Like a lot of middle-aged family men who sometimes pine for their days of care-free bachelorhood, I find myself drawn to the HBO series Entourage as a vehicle through which I can vicariously channel my long-gone youth – this time with a bankroll to do it in style. Since its 2004 debut, I’ve enjoyed following the exploits of fictional A-list movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his band of pilot fish from the hood who’ve hitched their cabooses to his train to live the high life of money, women, and the perks of fame that Hollywood can offer to those so young.
Entourage is one of the few offerings of the entertainment elites that actually turns the cameras back on themselves in an attempt to show the rest of us — stuck out on the sidewalk, pressed up against the velvet ropes of our mundaneness — what life inside Hollywood is like. I’m not sure what exactly is the purpose of the show beyond just comedy, but I know there is one. Is it to give us a glimpse of the privileged class? Is it to lampoon themselves? Or just to rub our faces in the fact that their lifestyle is so much cooler than ours?
The show does offer plenty of entertainment with a cast of enjoyable characters: from Jeremy Piven’s AAA-personality uber-agent Ari Gold and his loveable homosexual side-kick Lloyd (Rex Lee), to the affable loser Johnny “Drama” Chase (Kevin Dillon), the pot-smoking leech of leeches Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), and Vince’s relationship-confused if competent and dedicated manager/best friend, Eric “E” Murphy (Kevin Connolly).
There’s no denying that I do enjoy the series. But underneath it all–the babes, the impromptu jaunts to exotic places, the glad-handing with the jet-set, the mansion in which the boys spend most of their days getting high and playing Xbox waiting for Ari to refill Vince’s coffers and thus sustain their permanent adolescence–I’ve found myself shaking my head at the messages it offers.
If Entourage is indeed what Hollywood is all about, then count me out. Would it be great to make millions, get high by a pool all day and buy your friends Ferraris? I guess…for a while. But behind the glamorous façade is really just a bunch of whiney, spoiled punks living empty lives in a fog of pot smoke, material excess and mechanical sex, while bouncing through a false reality that could end at any moment. I find the characters of Drama and Turtle to be especially pathetic. The aging Johnny in his perpetual quest for tail. Turtle, whose depth can be summed up in his racing all over town to fork over $20,000 for a pair of sneakers … cash courtesy of Vince naturally. One wonders how many homeless he passed along the way.
I notice too that there’s no God in the lives of these men-children. (I do not consider being body-painted by Gary Busey evidence of “spirituality.”) Of course, with God comes a sense of responsibility to your fellow man and not just yourself. And if Entourage shows us anything it is that Hollywood is all about numero uno.
Still, being liberals, they just can’t help themselves in their overbearing self-righteousness nonetheless. So once in a blue moon Vinny Chase might donate a few bucks to charity after being chased down by some celeb making a coveted cameo. I especially liked Matt Damon guilting him into contributing to his children’s project (“Vince, it’s for the kids!”), while standing on a tarmac waiting for a private jet. And I’m watching this thinking to myself: unless there’s a kidney in Damon’s Gucci bag, his mission can’t be so vital and time-sensitive that he must fly in his own personal airplane. So how’s about just flying commercial with the rest of us betas, Matt, and donating your jet money to those same kids, huh? I didn’t think so.
And I guess that’s what bugs me about this show. Think about who’s presenting us this life of frivolousness in which Vince spends $250,000 on a dinosaur head because he can? This message of immature material excess is brought to you by the very same community that presumes to judge conservatives like me; offering that, because I balk at paying even more in income taxes, or don’t wake up wringing my hands over Darfur, I’m a selfish, greedy, right-wing racist, far beneath their moral plane.
So once again, Hollywood, so caught up in itself, and so surrounded by itself, is completely blind to the stunning hypocrisy of its fantasyland lifestyle as presented to us through the looking glass of their own televised self-homage each and every week.
So please, all you actors, artists and celebrity activists in tinsel town. Before you start beating down my door for even more tax money or a check for your disaster relief flavor of the month, why don’t you go wake up Turtle (it is almost noon after all) and ask him to convince his sugar daddy Vince to forego the next $100,000 bet on a soccer game just to prove he’s a “playah” and instead cut a check that could literally change, even save, the lives of every man, woman and child in a Zambian village.
Or at least give it to Uncle Sam, guys. Hell, if, according to Bill Maher, Alec Baldwin and the rest of Entourage-land, I can afford to pay more, then surely the Hollywood class can too. In fact I know they can. I learned that from Entourage.