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Arts and Entertainment

Johnny Drama Was Not Trying to Pummel Franklin Ave

By  Tony Pierce
Published May 13, 2007 11:00 PM
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Dear LAist,

Did you see Entourage last night? When Drama drove to Variety to beat the ass of the TV critic Paul Schneider, was that really Michael Schneider who also is a critic at Variety, appears on E!, and runs the Franklin Avenue blog? Also, where can I get that AD/HD shirt?

Nancy, North Hollywood

Dear Nancy,

We thought the same damn thing! However, if we had tuned into the Franklin Ave. blog on Friday we would have read that Michael links to another Variety writer there who they both say the character was based on.

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Last year the "Entourage" film crew spent a Friday in our Variety offices, filming a scene for the show in which Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) confronts a Variety reviewer (loosely based on our own Brian Lowry) after getting a bad review. [...] Brian wrote about the whole experience in a Variety column:
Because the glitz-filled "Entourage" has a certain hipster image to uphold, the producers populated the newsroom with extras, ensuring that Fake Variety's staff was more attractive, stylish and younger than Real Variety. A few of us actual journalists observing this alternate reality felt a bit like Woody Allen in "Stardust Memories," wondering how we wound up on the ugly train. In the scene, Drama -- so vulnerable the possibility of negative reviews causes near-paralysis -- bursts in and berates the critic as a "sad little fat hack fuck." Technically, just two of those adjectives are accurate.

Variety's Fake TV Critic dresses shabbily and wears glasses denoting years of solitary TV viewing (definitely true), eats lunch at his desk (occasionally true), acts unfazed by someone barging in to personally lambaste him (mercifully untrue) and has his own assistant (so untrue the Real Critic is still laughing his ass off)...

Anyway, there's plenty of excitement around Variety about "Entourage's" encore, perhaps because it's so nice to see the place temporarily adorned in prom-night finery -- even if it's as realistic as a newspaper, circa 2007, whose budget provides an assistant for critics.

You can get the tshirt at tshirtbordello online for pretty cheap but if you think you will look as good as Adrian, good luck.
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