David Fincher’s HBO series Videosynchrazy halts production

Despite that confidence-wavering comparison, Videosyncrazy has the benefit of drawing upon Fincher’s early career working in the music video industry. The show is (or was, up until this pause) centered on Robby (Charlie Rowe), an enthusiastic but naive college dropout who moves to Hollywood with dreams of directing a sprawling sci-fi feature film. As with most tinseltown pilgrims, Robby’s dreams are expeditiously crushed, and he becomes a production assistant on music videos. The career setback gives Robby a front row seat to the excesses of the ’80s music scene, when rockers chased big dreams and were fueled by big hair, big leather jackets, and big piles of cocaine. Because this is a comedy, there’s probably little chance that Robby’s anemic sense of masculinity will drive him into an insomniac fugue state or lead him to form an underground pugilism league. Then again, maybe he will—that setup already sounds funnier than Arli$$.

The status of Videosyncrazy should have no impact on Fincher’s other HBO series, Utopia. That series is not the ‘50s crime drama Fincher was planning with James Ellroy, but a science-fiction collaboration with Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn about a graphic novel that “predicts major disasters”—disasters which may wind up including Fincher-directed comedies in the vein of Entourage.