Entourage Decoder: "I Wanna Be Sedated"
The boys went their separate ways in this week's episode of "Entourage," with Eric getting whisked away to the estate of the producing legend Bob Ryan (in a delightfully batty turn from Martin Landau), Vince enjoying a little afternoon delight with the affianced Nicole (Lindsay Sloane), and Turtle and Drama going on a wild goose chase to find Saigon, with Drama finding himself the wrong way up.
And, along the way, there were plenty of droppings (name and otherwise) for the Decoder to scrutinize. Like, just who were those guys coming out of Sammy Kane's office? Where is it that Vince gets his dirty on with Nicole? And just exactly who is Bob Ryan anyway?
ART: Before Turtle's best day ever starts to get really bad, he passes a couple strangely familiar looking guys on the way into Sammy Kane's office – and does a double-take. Why the second look? And who does the thuggish manager who puts a mouthy Drama in peril remind us of?
LIFE: Turns out that the happy pair coming out of Kane's office were members of the platinum-selling, Oscar-winning rap group Three 6 Mafia, who are in fact signed to Sony/BMG, which Saigon later calls "the whitest hip-hop label around." And if you're wondering why Kane tells Turtle that he's sweating "like the guy in Midnight Express," that's a reference to the 1978 Alan Parker film about an American guy who runs drugs from Turkey, a job that causes him no end of stress -- and sweat.
As for the little interaction Turtle and Drama have with Saigon's old/new manager, it brings to mind a certain incident with a certain rap mogul and a certain white rap artist of the early 90s and a hotel balcony that has passed into hip-hop culture legend. We hate to leave you hanging like Johnny, but the parties involved have never owned up to the incident.
ART: As ever, hotels play a big role in the episode – Turtle and Drama in their search for the missing Saigon, Vince checking into a love nest and getting himself checked off Nicole's "allowed infidelities" list. Where do they go to get their respective business done?
LIFE: Vince takes the Monarch Suite at the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica, which goes for a very cool $1500 per night (and, no, they don't have hourly rates). The suite features spectacular ocean views, plasma TVs, in-room spa service from Fred Segal, and sumptuous interiors designed by Kelly Wearstler. And if the hotel looks familiar to HBO viewers, that's because Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) from "The Sopranos" stayed in the hotel while trying to take meetings with Ben Kingsley in an episode from earlier this year.
Drama and Turtle, on the other hand, look for Saigon at The Standard, which you find out in the episode. But there's actually two Standard hotels in LA, and the one they're at is in Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard, and the suite class of rooms that Saigon's partying in costs $500 per night. (The Standard -- a creation of haute-hotelier Andre Balazs -- is meant to be a slightly lower-key but nonetheless high-style lodging.) You'll remember that E goes to meet Sloane's friend Tori on the roof of the other Standard in an earlier episode, which is in downtown LA.
ART: Has there really been a Ramones script bouncing around, and did Oliver Stone really try to direct it? And what's with the wacky -- if famously prolific producer -- Bob Ryan?
LIFE: As far as we know, there's not been a script called "I Wanna Be Sedated" about the seminal punk group The Ramones, and the name Brian Cripe (the writer of the script) doesn't yield any results. In 2003, a critically lauded documentary about the band called "End of the Century" was released.
But the garrulous, storytelling Ryan is unmistakably a fictional analog of Hollywood legend Robert Evans, producer of "Chinatown" and shepherd of "The Godfather" and "Love Story" at Paramount Pictures. It should, however, be noted that Evans did not actually produce "Cutthroat Island," a famous 1995 Tinseltown disaster directed by Renny Harlin and starring Geena Davis.