I have a quirky connection to the creation of Entourage.
I worked for Ari Emanuel at his agency in LA. On Wednesdays we played pickup basketball at Beverly Hills YMCA (yes they have one). This brash young guy from Long Island, unemployed but with serious hoop skills, showed up every week and force his way into the game. We became friendly and he groveled to be introduced to the head of the training program. I made the intro and Marc Levinson was hired.
Turned out he and Ari Emanuel didn’t exactly get on well, but during his short tenure at the agency he struck up a relationship with Mark Wahlberg. He left the agency and became Wahlberg’s manager.
Together they conceptualized Entourage based on his Long Island posse in LA, Wahlberg’s Marky Mark posse from South Boston, and their friction with Ari the super agent.
Obviously I’m not taking any credit for Entourage here, brash Levinson would have worked his way in somehow and inevitably butted heads with Ari. But who would have thought he’d create a franchise out of the guy who fired him.
