Kevin Connolly, Doug Ellin, and Adrian Grenier at the premiere party for Jeremy Piven's hat.
Doug Ellin must be living a strange life right now. He goes straight from being feted at lavish premieres where studio execs tell him he’s great to reporters asking him why everyone hates his movie (confession: I was one of them). You have to sympathize somewhat with him not understanding what they’re talking about. And yet…
Here’s the money quote, from the Los Angeles Times:
“If you talk to real people instead of little, bitter guys sitting on their Twitter accounts —
Hey, pal, I may be bitter and sitting on my Twitter account, but you’ve got a lot of nerve calling me “little” for hating a show that stars Kevin Connolly.
real guys who have friends go, ‘This is my friends. This is how I grew up,’ ” said Ellin. “LeBron James? I go out to dinner with him, and he goes, ‘This is my E. This is my Drama. This is my Turtle.’ “
“If you talk to real guys, guys like NBA star LeBron James, or Home Improvement‘s Richard Karn, or Kurt Rambis, and not some dork writing brony fiction on his Apple Watch, they’ll say that Entourage is actually a thorough non-fictional account of their life and will try to sue me for money. Sting cornered me at our last tantric sex picnic demanding to know why I’d changed Turtle’s name from Robbo the Welshman, that’s how f*cking accurate my sh*t is.”
“I always felt like there was a movie there, even before the ‘Sex and the City‘ thing happened,” insisted Mark Wahlberg via telephone from a movie set in New Orleans.
“…said Mark Wahlberg, who clearly had better things to do.” I get the feeling Marky Mark called up Doug Ellin and said, “hey bro you should write a show about this” between Fireball shots and then hung up to plow some starlets and gave zero notes for the next six years.
“And, hey, I was not a fan of ‘Sex and the City,’ but I watched all the episodes and both movies because my wife liked it.”
“Look, one thing you hafta remembah is that I ain’t no queah, and expecially that I ain’t queah. In fact if theyah’s one walkaway factah from the awntarauge movie it’s that Mahky Mahk is nawt queah. I’m so nawt queah I do everything my wife axes.”
I understand this is a male-driven show, but I think a lot of women like hearing what it’s like when guys are talking with their friends unfiltered.”
To get the same sense of guys unfiltered, they could just read the same crappy men’s magazines Entourage models its dialogue after. Entourage isn’t how guys talk, it’s how focus-grouped facsimiles of guys talk.
The film’s premiere in Westwood on Monday night was also full of attractive women — go-go dancers elevated on platforms and leggy young ladies being squired about by men who could have doubled as their fathers.
That’s why Emmanuelle Chriqui — who plays E’s pregnant on-and-off again girlfriend in the movie — doesn’t have a problem with the depiction of the females in the film.
“This girl we paid to be there who we’ve surrounded with strippers for the last 18 months says our movie is exactly like real life, that’s why it’s so good!”
She doesn’t think the movie makes “girls look super great” but believes it’s an accurate representation of women in Hollywood.
I never felt bad for her getting paid to play a character, but I feel terrible that she has to go on junket interviews as herself and defend it. Where is the actor’s union on this one?
“Let’s be real: That’s what our … town is made of, and it shocks me all the time,” she said in an interview without her male cast mates. “Those little hanger-on-ers, those little bikini-clad, perfect bodies that show up and flirt with the 50-year-old that they think is gonna make them a star? There’s so many of those it’s disturbing. I see it way too often, and it shocks me all the time. And the thing is, Doug isn’t afraid to show it.”
“Doug Ellin is brave. So, so brave. Doug Ellin is actually one of my personal heroes. It goes my father, Martin Luther King, Sting, and Doug Ellin.”
Indeed, Ellin gets testy when asked whether he believes “Entourage” depicts women in a negative light.
“I don’t think that four guys in a car who say they would like to [have sex] that night are treating women poorly,” he said. He brought up Lena Dunham’s Girls, noting that he thinks the actress’ character “has had more sex than Vince and has been naked more than Vince, for sure.”
Wow, someone bringing up Girls as a false equivalency? That’s almost never happened seven times already today. By the way, of course Lena Dunham has been naked more than Vince. Girls is actually willing to make fun of its characters. If Vince ever got naked it might cut against the whole “LOOK HOW AWESOME MY BRO VINCE IS BRO” vibe of the show.
“Listen, Kim Cattrall’s character on ‘Sex and the City‘ — she was hooking up with dudes left and right,” agreed Connolly.
“This is not a Christian values show,” said Grenier.
Aaaand now we’re fourth-graders debating Puritanism, thanks for chiming in guys. “Like, of course they drive cars, they’re not Amish.” “This is not a horse and buggy show-type,” added Grenier.”
“Just because they’re guys that are out on the hunt to meet up with chicks and have a good time doesn’t make them such terrible guys,” Connolly said.
See, this is how incorrect Entourage criticism actually makes the show worse. It’s not bad because the characters are dicks, it’s bad because the people running the show want you to like the characters. To the point where they’re not people anymore. Imagine if It’s Always Sunny ended the gang arm in arm on the red carpet every episode.
Since the program wrapped four years ago, none of its stars have ended up with careers remotely resembling Vinny Chase’s. Dillon starred in the CBS sitcom How to Be a Gentleman, which was canceled after one season. Ferrara booked some small roles in films like Think Like a Man and Battleship.
Connolly made an ESPN documentary about the New York Islanders. And Grenier, an active environmentalist, is working on his own movie about an elusive whale… [LA Times]
No criticisms here, but I keep re-reading “Grenier, an active environmentalist, is working on his own movie about an elusive whale” and can’t stop laughing. That’s the kind of sentence that should’ve been in the Entourage movie. “Grenier, an active environmentalist, is working on his own movie about an elusive whale, with the help of a topless intern and his long-lost son, Kingsley.”
The tone of this piece was whether the h8ers were going to slow Entourage at the box office. After Tuesday’s “sizzling” debut, Wednesday’s returns were “less than rosy” and have it on track for a lukewarm “high teens to low $20Ms for the five-day.” Does that mean the bad reviews are affecting it? I can’t imagine the people who love Entourage are put off by the people who hate it. The crowd at my screening was so rowdy and excited I was surprised no one shouted “Gay” at the end of the Paper Towns trailer.
Anyway, everyone has Entourage all wrong. If it was actually an unfiltered view of Hollywood, it’d be great. But for all the cameos, nothing in it comes close to being as funny as this real headline:
Yep.