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At the outset of the episode titled “The Note,” Rogen’s Matt Remick, the head of Continental Studios, settles in with his executive team (Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn, and Chase Sui Wonders) for a lot screening of Ron Howard’s completed new film. It’s an uncharacteristically gritty crime flick for Howard (think the opening of “The Paper,” one of Howard’s best films, stretched to feature length) starring Anthony Mackie as a New York City cab driver who gets caught up with a gut-shot gangster played by Dave Franco. The movie, “Alphabet City,” wows the execs at every turn, but just when they think Howard has stuck the landing, the film cuts to what feels like a denouement tying up a loose narrative end regarding the child we saw in a picture with Mackie at the beginning. It seems fine (we know how Matt feels about bookends), but then Mackie and the kid repair to a motel, which leads to a scene that pads the tight two-hour feature out to nearly three hours.
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Matt and his team are aghast. Howard has delivered a bloated film that exhibitors say will cost the studio two screenings a day at the multiplexes, thereby limiting its box office potential. But all hope is not lost. Matt discovers that Howard is still making “tweaks,” so he has the opportunity to give the director a note that might convince him to cut the motel scene. What’s more, he’s Ron Howard, the nicest guy in Hollywood. Surely, he’ll listen to reason (or at least take the note in stride).
There’s just one catch: Matt doesn’t want to personally give him the note because, at the very start of his career in 2001, he attended a friends-and-family screening of “A Beautiful Mind” where, in front of all of the attendees (including Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers), he suggested that Howard reveal early in the film that Charles (Paul Bettany) is an imaginary character. Howard responded by viciously ridiculing Matt to the howling delight of the audience. Evidently, Matt is the only person in Hollywood who’s seen the cruel side of this beloved filmmaker.
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This leads to Matt cowardly delegating his responsibility as a studio head to his charges, none of whom can bring themselves to deliver the note. They’re first scared off by producer-star Anthony Mackie unexpectedly dropping by for the marketing meeting, but they tuck their tail even tighter when Matt’s predecessor Patty (Catherine O’Hara) reveals that the interminable motel scene is a tribute to Howard’s dead cousin. Matters take a turn for the worse when Anthony Mackie confides in the execs that he, too, hates the motel scene.
With his back against the wall, Matt must finally step up and tell the Academy Award-winning director, the man he most fears in Hollywood, that the motel scene doesn’t work. This is when Ron Howard goes shockingly, hilariously nuclear. Solana Token Creator
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