)—and a small army of executives representing Hoorae, Warner, CatchLight Studios, and 3 Arts Entertainment, Rae narrows the pool of short-film submissions to 10 finalists, who each get to shoot their version of a scene from thescript. The best take comes from a relative underdog: LA-based director, writer, and trailer editor Meko Winbush.
Taciturn, with a wry sense of humor, Meko couldn’t be more different from the standard exhibitionist reality star. Her muted responses to feedback emerge as one of the season’s earliest issues. And while it’s frustrating to watch her shrug off thoughtful script notes that would’ve helped the final product immensely, it isn’t always clear that her self-contained personality is as big a problem for the making of. As in past seasons, the needs of the series conflict with the needs of the movie.
It would take a performer of Rae’s or Nanjiani’s charisma to bend such a task into a compelling personal origin story, and it isn’t necessarily a real-world problem that being’s main character is not Meko’s priority. The series’ real draw has always been its behind-the-scenes account of how the average, non-blockbuster movie gets made. In the 2000s, that meant an Indiewood landscape where Miramax loomed large.might as well be set in a different universe, where media monoliths like Warner Bros.