The Studio Recap: Deleted Scenes

There’s good news as “The Note” opens: Ron Howard has a new movie. This is good for several reasons. Howard has a proven track record of making artistically successful movies that also connect with audiences. And because Howard has the clout to demand final cut, there’s not that much work for Matt, Sal, Maya, and Quinn to do. Their only job here is to watch the movie and figure out how to sell it. What’s more, they have every reason to be optimistic about Howard’s latest, an action movie that stars Anthony Mackie (Quinn’s favorite) and Dave Franco (who, in Maya’s words, “will line up those ladies moister than an oyster.”) What could go wrong?

And, save Matt’s odd reaction when A Beautiful Mind’s plot twist comes up, there seems to be no reason to worry at first (apart from The Studio’s two previous episodes). What’s more, the movie’s great, at least for a while. For two hours, the Continental gang thrills and swoons to Alphabet City, a thriller set in 1970s New York in which Mackie plays a cabbie who picks up a dangerous passenger (Franco). They’re ecstatic when the film reaches a “fucking unreal” ending. Then comes the postscript, a ponderous, seemingly endless string of scenes in which Mackie wanders the grounds of a motel with the ghost of his son to the accompaniment of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.”

It’s a sequence so bad that the epilogue not only kills their enthusiasm for the film but seemingly undoes all the goodwill created by the two hours of action preceding it. It’s not their job to give Howard notes, but as Maya says, “You gotta be delulu if you think people are going to watch that.” Clearly, Matt has to tell Howard to cut the motel scenes when the director swings by for a scheduled marketing meeting that afternoon. Matt knows it, too. He just can’t bring himself to do it. “You give brutal studio notes all the time, and it’s usually to people who hate you,” a puzzled Quinn says. “Ron Howard actually seems to fucking like you.”

Maybe that’s the problem. We have yet to see Matt giving “brutal” notes (or really any notes, apart from a single suggestion in “The Oner”), but we know he has a soft spot for artists he respects, and Howard seems to be on that list. There’s more to the story, as the episode reveals, but giving this note doesn’t seem like a task Matt would be eager to do, even without his past history with Howard. That gets to an issue at the heart of the series: Maybe, as Griffin Mill suggested, Matt’s desire to be liked by the talent and his fondness for the “artsy fartsy” makes him ill-suited to be a studio head. But if that’s the case, what does that say about the state of the movies?

Matt decides to meet Howard in the studio’s lobby, and after they exchange pleasantries, Howard gives him an opening to offer any feedback. He can’t do it (unless “You rule, man!” counts). Fleeing the scene, Matt tries to find someone else to give Howard the bad news. As the rest of the executive team lines up behind him, Matt confesses his cowardice, though he frames it as a strategic move designed to preserve his reputation as the town’s most talent-friendly studio head. Clearly, someone else needs to step up and let Howard know the ending doesn’t work.

That somebody is Quinn, who sees it as a need to save Howard from himself. She’s ready to do it, too. Then she sees Anthony Mackie, whose presence turns Quinn into a breathless fangirl who can’t get out anything but praise for him (and then just barely). She’s bailed out by the arrival of Patty, who makes the situation easier in the short term but harder in the long term by praising the motel scene, which she knows is deeply personal for Howard, a way of working through the childhood death of a cousin. She also knows the sequence sucks, but feels the need to kiss up to Howard now that she’s transitioned back to production after serving as the studio head. Still, she gives Matt some Demolition Man–inspired advice about handling sensitive artists for the small price of reading a script about an Australian chess team that cheats. The title, of course: Check Mate.

After Matt shares the dead-cousin news with the team, they come up with a plan B: Sal will pretend to have a dead cousin and use that connection to forge a bond with Howard. That doesn’t sound like a very good plan to anyone else, forcing Matt to confess to his history with Howard: Early in his career, he offered a note after a friends-and-family screening of A Beautiful Mind, suggesting it would be cool if viewers knew the whole time that Paul Bettany’s character existed only in the protagonist’s head. This was not well received. Thankfully, Howard has forgotten this (Matt believes), but he’s not going to risk that kind of humiliation again.

So plan B it is. And it works! Well, the bonding with Howard part works, even leading to Sal joining a group hug with Howard and Mackie. If anything, talking to Sal makes Howard dig in on his commitment to the motel sequence, no matter how punishing it is. But they end up finding an unexpected ally in Mackie, who knows the sequence “fucking sucks” and encourages Matt to man up (but in more anatomically specific language). Still, Matt still tries to wiggle out of the responsibility. It’s only Maya’s return with the news that exhibitors are balking at the runtime, explaining that “People don’t want movies that long unless they have capes or aliens,” that finally makes him agree to deliver the note.

Even then, it’s not until Howard makes the suggestion that the motel sequence should serve as the focus of the film’s marketing that Matt makes a motion to speak up. This does not go well. Upon realizing that Matt has a note about his film, Howard reveals that he does, in fact, remember the A Beautiful Mind story. This, finally, pushes Matt over the edge, inspiring him to tell the director that the motel scene has to go. Things quickly get out of hand, and the episode cuts to a despondent Matt wandering the lot to the tune of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.” (Matt and the series still love a bookend.)

But the episode has its own epilogue. Howard calls Matt to tell him he’s right about cutting the motel sequence. He also promises he’ll “fucking destroy” Matt if he crosses him again, but it’s still kind of a happy ending. Matt got the job done, even if he took a roundabout way to get there. He saved a good movie and kept its director from embarrassing himself. Maybe he’s good at this job after all?

Or maybe not. There’s still a lot of this first season left, and it’s unlikely to be a string of successes for Matt. Still, this outing makes it easy to root for him to get some wins. He’s doing the best he can to nurture an environment that is friendly to artists (even if Alphabet City looks kind of lousy, no matter how enthusiastic it makes the Continental team) while keeping an eye on the bottom line. If Matt failed at every turn, The Studio would be merely cynical, instead of a series about someone with good intentions and a real love for movies doing the best he can in a job that might be beyond his abilities.

And … Cut!

• “God, this job is a daily kick in the ovaries!” Again, O’Hara really knows how to sell a line like this.

• That’s not to take anything away from the other performances, however. Hahn’s a particular standout in this episode. She might come off as a clownish trendoid thanks to her tendency to declare everything a “mood” or a “vibe,” but, beneath this, Hahn plays her as a woman who’s very good at her job, even if that job can frequently be silly. She knows what she’s doing (at least as far as anyone in her industry knows what they’re doing).