"Entourage" Returns...Again

(originally published on 6/15 at the now-defunct www.poweredbyshows.com)

It’s sunny out in the world of television, so that can only mean one thing: the return of HBO’s hit show Entourage. Loosely based on the early career of producer Mark Wahlberg, the beloved comedy follows the roller-coaster Hollywood trajectory of up-and-coming hot actor Vinnie Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his tight circle of friends, manager Eric (Kevin Connolly), driver Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and washed-up C-list TV actor/brother Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon). This year, viewers were given a special treat as 2006’s third season had its regular 12 episodes extended by another eight which were shown over the last couple months, having its finale two weeks ago. Since this has always had been a mainstay program during the summer months, there is no need to wait for season four--it premieres this Sunday after the second episode of the new David Milch series “John From Cincinnati.”

In the words of Wayne’s World: “All right! Bonus!”

This serendipitous little bit of cable scheduling does wonders for the show. While nearly all HBO shows tend to keep their show’s runs an average of 12 episodes a season, Entourage always felt like it could extend its story and go really deep into the negative but very honest satire of Tinseltown. It might be because of its half-hour running time and comedic nature, but each season has always felt too short. HBO has always been a little strange with their comedies, but also know when to take a cable run and turn it into something a little more in tune with regular network programming. Most Sex & The City seasons ran 20 episodes straight, and earlier in the 90s the raunchy sex comedy Dream On would equal that amount, as well as even stretch toward 22 episodes during its final season.

Really, though, viewers just don’t want to be left waiting to go head-first into the focus of Entourage‘s return. After struggling to recover from his firing off of Aquaman 2 when he demanded too much money (and was subsequently replaced by Jake Gyllenhaal in a nod to the negotiations over Spider-Man 2) and losing a great role in a Ramones biopic, produced in the show by Martin Landau’s takeoff of producer Robert Evans (The Godfather) due to his agent Ari (Emmy winner Jeremy Piven) and his backstabbing ways, he struggled this season to both find new representation as well as take on passion project Medellin, a Paul Haggis written/directed biopic of drug lord Pablo Escobar. By the end of last season (you know, two weeks ago) Vinnie and Eric had decided to take a gamble and buy the script for several million dollars (thus having to sell their mansion) and produce it themselves. With financial backing from “Trust Fund Baby” Adam Goldberg and them tapping trigger-finger director Billy Walsh (Rhys Cioro) to helm the project, everything finally seems to be going according to plan. Even Drama buying a condo millions of dollars out of his price range compared to his comparatively minuscule salary for starring in what might be a hit show, nothing could go wrong.

Ah, but that’s what this upcoming season is about. For those not in the know, much of Medellin‘s financial squabbling, the stop-and-go nature of its development hell being bounced from studio to studio, is based on the real-life biopic of Che Guevara that never seems to be able to get made. Many directors have circled many different versions of the project, but the one to make it closest to actually happening was Steven Soderbergh’s version with the man he directed to an Oscar, Benicio Del Toro. Unfortunately, that’s been put on hold again. Since a year ago during my short stint as a bookstore employee in Los Angeles when I actually got to converse with Mr. Del Toro himself (who was strangely buying about 20 Rudyard Kipling books, despite the fact that no film based on the author’s work existed either then or now), and he said it was “taking a break,” there has still been no word.

As some of us saw in the previews, this development hell troubles will only be worse on the set, tipped off by the sly little joke at the end of “last season” when Walsh, finally accepting the job offer to direct, springs the news on the entourage that he’s considering filming the entire film in Spanish, sure to hurt the film’s glory at both the Oscars and at the box office.

What’s great about Entourage is that it really does get a lot of its jabs completely correct. I worked in Los Angeles in the film business in some capacity or another for a good five years, leaving due to financial struggles and an overall contempt for the city, and while some of the sexual escapades of the entourage can sometimes seem forced, nearly everything about everyone else in the business is spot-on. The show can also be seen to Hollywood “outsiders” as a sort of fantasy of life out there, but it’s really not the case. For every party attended and every million-dollar deal being signed, there is an underlying hatred for the business on this show, as if everyone in the industry is a shark just waiting for their meal. It’s a great draw for the show to hit both sides of the critical reception with such precision, and it’s very bold, very fun and very smart.

On a side now, I also feel especially happy about a small bit of foresight regarding cast member Rex Lee, who plays Ari’s loyal (and very flamboyant) assistant. On September 8, 2004, when I was still writing arts journalism, he was a recurring actor at the local small MET Theatre, having impressed me over a year earlier with a fun role in a play called “The Question.” This time, it was for the awful post-modern cowboy comedy “Western Big Sky.” While I took the play to task for being offensive, stupid and dull, I still wrote the following (ignore some weird verb conjugations and you’ll be fine):

“As unfunny and poorly-plotted as “Western Big Sky” is, one factor barely saves it, and that is the performance of Rex Lee as the intelligent and monotone-dialogued Native American Shemp. His brief and mysterious interjections of philosophy, pop culture and overall deadpan wit provides a momentary respite to those in the audience who prefer their humor a little less alcohol-induced. When his cathartic monologue peeks up from the wreckage of the script, it’s a welcome distraction from all the pointless violence and gay jokes.”

One review, of course, does not make a career, but I do like to think I had a little bit of say in Lee getting his delicious role as fan-favorite Lloyd on Entourage the following year. It’s good to find new talent in Hollywood.

"The Sopranos" Goes Out Singing

(reposted from the now-defunct poweredbyshows.com) [Note: Spoilers about the final Sopranos episode, as well as ones on the endings of the films Limbo, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Scarface. (But really, who doesn't know the ending of Scarface?)]

Everybody’s talking about it. You’re talking about it. Your mother is talking about it.

The Sopranos finale. The most hotly debated finale in years. Despite the show being on a premium cable channel, discussions surrounding the controversial ending rival that of the “it’s all a Patrick Duffy” dream from Dallas or Seinfeld’s final whimper. Everybody has an opinion about it, and this writer is no exception. Spoilers from Sunday’s finale as well as the final sequences of movies from the last decade follow.

For those not in the know, The Sopranos ended its eight-year six-season Shakespearean opus with a low-key episode that traded not in death and violence, but in quiet moments, family bonding and an artistic final choice that has nearly everybody up in arms. Phil Leotardo, who spent most of the recent half-season killing off nearly all of Tony’s Jersey crew, finally gets his comeuppance in a sudden a sickening end. During the final moments, Tony meets with his family at a local diner, each of them arriving separately. As he awaits them, he is fully aware of the strangers coming in and occupying the restaurant, keeping his eyes open for any assassination attempts. The head guy of the New York family may have been eliminated scenes earlier, but we know as viewers that Tony will never be safe. When Meadow finally comes through the door, Tony looks up. The show cuts to black for around six seconds, and credits roll. Was Tony shot? Was his family massacred? Did he go on living? Who knows?

I would consider this an ending befitting of the tragic tale of a mob boss who must live with the horrific decisions he must make day-in and day-out. Many others, however, consider it a cop-out akin to show creator David Chase giving them the middle finger, and boy are they pissed. They wanted closure. They wanted storylines wrapped up. And they’ve been coming up with theories--reading clues as if to say that the “cut to black” indicated “lights out” for Tony, hence a death--that will never be confirmed by Chase, who is currently avoided all the hoopla by relaxing with his wife in Paris.

These people, though, who wanted this big bloodbath at the end, were watching the wrong damn show.

For starters, I think there’s absolutely no way of knowing what happened at the end, and that’s the absolute point. He will have to live in constant fear for the rest of his life, or he was killed, but Chase is sly enough not to give us any kind of tangible answer. He first led us to believe that Tony would be his old school self and choose Tony Bennett on the jukebox at the diner (the last song we see him look at before he puts in his quarter and hits the combination of buttons), giving this old school gangster his final song. But instead he picks Journey. “Don’t Stop Believing.” And as the show ends, we’re left with the chorus “Don’t Stop...” and don’t even get the full line. That’s a moment of great writing lost on many of the viewers.

As for the black-out, it reminded me of this John Sayles film called Limbo. David Strathairn and his family get stranded in the Alaskan wilderness, trying to survive, and also pursued by people who want to kill them. During the film’s final moments, they see and hear a plane in the distance. Is it rescue, or is it the villain, finally coming to murder the family?

We don’t know. The screen goes black before we know for sure. End credits.

That’s the same thing here. Limbo. Tony is in a kind of limbo, much like the end of Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, where Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) gets away with every murder in the entire film, and to ensure this must murder his lover. As the film closes, Tom is in tears at the monster he has become. He’s free, but his soul is not. Minghella has called the film an examination of living your life in purgatory.

I can’t accept the “light’s out” argument, simply because there is no evidence to support this any more than Tony living.

Secondly, I also think that if you really wanted an ending with our hero--note that, our HERO--to simply go down in a hail of gunfire a la Scarface after finally finding some semblance of sanity with his family and himself, then you need to take a good, long and very hard look at what you thought this show was for six seasons. Never has it been Scarface. The show makes some very difficult decisions, much like its brilliant HBO companion The Wire, and giving him some kind of glory death would betray the themes viewers have all known since 1999.

I feel as if the people calling for some kind of finite ending, with just the simple explanation of a bloody showdown, are watching for the wrong reasons. Or, at least, what I consider the wrong reasons. They watch for the violence, for the deaths, for the inner mob workings. But that’s not The Sopranos. It’s only peripherally about the mob and the guns and the sex. The Sopranos is first and foremost about a troubled man balancing the two families in his life, trying to squeeze by doing the only thing he knows how to do. Why viewers would want to see this character, who rivals some of the great troubled heroes in literature, simply die.

The ending was tense, haunting, maybe terrifying and maybe hopeful. What it’s not is one instance of violence that could potentially negate everything we’ve seen on the show. Tony’s life is his burden, and to relieve him of this burden is a cop-out. Not this ending. This was no cop-out. This was perfect.