U2 Gets An ‘Entourage’

Don’t you just hate it when you’ve trolled everyone you know until you finally score those free tickets in prime Staples Center seats for the biggest concert of the season, only to find out that instead of U2 ducats your “friend in the biz” mistakenly sent you basketball tickets? And they were Clippers tickets, no less?

Bummer, dude. You know you really don’t rate when the “mistake” can’t at least be for a Lakers game.

If the scenario sounds familiar, then HBO’s second-year original series “Entourage” will ring true. That’s exactly what happened when semi-fictional talent agent Ari Gold, played by Jeremy Piven and reportedly based on real-life über-agent Ari Emanuel, thought he’d wrangled those primo U2 tickets for his emerging movie star client and his pals.

The series might be based on the film industry, but it has scored such a hit that even music biz folks are getting into the act. “Entourage” shot part of its August 7th episode during U2’s Staples Center stop last spring and included two full songs in the concert footage.

“Entourage” is causing quite the commotion in Hollywood, where stars on both sides of the camera are clamoring for cameos to spoof themselves, even if the point is to poke often close-to-home fun at the more banal side of the entertainment business.

Singer/actress Mandy Moore has a role as the on-again, off-again love interest of Vince Chase (played by Adrien Grenier), the budding actor with a ubiquitous entourage of hometown pals. “Titanic” director James Cameron has a recurring role. Brooke Shields, whose husband is a writer for the show, recently took a comedic turn playing herself.

“Entourage” hits the mark and, according to The New York Times, Hollywood power breakfasts of late include as much chatter about what sleazy Ari Gold did in the latest episode as they do about tanking box office receipts.

“I can tell something clicked because people are constantly e-mailing and calling and saying they want to do the show,” Doug Ellin, the show’s creator and head writer, told the paper. “But it wasn’t like we consciously went out and said, ‘This is gonna be our big year.'”

And as its cachet has risen since its first season, so has the “Entourage” production budget. This year, the show has done location shoots at the Sundance Film Festival and during a real Lakers game.

But what was “Entourage” doing at the U2 concert if Gold screwed up scoring tickets for his hot new client? Working those phones for tickets to the second show, of course.