“Did I tell you the Jewish Journal just named me the best-looking circumcised studio head?” uber agent-turned-mogul Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) crows in Doug Ellin’s new “Entourage” movie, based on the long-running HBO series about a Hollywood superstar, Vince (Adrian Grenier) and his horny posse of best friends. Piven stole just about every scene in his TV role as the blustery Gold, who in one famous episode snuck a cell phone into Yom Kippur services to finagle a big Tinseltown deal.
Ellin is not the first writer-director to note The Journal in a major Hollywood film recently. In his 2013 comedy, “This is 40,” Judd Apatow created a scene in which a dowdy, yarmulke-clad Jewish Journal reporter asks a musician “Why is this album different from all other albums?” In an interview before the release of that film, Apatow told me he comically dissed the Journal because “I only make fun of the people I love.”
Ellin, who is Jewish, wasn’t available to speak to me about why he mentioned The Journal in the movie, “Entourage” (and no, we don’t publish a list of hunky circumcised moguls); even so, just as in the HBO series, Ari remains the Jewish heart and soul of Ellin’s comedy.
Here are a few more of Ari’s Jewed-out moments from the movie:
– When Gold realizes he will be forced to travel to Amarillo, TX, to appease the wealthy financiers of Vince’s new film, he complains to Vince: “Do you know what they do to Jews in Texas?”
– As Ari’s car pulls up next to actor Liam Neeson’s convertible in L.A. traffic, Neeson, still disgruntled over Gold’s past misdeeds, gives him the finger and speeds away. “Hey Schindler – leave no Jew behind,” he yells to Neeson, who of course famously played Holocaust rescuer Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 epic “Schindler’s List.”
– When Ari’s gay former assistant, Lloyd, marries his fiance in a wedding at Gold’s home, guests wonder why the non-Jewish Lloyd stomps on a glass at the end of the ceremony, per Jewish custom, then is hoisted on a chair, along with his groom, as revelers dance the hora to “Hava Nagila.” “My house, my God,” Ari explains. “L’Chaim, bitches!”
