‘Project Greenlight’ review: In Season 5, Issa Rae and friends take over for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck

Intentionally or not, the fifth season of “Project Greenlight” makes a persuasive argument that writers are the backbone of Hollywood.

Originally the brainchild of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the reality series launched in 2001 and followed the pair as they (and a small team of producers and executives) plucked an unproven filmmaker from obscurity, handed them a budget and a script, and gave them the opportunity to direct their first studio movie. In exchange, everyone involved agreed to be followed by a camera crew documenting the behind-the-scenes process.

The premise for Season 5 remains the same but with a key change: Issa Rae takes over for Damon and Affleck, and she’s recruited Kumail Nanjiani and director Gina Prince-Bythewood to offer their services as celebrity mentors, while Rae’s production company, Hoorae, oversees both the film and TV projects. A woman has never been chosen in previous seasons and Rae & Co. make it their purpose to change that, selecting Meko Winbush. The director initially comes across as wonderfully down to earth.

Surprisingly, this trait doesn’t work in her favor.

In the first episode, when Rae and her team are narrowing down the contenders, you can see they expect the candidates to open a vein or two and share personal stories as part of the interview process. But Winbush is visibly uncomfortable with this, which prompts some creased foreheads. Watching the interaction you think: Shouldn’t it be OK if she’s not inclined to play this particular game? Is that really the price of admission when the thing you’re directing isn’t even about you?

It turns out, the panel was right to be concerned. It’s not that Winbush is protecting her privacy. She’s just generally uncommunicative and fails to convince the executives at Hoorae that she’s on top of things.

This becomes a stumbling block as the project progresses. Everyone agrees the script needs work. And since Winbush advertised herself as a writer as well as a director (did anyone see her writing samples ahead of time to confirm this?), the Hoorae team expects her to revise the script herself.

If a screenplay isn’t ready, you need a capable writer to wrangle that thing into submission, which underscores how important and valuable writers are to the process. Weirdly, the show doesn’t even name the screenwriter at first. It’s as if the script just fell from the sky. The series was filmed more than a year ago, but this detail is ironic for a couple reasons: The WGA is currently on strike and this is emblematic of the way writers are often treated in Hollywood — as nonentities — but it’s also odd because all three celebrity mentors are screenwriters themselves.

Why give Winbush a script that no one is happy with — and then tell her she has only seven weeks to rewrite it, while also juggling preproduction on her first film? That decision feels cynical and designed to create reality show drama.

We finally do meet the screenwriter, Philip Gelatt, who works with Winbush to tweak the script, but his efforts are futile. Winbush is passive and not great at brainstorming on command. She’s resistant to being rushed and prefers to wait for inspiration — even if, apparently, it never comes.

It’s a slow-motion car wreck, which is why it’s so watchable. The stakes feel real — this is Winbush’s big opportunity. And the show reveals details about hiring that we rarely see play out; just because a Black woman is at the helm, there’s no guarantee she’ll be focused on assembling a diverse crew. The team at Hoorae are the ones who have to bring this to her attention.

The tensions on the show also reveal so much about how Hollywood actually works. It’s not always about who has real filmmaking talent, but who can talk a good game. You can see how this might put introverts at a disadvantage. But a big part of any creative profession is sales, no matter how gauche that may sound — you’re selling yourself and you’re selling your ideas. The Hoorae executives recognize this isn’t intuitive for Windbush, but they also expect her to figure it out, instead of more explicitly teaching her the ropes. She needs them to spell it out!

Her struggles are clear. Despite being experienced professionals themselves (unlike Winbush), the Hoorae team doesn’t brainstorm alternate strategies of their own. Winbush is not good at reading signals, but they’re not good at adapting to that and being more straightforward. This is the director they decided to go with and script revisions are not her strength. She’s floundering and is seemingly waiting for someone else to step in. So instead of forcing her into this box, why not present her with another option: Take the script off her hands, hire someone to fix it and tell her that money will be subtracted from her budget?

The last time “Project Greenlight” aired in 2015, the movie had a $3 million budget, which was then raised to $3.3 million when the director wanted to shoot on film instead of digital. Nearly 10 years later, the budget is only $3.5 million. That’s not even close to matching the rate of inflation (if it were, the budget would be about $1 million higher) and there’s something conspicuous about this being the case the first time a Black woman is featured as a director.

Once production on the movie begins, there’s more conflict — this time between the film crew and the “Project Greenlight” TV crew. Tempers flare and reality show mics are discarded. An executive from Max visiting the set lays down the law: “We wouldn’t hire a director with no experience and give them several million dollars to make a movie and just go let ‘em do it. That’s not the point of this. The point of this is to document the process.”

The film itself is titled “Gray Matter,” a coming-of-age sci-fi thriller about a teenager with psychic powers and it also premieres this week on Max (I have not seen it). As with previous seasons, the celebrity mentors pop in here and there, but we don’t see them offering much beyond encouraging words. Winbush really could have used some practical insights from Prince-Bythewood in the editing room, but the latter was up against her own timeline editing “The Woman King.”

Winbush does not come off well, and that tracks with previous seasons: These first-timers tend to be stubbornly resistant to advice and creative input. Notes are greeted with skepticism, sometimes with good reason and sometimes to the director’s detriment.

Rae and her team are optimistic that they can improve upon past incarnations of the show, and yet it remains the same as it ever was, for good or for ill. None of the resulting movies in the past were watchable and none of the directors have gone on to noteworthy careers. Maybe that’s why the series was moribund for nearly a decade before Rae revived it to mixed results.

Let us pause to appreciate an irony you might only notice if you pay attention to the show’s credits: A series that proudly aims to give a woman an important foot in the door lists 3 Arts talent manager Dave Becky among its executive producers.

Becky, you may recall, was Louis C.K.’s manager when the comedian was accused of sexual misconduct. According to reporting in The New York Times, the two women “began telling others what happened but said they felt threatened by Mr. Becky, who was angered that they were talking about it openly. ‘I now comprehend that my response was perceived as a threat to cover-up sexual misconduct,’ Mr. Becky wrote. ‘This is not an excuse. What I did was wrong.’”

Apparently, for Rae & Co., that’s all water under the bridge, while Becky collects whatever fees are associated with his producing title.

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'PROJECT GREENLIGHT'

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Max

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