With last night’s episode of Entourage, we finally got the first public screening of Medellín at the Cannes Film Festival. This storyline has been playing out since Season Three, so I was definitely ready to see some sort of resolution here. While we probably haven’t seen the end of Medellín entirely, we did learn that it tanked at Cannes — as viewers pretty much guessed it would. Hold on, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. Let’s go into the recap of “The Cannes Kids” right now….
Vince/E/Billy/Ari/Turtle: The gang is in Cannes enjoying some fun in the sun before the long-awaited Medellín screening. That’s when they run into Yair Marx, the Arab prince who appeared back in episode 3×19 when the boys were trying to secure funding for Medellín in the first place. Yair still wants to get involved in the movie business, so he pesters Ari and the boys for an advanced screening of Medellín. Everyone’s talking about the film, and Yair wants to see it first so he can make the first offer.
Billy flat-out refuses, even when Yair offers the whole gang gold Rolex watches to sweeten the deal. When the crew holds out, Yair gets so desperate that he offers them $35 million for the rights to Medellín — sight unseen. This would get all the investors (Vince, E, and Nicky Rubenstein) their money back, but wouldn’t give them a profit. Eric wants to consider the deal, but Billy doesn’t want to sell to Yair because he’s thinking Oscar all the way and he’s afraid Yair will screw up the distribution deal. Ari tells them not to worry; he’ll get a bidding war started before the screening.
So Ari then gets on the phone with Lloyd and tells him to start spreading rumors among all the gay assistants in Hollywood about how good Medellín is and how high the bidding will go. Word eventually gets back to Harvey Weingard and Dana Gordon. Harvey’s not interested because of the way E screwed him over last time, but Dana is. She gets ready to deal with Ari and comes in with an offer of $15 million. They eventually negotiate to a price that everyone is comfortable with, but just then Nicky calls Ari. He just got off the phone with Yair, who offered him $75 million for Medellín and of course Nicky accepted the deal.
Later on at the actual screening, we see what a piece of crap Medellín really is. Half the audience has fallen asleep, including Ari (ha!), and when the show ends, people walk out with zero applause and a smattering of boos. Billy goes up on stage to deliver a typical rant, but the damage is done. Yair backs out on his end of the bargain and tells Ari to try suing him for the money. Harvey ends up offering the boys $1 for the movie.
Drama: While all this is going on with Medellín, Drama is off trying to score a hot French chick. He’s a bigger celebrity in France than he is back home because Viking Quest is very popular in Europe, so Drama knew beforehand that he’d have some luck with the ladies. As a result, he had his whole trip planned out in his head, from the type of hotel room he’d be in to the kind of girl he’d get.
But the hotel screwed up his reservation, so he ended up with a much smaller room than he expected. Being the basket case that he is, Drama couldn’t just go with the flow; instead, he had to try to get everything to be as perfect as he envisioned. Of course, he ends up getting kicked out of the hotel and losing track of the girl. But luck was on his side this time, as she finds him at the screening. They go off together and have sex on the beach — while hundreds of people look on!
My Reaction: FINALLY! We finally got to the screening of Medellín and finally got other people to acknowledge that the movie was total shit. I really hope this moves Entourage in a different direction, maybe with Vince having to accept small-time roles for a while as he tries to rebuild his reputation. And maybe this will wake him up and make him realize that his “it’s not about the money” stance is far too idealistic for Hollywood. It’s got to be about the money at some point, particularly when you keep making crap movies that no one wants to see. Eventually you run out of money and have to start doing real work.
I wasn’t interested in Drama’s storyline at all in this ep. I wish they had cut that part in half or just left it out entirely so they could focus more on the aftermath of the screening. I would have liked Vinnie to have more of a reaction than he did. Maybe if they had him in a post-screening interview with reporters asking obnoxious questions, he would have been forced to give some decent answers. His “whatever” attitude can’t last too much longer, can it?
I don’t know when episode 4×13 will air, but since this is HBO, you can bet it’ll be a good, long time from now. Until then, let the speculation begin about what will happen to Vinnie after this Medellín fiasco!