2024-07-22 03:01:00
Has any successful series aged so radioactively as Entourage? The comedy of HBO eight seasons, centered on famous Hollywood actor Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his circle of cronies, representatives and hangers-on, has become synonymous with a certain kind of masculinity. To his detractors, Entourage It is basically Toxic Masculinity: The Series, with a fanatical cult of wealth, womanizing profile and celebrity culture. Declaring yourself a fan of Entourage In these times it is, in other words, a real alarm signal.
Loosely based on the life – or rather, lifestyle – of Mark Wahlberg (minus the history of racist hate crimes), Entourage was never quite a phenomenon. At the time HBO began airing the series, 20 years ago, The American network was in the midst of a historic streak. Entourage coincided with Los Soprano, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, The Wire y Curb Your Enthusiasm. They are reputation for misogyny has only grown in recent years, something that has not been helped by the sexual assault allegations filed against former cast members Jeremy Piven, who played Vinnie’s foul-mouthed agent, Ari Gold, and Kevin Connolly, who played Vince’s best friend and manager, Eric “E” Murphy (both actors have denied the accusations of assault.) That Entourage was deeply and transparently problematic is beyond dispute at this point. And yet, all these years later, it would be inaccurate to dismiss the series as a mere amalgamation of its worst qualities.
Often, apologists for Entourage They defend it from the same banal parapet: the dubious claim that it is really a series about male friendship. In reality, it has little value or nuance to say on the subject. Much more interesting is the way in which Entourage explores the film business, often with a bias of insider information. The series became famous for its parade of A-list guest stars playing themselves. (Entourage, However, he did not originate this topic, but rather it appeared more than a decade after The Larry Sanders Show, a much more intelligent, funny and elegant satire of the world of entertainment, would set the precedent).
Beyond this gimmick, the series was generally cunning in its understanding of the film industry and offered fans a fictional behind-the-scenes look at, say, the difficulties of promoting a movie on a talk show, or what it’s like to run afoul of an all-powerful super-producer named, not so subtly, Harvey Weingard. But more than that, Entourage touches on something fundamental about the way we, as a culture, narrate the film industry.
If you spend enough time immersed in film culture, you start to analyze things like career trajectories or the persistent “what ifs” that adorn the history of popular cinema. What if Stanley Kubrick could have done his Napoleon? What if Will Smith hadn’t turned down Matrix? Entourage, Set in a parallel universe where Vince Chase is as well known as Matt Damon, allows us to live in this kind of hypothetical reality, a reality that also happens to be strangely premonitory. We see how a James Cameron post-Titanic chooses Vinnie for an adaptation of Aquaman, years before that Jason Momoa make it happen in real life. We see how Vinnie’s passion project, the crime drama about Pablo Escobar in Medellin (not unlike Narcos of Netflix), turns into a career-threatening disaster. We see Vinnie bounce back: he stars Gatsby, of Martin Scorsese (a few years before Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 version), and then Ferrariby Frank Darabont (a decade before Ferrariby Michael Mann). The fact that all the short clips from these fake films we see are comically and atrociously terrifying just matters.
At a very basic level, Entourage is a successful exercise in vicarious wish fulfillment. Watching a bunch of rich people buying nice things and going to expensive places may not traditionally make for compelling storytelling, but there is a kind of vertigo in witnessing what it’s like to live at the top end of the fame spectrum.
The first two seasons were very well received, with some caveats. “We can assume that it is not far from real life, Hollywood style,” he wrote. The Guardian in a review of the first season. “Which is to say “vacuous, brainless and utterly attractive.” As the series progressed, however, a decline in quality. What was once playful and lavish had become leaden and indulgent. In the last season, not to mention the sequel released in theaters, Any semblance of credibility had evaporated. The film Entourage (2015), co-starring Haley Joel Osment, Billy Bob Thornton and professional wrestler Ronda Rousey, among others, sees Vince make the move to film and direct an adaptation of Dr. Jekyll y Mr. Hyde Set in a futuristic underground DJ scene, we’re supposed to believe this movie is a masterpiece, when the brief glimpse we get of it makes it seem like the worst deodorant commercial ever recorded. It was terrible.
Las Criticism of sexual and gender politics of the series have abounded over the years. Kevin McFarland, of Wired, wrote that the series was “a reliable source of crude humor, casual misogyny and homophobia.” Anne Cohen, of Refinery29, wrote: “Most of the women in this series are “objectified to the point of absurdity.” While these complaints are valid and true, it is worth noting that many of the most prominent supporting characters in Entourage -publicist Shauna, played by Debi Mazar, from Good boys; Ari’s wife, Melissa (Perrey Reeves); Ari’s enemies in the industry, Barbara (Beverly D’Angelo) and Dana (Constance Zimmer)- are women. But this does not exonerate anyone. (In fact, Mazar has shed light on her time on the series, speaking to PeopleTV: “Series creator Doug Ellin wrote a very strong character, but “the set was very testosterone-fueled and misogynistic”).
In his 2011 memoirs, Bossypants, Tina Fey describes how he watched the whole series Entourage while using a breast pump. “Over the hum of the milking machine,” she wrote, “I could almost hear my baby being lovingly cared for in the other room while Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) I was yelling across an SUV, ‘Hey E, have you ever fucked a girl while she’s on her period?’ I was able to do this for almost seven weeks before I ran out of episodes of Entourage and sink into a deep depression.”
This is, essentially, the series in a nutshell: raw, problematic and not all that funny. And, of course, it was full of off-road vehicles. But there were quite a few who watched it all. And enjoyed it.
* Of The Independent from Great Britain. Special for Page 12.