The Producer Of 'Entourage' Says Guys Complaining About It Are ‘Little, Bitter Guys Sitting On Their Twitter Accounts’
LA Times – A lot of people hate “Entourage,” and Doug Ellin knows it. But he thinks they got it all wrong.
He wants to remind you that the show was nominated for multiple Emmys and Golden Globes for comedy series. That critics loved the show when it started in 2004 and that its ratings were way better than HBO’s zeitgeisty show “Girls.”
“And for some reason, somewhere along the line, this hate started propagating that actually it wasn’t good,” said Ellin, who created the eight-season-long program and the Warner Bros. movie version that opens Wednesday. “It’s really silly and really stupid. I will never understand it. The truth is, I’ll stand up in front of anybody and say this is a smart show that really shows this town how it is.”
But Ellin is nervous. Nervous because “Entourage” reruns don’t play that often on HBO anymore and because he’s up against big-budget tentpoles at the box office (Melissa McCarthy’s comedy “Spy” opens Friday). But he’s encouraged that the movie played well with test audiences. In fact, he was so proud of the 96% the film scored during testing that he actually framed the feedback sheets.
“If you talk to real people instead of little, bitter guys sitting on their Twitter accounts — 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.'”
The hate around the new Entourage movie is really weird. I haven’t seen it yet and assume based on reviews it’s the same total dumb bro wish fulfillment without a little substance to it that the show was — season two of the show where they went from “Vince’s life might get interesting and challenging” to the full-on “HEY VINCE IS DOING THE MOVIE” mode was where the show made a choice to just be fun wallpaper — but the vitriol that people have for Entourage just blows my mind. Fucking Newsweek has a 1,000 word article (thanks for sending, Chris C) that’s just full of godawful puns meant to “take down” bro culture just because of Entourage:
So while normally I might think Doug Ellin is being awfully thin skinned about something that’s helped make him very rich, he’s right. The people railing against Entourage are doing it because they can’t relate to having just a group of guy friends who do fun shit without a care in the world. The SB Nations of the world who spent their youth seething in their basements that the pretty girl didn’t like them even though they were so goshdarn nice to her. It’s a show about guys doing dream guy shit like getting fucked up, banging 10s effortlessly, and being ridiculously successful in the process. Women have the vacuous reaffirming horseshit that was Sex and the City, guys have Entourage. Why is one of them crucified for existing while the other isn’t?
Oh right, because regular dudes can’t have anything fun any more without offending someone. Thanks for the reminder.
(h/t @Filmdrunk)