Leave it to Martin Scorsese to have a little giddy fun at the expense of the business that has made him a legend.
“It’s so good it’s painful; it’s so truthful that it’s painful,” a laughing Scorsese tells USA TODAY. Here’s what the “it” is.
In the debut episode of the new Apple TV+ Hollywood spoof “The Studio” (first two episodes now streaming; weekly on Thursdays) studio boss Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) is elated over landing Scorsese for what promises to be the filmmaker’s final movie. But there’s a wee catch.
Scorsese wants to direct a sober revisitation of the 1978 People’s Temple mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. The cult members died by drinking from a poisoned vat of Kool-Aid, an act that spawned the term “drinking the Kool-Aid,” meaning blindly following a group edict.
Remick is trying to satisfy his new box office-obsessed boss Griffin Mill (Bryan Cranston), who has announced that the studio’s next big-budget film will be based on the sugary drink Kool-Aid. So Remick greenlights Scorsese’s film with one request: that the director call his movie “Kool-Aid.” Scorsese agrees, not realizing he’s unwittingly signed up to direct a movie about a powered soft drink.
Of course, the deal falls apart the instant Remick’s slimy sidekick Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz) delivers the bad news at a party hosted by Charlize Theron. Scorsese promptly breaks down in tears, and Theron kicks Remick and Saperstein out of her party.
Scorsese just starts laughing when asked about the premise of his cameo, one of many promised by “The Studio.”
“It was not that much of stretch,” he says. “I’ve been through that a number of times in my life.”
Meaning, meetings where compromises are made to move the movie along. And perhaps even meetings about projects rooted more in pop culture than great storytelling. Scorsese has been a longtime advocate for filmmaking and filmmakers, ranging from efforts to preserve old movies to criticism of what he called “manufactured content.”
“Jonestown was just awful, but look, suddenly you call the movie ‘Kool-Aid’ and you get the picture made,” he says. “So then, when you see the picture, you realize it’s not really about Kool-Aid, it’s about other things.”
Speaking of other things, Scorsese is set to deliver the second part of a series about legendary Catholics called “The Saints,” streaming on Fox Nation April 4 with an episode about St. Francis.
But what about feature films, considering that his last sprawling epic, Netflix’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” was a critical triumph? The good news is, “Kool-Aid” or no “Kood-Aid,” Scorsese is not done yet.
“I don’t know what’s next; I’ve got to get going here,” he says with a laugh, suddenly reaching over to grab a stack of scripts. “I have some reading to do.”
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