David J. Rosen’s new Apple TV show Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed may not be a conventional horror series, but director and executive producer David Gordon Green confirmed that genre greats like the Halloween films helped inspire the dark comedic thriller’s nail-biting tension.
The series stars Tatiana Maslany as Paula, a newly divorced soccer mom whose attempt to seek pleasure and companionship online completely upends her life, threatens her safety, and puts her chances of gaining custody of her daughter at risk. As Paula gets wrapped up in deadly crimes and dangerous investigations, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed cleverly utilizes sound to raise stakes, heighten stress, and build unsettling paranoia both on and off screen.
“It does come from from doing the Halloween movies and working in horror. You do become dialed into the way that sound can heighten,” Gordon Green, who rebooted the Halloween franchise trilogy, told DECIDER over Zoom. “It could be the room tone, the buzz of the lights, where silence is helpful, where music comes in and adds to the suspense. The way that all of these technical elements go into creating an uneasiness is certainly a really fun thing, and a creative avenue in horror movies. And to be able to take that, some of those lessons learned, and design and bring that to Maximum Pleasure was really fulfilling.”
From a fierce opening title track and bangers blaring through Paula’s headphones to perfectly placed needle drops and Wynne Bennett’s intense techno score, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed makes music a character of its own. In the spaces between music and silence, everything from sounds of the city and office background noise to haunting cell phone rings help keep adrenaline pumping.
“We spent an enormous time on sound. There are a lot of of hard cuts on sound in the show, which on other shows I never did as much of,” Rosen told DECIDER. “There’s a lot of loud sound butted up — if you’re looking at a timeline — to another loud sound, to stress the jarring feeling of being in New York, and life, and your phone always buzzing, and all those feelings to keep this paranoia going.”
For Gordon Green, who directed the pilot and helped set the tone for the series, part of what excited him about diving in was identifying opportunities for camerawork and sound to not just coalesce, but enhance each other. “Maybe Paula’s scooting a chair back or she’s closing a door. The camera’s got a playful quality with her, and I like these snappy ways where sound can be integrated and slightly heightened to atmospherically enhance the paranoia, the uncertainty, the instability as the ground starts to crack and fragment beneath Paula’s feet,” the director explained. “I think the sound is such a fun way to enhance the atmosphere and give us a sense that sometimes we’ve got a pulse and a pace and Paula’s in the groove, and other times, it’s all falling apart in front of us. That’s a big part of what, for me, stands out about this show.”
Certain scenes from Maximum Pleasure Guarantee can be described as The Bear-level tension meets the Challengers soundtrack. More subdued, emotional beats will make viewers feel like they’re watching a heartbreaking parenting drama or a relatable mediation on loneliness and the pressure to achieve perfection. Sometimes, the show is a crime comedy. Other times, it’s a cautionary tale of technology and a horror driven by blackmail and extortion. But what Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed isn’t is another series that explores online sex work in more traditional fashion like Euphoria and Margo’s Got Money Troubles, which recently introduced OnlyFans storylines. Instead of diving deep into online sex work as a profession, Maximum Pleasures dabbles in online sex scams and explores the loneliness behind a person’s drive to seek digital companionship. Despite different approaches, Rosen recognizes the “really interesting” TV trend and has some thoughts on why online sex work is having a moment on-screen.
“I’ve obviously noticed the same. For me, and for us, I think the show came out of a place and the fact that we’re living through an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Yay us!” said Rosen, who drew initial inspiration for the Apple TV series when the pandemic forced people to connect virtually. “The idea was that this woman, a single mom, made one little reach for happiness through the thing that makes us so isolated: technology. And that one little move pulled her into this caper of danger and murder. So really, our show does dance into the world of sex workers, but it’s not really fully based there as much as some of the others who dive deep. Ours is very specific to one guy [a camboy named Trevor, played by Brandon Flynn]. But the reason for the popularity is America’s a nation where… it’s getting hot in here!”
The first two episodes of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed — which also stars Jake Johnson, Murray Bartlett, and more — are now streaming on Apple TV with new episodes premiering Wednesdays.
Stay tuned for more Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed coverage from Decider.
