With Friends Like These

The New York Times > Arts > Television: "THE biggest question about "Entourage" may be why Mr. Wahlberg, a firmly established star with both box office and critical hits to his name, would decide to expose the often embarrassing circumstances of his own social life to millions of HBO subscribers. It's as if Tom Cruise were starring in a fable about Hollywood secrecy, or Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were writing a script about high-profile coupledom. After all, almost no one in Hollywood knows more about entourages than Mr. Wahlberg. He has headed his own posse for the better part of the last 15 years, as he transitioned from being the bad-side-of-Boston rapper Marky Mark to the respected, bankable star of movies like "Boogie Nights," "Three Kings" and "Planet of the Apes." Through it all, Mr. Wahlberg, 33, has prided himself on his eclectic mix of hangers-on.

In the first two episodes alone, the show takes swipes at sycophantic agents, promiscuous groupies, pseudo-virginal pop stars, dimwitted star siblings and, of course, immature, insecure, unprepared movie stars.

The characters on the show are based directly on real-life cronies of Mr. Wahlberg's. Turtle, the rotund, crassly funny, baseball-cap wearing driver (played by Jerry Ferrara) is based on a struggling rapper named Donkey who performs under the name Murder One. The character of Johnny Drama (played by Kevin Dillon, brother of the former teen idol Matt), is Vince's half-brother, his cook and an also-ran actor. He is modeled in large part on John Alves (whose nickname is the same as Mr. Dillon's character's), a bodybuilding security guard-slash-spiritual guide who was tapped by Mr. Wahlberg's brother, Donnie, to keep his kid brother out of trouble. (At 16, Mr. Wahlberg was convicted of assault and served 50 days in a state penitentiary.) It was Mr. Alves, who had done a couple of episodes of obscure television shows, whom Mr. Wahlberg credits with getting him into acting. In the show, Johnny Drama is nakedly, pathetically jealous of Vince's effortless success.

The character of Eric, the sensible one who acts as a go-between with the star's agent, is largely based on Steve Levinson, Mr. Wahlberg's actual manager and another of the show's executive producers, and Eric Weinstein, a middle-aged Bronx native, who first met the star on the set of "The Basketball Diaries" in the mid 1990's, when Mr. Wahlberg was new to Hollywood and searching for confidantes. On the show, the character of Eric is the smart, sensible friend and the only vaguely moral presence. He regularly clashes with Vince's agent, Ari Jacobs, played by Jeremy Piven.

THE real reason Mr. Wahlberg has chosen to expose and lampoon his entourage may rest in the logic of the entourage itself. In a bizarre extension of the usual posse dynamic, the show is providing jobs, and even a bit of exposure, for these longtime friends and hangers-on. In fact, the original idea for the series came from Mr. Weinstein, who started to film a documentary about the odd assortment of characters who still surround Mr. Wahlberg. The star liked the idea, but preferred to turn his posse into a fictional group, in order to more brutally satirize himself, his friends and the industry that made him a star."