A lot of older — even not that much older — shows and movies probably don’t age too well. That’s to say that their politics, the things they depict, sometimes glowingly, wouldn’t pass muster in today’s more critical, more sensitive climate, leading to things like warnings on streaming services. Take a show as recent as Entourage. It’s only been a decade since the adventures of Adrien Grenier’s Vincent Chase and posse ended their eight season run on HBO. And even its creator, Doug Ellin, knows it. And he’s not happy about it.
“I resent it tremendously,” Ellin told Yahoo! Entertainment, about the modern reception his still pretty newish show, which regularly depicted the conquests of four thirsty, straight men, modeled after Mark Wahlberg and his own gang. The problem, as Ellin sees it? It’s what he called the “wave of righteous PC culture” that has taken over the industry, forcing it to reckon even with stuff as recent as Entourage. But he feels people have singled his show out:
“Nobody says that about The Sopranos, where they murder people, that maybe we should readdress whether murdering people on TV is OK,” he notes. “I don’t want to sound obnoxious or that I’m looking at Entourage as high art, but it was a pretty accurate portrayal of how people [acted] at that time in Hollywood.”
He also blames “PC culture” for the fact that Entourage hasn’t received the reboot/revival treatment, as so many other HBO faves have — including The Sopranos, which is soon to get a prequel movie. It even cost him, he claims, a show with Michael Imperioli, Michael Rapaport, and Ed Burns, which filmed a pilot that never got picked up. “Whether they thought it was good or not, I earned my chance to have a second shot, and they put some other pretty crappy shows on [instead].”
Ellin does defend the show. “I don’t think Entourage was this vulgar boyfest that people like to paint it as now,” he told Yahoo! Entertainment. “When we came out, The New York Times said we were the smartest show on television! If we did reboot the show, it’s not that I would make it any more PC, but I would write it to the best of my abilities to reflect the reality of the world right now.”
There was that Entourage movie, back in 2015, which was neither a hit nor led to more misadventures with Vincent and company. But despite his feelings about how Entourage is received today — and despite his feelings about HBO — he makes it clear that he’s “ready to bring back” the show, although, they note, “HBO hasn’t asked.”
But should they bring it back, they could address cancel culture — perhaps by having the gang get cancelled. When asked which of the group would go, Ellin had an answer: Drama, the older C-list celebrity played by Kevin Dillon, “would clearly be the guy who wouldn’t understand why he got canceled.”
(Via Yahoo! Entertainment)