Entourage: Let's Blog It Out

By Mark La Monica

Educator friend Avram sent me an IM a week or so ago. It was part-informative, part-taunting. The HBO gem "Entourage" was going to be filming scenes for an upcoming episode at his place of educational business.

I was thoroughly enraged by his mocking of my geographic inferiority, but I calmed down and thought of my readers. Maybe they'd like a little first-hand retelling of someone else's first-hand experience.

So, I put the kid to work and made him commit to writing about his day on set for this blog. Nothing wrong with a little free content, especially when it's exclusive and for the betterment of the people.

Here's Educator friend Avram's tale about being on set during an on-location filming of an episode of "Entourage," set to air in the second half of the third season:

"It was difficult not tripping over all of the cables running through the hallways of the synagogue today while a future episode of Entourage was being filmed. It turns out the location scout for the show was attracted to the 'hippie/liberal' feeling of the synagogue where I work. He also said the large parking lot and walkway to the front door of the building had an authentic Reform Jewish feeling to it.

"Living in Los Angeles, it is not so unusual for me to accidentally hit on the likes of Jessica Biel or spot Carson Daly or Phil Jackson chowing down on Mexican food at the local cantina. Star spotting is fun to tell your out-of-town friends about because they always seem excited to hear it, but truth be told, it happens frequently in Los Angeles. What doesn’t happen frequently is that an HBO television series invades your workplace.

"As I sat down to my free catered lunch with my colleagues and 200 Entourage extras, I felt like I was in the movie 'The Sting.' Remember the scene where everyone is getting into costume and pretending to be high-class horse gamblers? Well, I was in a tent full of people dressed like Jews, ready to pray, but none of them were who they were dressed like. I asked one production person and his guestimate was that only 20 percent of the actors were Jewish. I was watching old married couples filling their plates with salads and fruits, thirty-something actresses in sheitels (wigs that orthodox women wear) eating seared ahi tuna, and men in white yarmulkes trying to keep the chocolate syrup off of their blue and white prayer shawls.

"My star sightings today included Jeremy Piven, his on-screen wife Perrey Reeves, and their on-screen daughter. I didn’t have any interactions with the 'stars,' but the extras were quite happy to see a smiling face that cared about them. During the shoot extras are basically treated like cattle and since I had nothing invested in the shoot, I was happy to reach out to them and hear their stories. I tried not to disturb them during their sudoku games, crossword puzzles, and cat naps. Oh to be an extra.

"I’m excited to see the episode which is supposed to air sometime in January. Even my assistant got in on the action. They hired her to be an extra for the day, great news for her, but I had to answer all my own phone calls."