Doug Ellin rides 'Entourage' to the top
The creator of the HBO show knows all about the fickleness of Hollywood. Vincent Chase is going to learn all about it too.
When making a television series about yourself and your friends, the hardest part is making sure the stories are entertaining to others. The next hardest part is making them fit into a half-hour.
And when the town you and your friends inhabit is Hollywood, it really helps if the community likes it.
"This could be humiliating in this town if we didn't get it right," said Doug Ellin, executive producer and creator of “Entourage," one of HBO's few remaining hit original series. "And you got to walk around, 'Oh, you did that [mess]?' "
About to launch the fifth season of the insider show about four childhood friends from Queens, N.Y., coping with the absurdly easy life of young Hollywood, Ellin has received enough calls from studio heads saying they can relate, and from friends' wives concerned about Vince's career, that he feels the effort is worth it.
This season, the boys will tackle what Ellin called the "biggest thing about Hollywood," that is, its extreme seesaw nature.
"One second, your friend's a loser, the next he's this giant star that you need favors from. The next second, he needs favors from you," he said. And that's if you're lucky. "Sometimes it never goes up."
Until now, Ellin said, many fans have perceived the ensemble's lead character Vince, a handsome, laid-back talent played by Adrian Grenier, as having an easy ride. But to show the real nature of the town, the new season opens with Vince's big film bombing at Cannes. His leading man status is suddenly called into question.
Ellin said he based the story line on actor Mark Wahlberg's appearance in "The Departed." (Wahlberg is also an executive producer, along with Stephen Levinson, of "Entourage.")
Ellin's own career has also been a model seesaw. A native New Yorker and Tulane University graduate, Ellin set out with friends for Hollywood, where he was surprised at how easy it was to get two films made: "Phat Beach" (1996) and "Kissing a Fool" (1998). He was up. The first made $1.6 million; the second $4 million.
Then, he couldn't find work. He was down. Then, he joined forces with Wahlberg and Levinson to make "Entourage." Up again.
One recent day, the 40-year-old sat in the shade of a tree, on a Calabasas hillside smelling of smoke, as actors and directors bustled about shooting and re-shooting a scene within a scene. (He asked that further details not be revealed.) At this point, he said, the show runs like a "good machine." He looked around at visiting friends and guest stars; his son Luke, 7, who plays the son of agent Ari Gold on the show, wandered over to ask a question.
