Critics at Large | The New Yorker10 Apr 2025

“The Studio” Pokes Fun at Hollywood’s Existential Struggle

The tension between art and commerce is a tale as old as time, and perhaps the most dramatic clashes in recent history have played out in Hollywood. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz explore how moviemaking and the business behind it have been depicted over the decades, from Lillian Ross’s classic 1952 work of reportage, “Picture,” to Robert Altman’s pitch-black 1992 satire “The Player.” In “The Studio,” a new Apple TV+ series, Seth Rogen plays a hapless exec who’s convinced that art-house filmmaking and commercial success can go hand in hand. At a moment when theatregoing is on the decline and the industry is hyper-focussed on existing I.P., that sentiment feels more naïve than realistic. And yet the show’s affection for the golden age of cinema is infectious—and perhaps even cause for optimism. “Early auteurs were people who knew Hollywood and could marshal its resources toward the benefit of their vision,” Cunningham says. “I wonder if now is the time for people who are seasoned in the way of Hollywood to really think about how it can be angled toward making art.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “The Studio” (2025–)“Veep” (2012-19)“The Player” (1992)“The Pat Hobby Stories,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald“Picture,” by Lillian Ross“Why Los Angeles Is Becoming a Production Graveyard,” by Winston Cho (The Hollywood Reporter)The New Yorker’s Oscars Live Blog New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Episoder(141)

Critics’ Cult Classics: Hannah Goldfield on the Food World’s Secret Tastemakers

In the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to the topic of cult classics, Naomi Fry talks with the New Yorker staff writer Hannah Goldfield about how that designation app...

13 Aug 39min

Critics’ Cult Classics: Hanif Abdurraqib on Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night”

When it dropped in January of 1997, Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night” thrilled some listeners and confounded others. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to resurfac...

6 Aug 46min

The Irony and the Ecstasy of Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead’s ascent in the literary world has seemed, like much of what he does, impressively effortless. Though he’s best known for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys”—both of whic...

30 Jul 50min

The Golden Age of the American Idiot

The new game show “Nation’s Dumbest,” flips the classic “Jeopardy!” script on its head. The format: twelve famous-ish contestants are peppered with basic logic and trivia questions. The twist is that ...

23 Jul 52min

Who Owns the Odyssey?

In its nearly three-thousand-year history, the Odyssey has undergone as many twists and turns as its protagonist does on his journey home to Ithaca. Its origins as oral poetry suggest countless revisi...

16 Jul 50min

An American Playlist

This week, to commemorate two hundred and fifty years of the American experiment, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz present an American playlist. On this special episode, the hosts ...

2 Jul 59min

From The Political Scene: The Politics of the Big Game

Critics at Large will be back next week. In the meantime, you can hear Vinson Cunningham and Naomi Fry on a recent episode of The New Yorker’s Political Scene, hosted by Tyler Foggatt, where they cons...

25 Jun 37min

Steven Spielberg’s Blockbusters

When “Jaws” hit theatres in 1975, no one—neither the studio executives involved nor the film’s twenty-six-year-old director, Steven Spielberg—was betting on its success. But it dominated at the box of...

18 Jun 55min