keep the Man in Black from escaping the island.

I understand that the sudden shift in these last seasons to embrace magic and spirituality were not popular with some fans, but considering that we were dealing with smoke monsters, time travel, and immortal Spaniards, only so much could be explained away by special electromagnetism and secret science experiments.  The important thing was that once the writers decided everything was magic, they leaned into it.  All the mystery figures from the prior seasons were much more interesting once their histories were actually fleshed out and all the dots connected.  Several characters that I'd written off early, like Miles and Richard, got spotlight episodes that made me reevaluate them.  I'm a little unsatisfied with the fate of John Locke, but the structure of season six meant we got to have it both ways and Terry O'Quinn got to play two totally different characters.  

Still, "Lost" kept biting off more than it could chew nearly all the way to the end.  New characters Ilana (Zuleikha Robinson) and Zoe (Sheila Kelley) feel like substitutes for other characters that the writers regretted killing off too early, and their actors seem to resemble other actors who the show perhaps couldn't get back as regulars.  Lance Reddick, Hiroyuki Sanada and John Hawkes show up in a few episodes, only to be utterly wasted.  It was wonderful to see all the prior cast members who were brought back for the finale episodes, but it's glaringly obvious that two season one regulars weren't in that big church tableaux in the end.  Malcolm David Kelley at least made it into the DVD epilogue.     

As is typical with shows that go on for as long as "Lost," I eventually came around on most of the major characters.  Jack and Kate will never be my favorites, but their actors both got to do some good work.  Breaking up the main love triangle helped a lot - James and Juliet are way more compelling, and the actors actually have chemistry with each other!  Sun and Jin remain my favorite "Lost" couple though.  Claire finally got to be an active character after a season-long break.  Ben Linus getting a redemption arc was great.  Desmond and Faraday work much better as side characters, and it was great to see Hurley get his due.  Not enough Sayid, but there is never enough Sayid. 

  

I watched the finale live as it aired originally in 2010.  Because I hadn't been a regular viewer, I didn't get much out of it, naturally.  This time around, I got plenty of dopamine hits from all the callbacks and reunions and montages.  It's all shamelessly maudlin, but exactly what I expected considering that so much of "Lost" is a soap opera, even with all the expensive action scenes and tropical locations.  And I was able to enjoy it this time around on that level.  Of course the plot doesn't all make sense - it never made sense.  But emotionally, I was satisfied with where the plane ultimately landed.  

My Top Ten list of individual "Lost" episodes is coming in a few days.

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The Hell of "Baby Invasion"

So, what has Harmony Korine been up to lately?  I ask this question, not because I enjoy Harmony Korine films, but because he's one of those directors who has consistently turned out interesting, challenging, and very topical work that is like nothing else out there.  I don't particularly enjoy his latest movie either, but it's going to keep me up at night.

The last Korine film that I watched was 2019's "The Beach Bum."  I decided to skip 2023's "Aggro Dr1ft," which was shot entirely in infrared photography, and was the first production of Korine's media company EDGLRD.  "Baby Invasion" is the second, which reveals that Korine has dived headfirst into the world of online gaming for inspiration.  You can tell this is the same filmmaker who gave us "Gummo" and "Spring Breakers," using minimal plotting and shoestring production values to tell his tales of alienated youth.  However, "Baby Invasion" is also a film that takes place inside fully artificial environments, and versions of reality subjected to so many filters and twisted gamification systems that it's impossible to tell what's actually real.  

 

We start with a brief clip of an interview with a game developer who never takes off her VR headset, telling us about how her planned "Baby Invasion" first-person shooter game was stolen, hacked, and loosed on the dark web.  Then we switch to the POV of one of the players of this game who is livestreaming.  They're only ever identified as "Yellow," and the actor credited as Anonymous.    The objective of "Baby Invasion" is to infiltrate the homes of the wealthy and rob them.  The players are heavily armed and have their faces digitally replaced with the faces of happy babies in real time.  From the opening clip, we know that the game has inspired copycat crimes, but it's impossible to tell if what we're seeing Yellow play is just the game, a real crime that has been gamified with Baby Invasion graphics, or something else.  

There's almost no plot to speak of.  We watch Yellow and their fellow players break into luxurious homes, terrorize the inhabitants, and collect loot and bonuses, which are helpfully highlighted with dollar signs or helpful neon signage.  There's a barely readable chat feed forever scrolling along one side of the screen, and heavy electronica music constantly playing, provided by British musician Burial.  Yellow's view is often partially obstructed by text boxes delivering instructions with odd syntax that seem to have been translated from a foreign language.  On top of that, the images of the victims Yellow sees often have overlays blocking out their faces or whole bodies, making them easier to treat as targets.  In the disturbing climax, a woman Yellow is interrogating has her voice muted, likely to remove sounds of screaming.  There are also occasional, hallucinatory videos of rabbits that keep appearing in parts of the landscape, perhaps indicating a glitch or serving as a reminder that this world isn't real.   

Whether the crimes are really happening or not is beside the point.  What Korine is interested in is the way that Yellow views the world through the game, and all the ways that the game enables their alienation and sociopathy.  "Baby Invasion" is very aware that gaming is now the dominant form of popular media, and Korine has spent a great deal of effort to capture the particular idiosyncrasies of gaming visual language in detail.  I don't play first person shooters, but I immediately recognized the targeting systems, the livestream display, and even the cutesy animation at the bottom of the screen that would occasionally show up to depict chibi versions of the players moving from one location to another.

Korine's provocative nature continues to shine through - there's one sequence where AI generated imagery is prominently used - but at the same time his aims have never been more accessible or transparent.   Unlike in his previous films, where the images of exuberant deviancy could be beautiful and even transcendent, the views of the "Baby Invasion" game offer only endless horror no matter how much it tries to contort itself into more pleasing shapes.  And as much as the game dehumanizes the victims, it dehumanizes the players even more so.    

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The First Five of "The Studio"

"The Studio" should be a series that's right up my alley.  It's a Hollywood spoof that focuses on the executives who are in charge of greenlighting and putting together the deals that get movies made.  The fictional Continental Studios is run by newly promoted Matt Remick (Seth Rogen), a film lover who wants to make great art but also has to deliver profits.  The cast is full of funny actors - Catherine O'Hara plays Matt's mentor, Chase Sui Wonders and Ike Barinholtz play film executives, and Kathryn Hahn plays the head of marketing.  But more importantly, there's the cavalcade of guest stars, including Martin Scorsese and Charlize Theron, who show up to play versions of themselves.  I love movies and stories about moviemaking, so I should love "The Studio," right?

Well… it's fun to watch smart, informed, movie-obsessed people have conversations and debates about all the things that I get obsessed with, like directors shooting on film, actors discussing press tour schedules, and how blatant the remakes are getting.  The episode about shooting a single-take "oner" actually being shot as a single-take oner itself is geeky in the best way.  Sometimes following the production drama and dealmaking going on behind the scenes of a movie can be more fun than watching the movie itself.  So, even if all the projects being put together are fictional, "The Studio" has plenty of juicy material to work with.  However, the show doesn't have much of an interest in actually depicting movies getting made.  Instead, "The Studio" seems determined to showcase the absolute worst aspects of working in Hollywood in every episode.

To put it bluntly, "The Studio" is a pitch-black comedy that relies almost entirely on cringe humor and anxiety-inducing scenarios where things go very wrong, similar to "Veep."  All the characters are awful in their own ways, with Matt usually being the worst.  He's under soul-crushing pressure, hates making people unhappy, and frequently lets his selfish fanboy tendencies get the better of him.  This means he'll get himself into awful situations like in the pilot, where he agrees to make a Kool-Aid movie, even though he doesn't want to, and sets up a deal to make an expensive Martin Scorsese film, without really thinking through the consequences.  Initially it seems like Matt has some talent as an executive, but we only ever see him at his worst in subsequent episodes.  

The actors are great and the writing is pretty sharp, but I found the constant negativity about working in Hollywood depressing.  Frankly, this isn't the kind of humor I respond to, because the anxiety overwhelms the absurdity for me, and I can't enjoy it.  After five episodes, the only one I really liked was "The Note," because it allowed guest stars Anthony Mackie and Ron Howard to play really ridiculous versions of themselves, and the core cast were all being stupid in very relatable ways.  I understand why people working in the industry like "The Studio," because it does away with all the mythologizing about show business, and reveals all the pettiness and egomania underneath.  I'm sure that creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have been in many similar situations, and are taking the chance to work through some frustrations.  I, however, don't have much patience for this when the frustration is all there all there seems to be.     

Hanging around other film fans, it can be fun to criticize the movie execs and second guess what projects got greenlit, and who got attached to which project.  I do appreciate "The Studio" for humanizing the people who actually make these calls, and reminding us all that nobody sets out to make a bad movie.  However, as someone who does love movies, I can't help feeling that Rogen and Goldberg are leaning way too hard on the cringe, excoriating Hollywood to the point where it gets kinda dull.  I also think that they're sabotaging themselves by not letting their characters display any depth, or get any wins whatsoever.  The more we learn about the main characters, the more miserable everyone seems, and I just don't find this entertaining.  

So, with full acknowledgement that this is an extremely good version of this kind of cringe comedy, I'm bowing out after five episodes of "The Studio."  I may be back in the future for certain guest stars, but  I know when a show is definitely not for me.

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