Blurring Fact and Fiction with HBO's Entourage

If you ask me, Entourage succeeds as a Hollywood satire when it comes off as, well, real. And the show obviously enjoys erasing the line where fact ends and fiction begins, especially when it comes to interacting with the industry itself. Last summer, HBO took out an ad in Variety to celebrate Aquaman's faux opening, congratulating director James Cameron for the "biggest box office splash in history" by opening with $116,844,114. Now, the cabler has taken out a for-your-consideration Emmy ad in the trade for its tragicomic character Johnny "Drama" Chase and his fictitious TV show Five Towns (which, if you recall, didn't get the best review from the paper on the series this season, causing Drama to storm the office and threaten the critic). While a fake trade ad is pretty funny (even twice), Entourage falters when it becomes too self-conscious and burlesque, as it does with the first-person essay from Drama about award season anxiety that also appears in Variety:

Well let's hope the TV Academy makes up for past injustices, because being a working actor is nice, but being an Emmy nominee, well that would change everything. Being a nominee would mean never again going back East and having people say, "How you doing?" as though I'm a cancer survivor. They'll know how I'm doing. They'll know I'm an Emmy nominee. 'Cause they can cancel your series and they can let your SAG health insurance expire, but they can never take away that nomination certificate.

Entourage has its Season Three finale on June 3. Season Four starts two weeks later.