If you haven’t been following Shane Power’s blog at shanepowers.com, it’s time to start. This L.A. insider has been nailing the hard facts since ’08 in sports, politics, celebrities and women. Corn-fed boy turned Tinsle Town scenster attests to Entourage’s authenticity today on his blog.
As one third of “The Alliance” trio, one of L.A.’s most notorious go-to guys for branding needs in entertainment and Hollywood, Shane and his long-time partners, Josh Richman and Hartwell (just Hartwell) are serious players in the industry I call “Hollywood Adjacent”. Just a year ago washed-up GM spent 100s of thousands on the annual “tastemaker” bash in L.A. called the “GM Ten.” Along with Ashlee Margolis, PR-firm BNC, and platinum party-planner Jeff Best, “The Alliance” was is routinely called in to handle celebrity-wrangling, and much like any wrangling, it is an art. GM stopped the party this year however, giving The Alliance the weekend off.
Shane Powers (left), Josh Richman (middle), Hartwell (right)
You may recognize Shane from watching Survivor-Panama in 2006 – he was the controversial blackberry addict who made it all the way #11. He was also engaged to Eve. And you can catch him next along side Balthazar Getty in upcoming film “Struggle” (2009).
My own opinions on “Entourage” are very much the same as Shane’s. Entourage is dead on with correct Hollywood moments from locations to cameos to dialogue, the fast pace, the restaurants … everything is basically perfect. So yes, if you or a friend ever made it big in Hollywood, this is likely who you would be, where you would go, whom you would know. I hate the characters however - they are all empty (Vince), selfish (Turtle), foul (Drama) and useless (E). Ari and Lloyd are amazing. As a former employee of CAA, I can attest to the nature of the biz and Lloyd perfectly portrays the Hollywood assistant and Ari perfectly portrays the Hollywood agent and together they have the perfectly portrayed Hollywood boss employee relationship.
Here what Shane had to say about Entourage:
“Finally, fuck …” – from ShanePowers.com
In true HBO fashion, the new Entourage season starts RIGHT when I forgot about it. I don’t know why this network schedules shit the way they do, seemingly doing everything they can to torpedo their jagular tv shows, but whatevs.I want everyone to hear this. When this show was announced five or six years ago, I waited to watch and utterly shred it to fuckin bits.I have roughly a THOUSAND years of experience of watching real life entourages, specifically in this vein of young, goin out club monstering, model slaying silliness. I couldn’t wait to list all the reasons why this show sucked fuckin cock.And I gotta tell ya, they did a pretty great job of gettin it real close to right.You could literally hire me as a technical advisor on this show tommorra for the “scene stuff” that’s how ingrained I have been in this culture, and they don’t miss too bad. It’s been pretty impressive to watch.The show for me, has ended up bein a decently interesting journey. People immediately respond to Piven and his hyper clever agent guy SCHTICK, and there are times for me I laugh out loud. But the show would never have made it this long without the centering it receives from Kevin Connolly. Without him, and HIS story arc, it coulda devolved into comedy bits from Piven and who I think is the real comedy relief, Kevin Dillon. Instead, it’s five years later and I really want to know what happens to these characters. The show is fun. FACT.And the show also has heart at this point. FACT.Starts tonight at 9 or 930 or 10 or 1030… At this point, who fuckin knows. It’s HBO. They are tireless assholes when it comes to this part.
