Doug Ellin - Creating The HBO Television Series Entourage

Legacy of Monsters an Apple original series. The world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place. It's not ours. Believe me, the most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise. Oh, my God. Go, go, go. Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV. Plus.

Hold music. You want to avoid it and so do your customers.

So say goodbye to holdmusic and hello to faster, smarter support with Salesforce.

Make service more personal and agents more productive using built in trusted AI.

Then watch costs and wait times drop and satisfaction soar.

Support customers in a whole new way with Service GPT.

Learn how@salesforce.com ServiceGPT what is going on, everyone?

Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Doug Ellen here with us. Doug Ellen is a screenwriter and film and TV director known best for creating the HBO television series Entourage. In this conversation, we talk about what it takes to become a successful producer, writer, and director for not only television shows, but but for movies and short films. So before we jump into it, please take a moment to share this episode with a friend. Subscribe to Rise of the Young and tag us on your Instagram story if you find this episode valuable. And that being said, please enjoy the episode with Doug Ellen. Here we go. All right, what's going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. On today's episode, we have Doug Ellen here with us, the creator of Entourage. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Doug.

Thanks for having me.

So, first things first, man. I want to say thank you for coming on today because I'm sure you're very busy creating the things that you are, but I'd love for you to take us back to the origin story of Entourage and how that came about, because that is not only a smash hit, but it's something known all over the globe. But where did it begin?

It began with Mark Wahlberg, and he used to film his friends, who were like a crazy, much crazier crew on the show. He used to film them, and he came up with an idea with Steve Levinson, who I went to college with. Again, there wasn't really the idea. It was just like, okay, we want to do a show about Mark and his friends. And that's where it started. So when I came in, I kind of said, I need to make it about my friends with Mark. Stories, mix and match, make it New York. So I blended a lot of elements of Mark's life, my life, et cetera.

Okay. When did you know that you wanted to be a executive producer and director?

I don't know that I ever wanted to be an executive producer. But, you know, I grew up and it's wild looking at you young guys now doing this stuff. But I had no connections to the entertainment business. There was no ability to do what you do now. I mean, obviously you could go get a camera and do that when you were a kid, like Steven Spielberg did. But I didn't do that. I had nothing to do with the film business. And I graduated, college was on my way to law school. I just did not want to do it. So some people thought I was funny, always told me I was funny. I always wanted to be a comedian, actor. So I graduated Tulane University and I just went to LA and started doing stand up, which, you know, if you saw the scene of me telling my parents I was gonna go to Los Angeles and be a stand up comic, it was pretty, it was pretty bad. Their friends called me, you're killing your parents. All this stuff. So very different times in 1990. I didn't know a single person when I got here. So that's how it began.

When you moved out there, you had no intentions to direct? Or was that a goal? Or how did that come about with no connections? What was the plan?

I mean, to be honest with you, I knew so little about actual movie making. I loved movies, I loved stand up comedy. So I had no plan. And I mean, my mother used to call every morning, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm just, you know, figuring it out. And like, I used to get scared when the phone would ring because my mother, just like it was in high school, was always monitoring me. But I started doing amateur stand up nights at clubs. I worked in the mail room at New Line Cinema for like three weeks actually. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna go make a movie. And I honestly knew so little about filmmaking and directing that when I made my first short film, we had a cinematographer. And the first shot, which was actually a pre friends, David Schwimmer was in my short film that I did, ultimately became a good friend of mine. But the cinematographer said, what do you think of the shot? And I looked into the camera lens and I just saw black. And I said, I didn't know if he was fucking with me, if this was like a bit, you know. And I like kind of walked up the side, I'm like, I don't see shit. And he said, you Gotta really press your eye. This is an old 35 millimeter camera. You know, there's no monitors, there's no this. He's like, you gotta really press your eye into it. So that was my first thing. And, you know, back when I started, I wrote a script that actually some people thought was funny. And I met Harold Ramis, one of my idols and great writers of all time, of Animal House and Ghostbusters and Caddyshack and Groundhog Day. And he told me on the set of Caddyshack, which was his first directing movie, he said something to the effect of like, I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I was funny and similar. His cinematographer said, the director, just get out and have a plan. Even if it's wrong, say, I know what I was doing. So I kind of went from that kind of mindset and that short film, to be honest with you, led to everything I've done for 20 years. It got me my first agent, it ended up selling to Showtime, it got me into film school, and that's where I started.

So that's so epic. When you sold your first show, how did that not only change your life, but what did you learn from that?

Well, selling first shows, you mean, or getting something on? Because I sold. I mean, as most writers in this town know, I've sold a ton of things that are sitting in a drawer somewhere, you know, that one person hated and stopped it from going forward, or everybody hated whatever it is. But, you know, I made two independent movies that both sold to studios and, you know, did they change my life? I started making money, I bought a house, I got married, I had kids. But I made a movie with David Schwimmer in 1995 that was a million dollar budget, extremely low, obviously, that Universal Studios bought and released around the world, 2000 screens opening weekend. It didn't perform the way they wanted. Made two and a half million dollars, which is double what the budget was, but was unemployable after that. So after working for a decade, I could not get a job. And it really was the classic example that you learn of this business, that it is the last thing you did and people forget everything you did. So I was thinking about going to law school. Ten years after I was in this business, after I had made enough money to buy a house in Beverly Hills, I was like, I'm never going to work again. Because suddenly when this movie was coming out, I was getting all these offers. When the movie actually came out and didn't do business, it Was done. So Entourage, what happened was. I mean, I was honestly on my last straw, and a friend of mine told me I needed to get into tv. That was the thing. And I asked him, what.

What year is this?

This is 2001, probably.

I was 1 years old.

For reference, that's fucking crazy. For reference. For you, though, I had already made two movies that had played around the world, whether they were good or not. Other people can judge, whatever. But I supported a pretty nice lifestyle from this business for 10 years. And before the movie came out, I was hot. I was the hot young comedy guy. And then the second it came out, which is a lot of stuff that I wrote about in Entourage, that was it. It was like, you're dead. So my friend Dylan Sellers actually said, get into tv. And I said, I don't know anything about tv because I had only written movies, and I had done shit on my own and nothing to do with the whole process of tv. But he said, write a script about a show. Like a show that you like. I wrote a Curb youb Enthusiasm script, which is crazy. That Curb is still going, and I'm talking 2001 now. I wrote a script, which doesn't. Wasn't written for Larry David. It was written just so people could see I could still write. You know, I've been doing it for a decade already, but you have to prove it again. And I wrote that script, and I gave it to, again, Steve Levinson, who was Mark's manager and my manager and my friend from college. He read it, and he was like, basically, you're good. Which. Thanks, you know, because I thought I was good before this, but it's really how it works. So anyway, that script then started Entourage, and then we sold the show to hbo, which, as you asked before. Yeah, that was one of the great days of my life, selling it to HBO. But that meant almost nothing. They paid me $50,000 over almost two years, and it was just draft after draft after draft till they finally approved it. So it probably took almost three years to get it on the air from that point.

Wow.

Yeah.

When. When Entourage went live and, you know, now it's so madly successful. What do you think made it as successful as it is?

Well, what I really wanted to do is make a show about friendship. I mean, I didn't care about. And it's not that. Obviously, that wasn't a big part of it. I didn't care about the Hollywood business aspect of it. I didn't care about the movies. All I cared about is guys that spoke Like I spoke, which now I can't even say because now I'm an evil person if I speak like, like the guys spoke on the show. But that's how I grew up. Those were my boys. They still are. My best friends from childhood, are still my best friends in life. And we were always very loyal to each other and always looked out for each other. So that was what I thought would work about the show. And at the time, which, this is before tmz, this is before all the other Hollywood stuff, people were like, stuff about Hollywood does not work. It never did even like the great movies, the Player, it's not like a commercial success. And there was a good show called Action that nobody watched, which was very good. But I said, this isn't gonna be Hollywood. These guys could essentially could be anything. The backdrop though is gonna be this fun, sexy world. So that's why I think it worked because it was about friendship and loyalties.

So what's your advice to a young writer who's looking to have their first successful show in 2020? Cause I'm sure the industry has changed dramatically since 2001.

Yeah, well, I mean, similar to what I did, which now is so easy to do, the short film that I made with David Schwimmer was in it. Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters. And I was a 20 year old kid who was just running around looking for actors. But I went out and made a film myself, which I had to raise money for it, I had to max out credit cards for it, etc. Today it would cost a few hundred dollars. And as you guys are doing, making content, that's just what to do. Now if you want to be a writer, director, you go make it, you know, and obviously when budgets gets bigger, you can do a lot of things. But there's incredible things that people are doing with no budgets and now have an eye on it that a couple of things like you guys make a couple of friends on Instagram and all of a sudden if it's good, you can spread the word on it. So the biggest thing I say is do it. I have writers and directors, young people DMing me all the time, like, what's your advice? And my advice is whether you're in Scottsdale or in fucking Nigeria, go make some content and show people what you're capable of. Because it's really, it's such a different world now where 20 years ago, if you didn't have an agent, what were you going to do? Where were you going to go? How are you going to get anybody to see it. So now it's very easy to get seen. And if you have talent, it's very easy to get spotted.

I know that you talked on at the beginning you moved to la, no relationships. And I put a lot of value on conversations like this, you know, building quality relationships. How were you able to navigate Hollywood the way you did looking back to build, you know, great relationships in your life, to have so much success?

You know what? It's hard for me to look back. I don't even really know I met my ex wife, but whatever I met the day I got here, and that was really my. My crew. I was not kind of running around networking and doing that stuff. Some of it, I guess I got lucky and I had some good friends. I had a friend of mine who sold my film to Showtime, that short film, which was unheard of to sell a short film, and they put it on Showtime. So I guess I got lucky because I was not the kind of guy running around and trying to network with everybody. But I focused on doing the work and it kind of paid off to me. But I do think it's important to network. And now for me, by the way, like, 2020 would have been a much better place for me because I'm very good at networking like this. But I don't like going to, like, the swingers model. I used to laugh so hard at that movie. And they'd all go. Because I had friends like that. They'd all go in separate cars and. And half the night was more about meeting an agent or a producer than meeting a girl, you know, And I was like, you know, I'm just gonna go home. I'm gonna write and do my thing. But I do think making the connections is very important. And more importantly than the connections is meeting people that you can trust and that you can work with, which I did early on, you know, like Schwimmer and like friends of mine, like Rob Weiss, who was my friend from high school and et cetera. I met a good group of people that I could trust and I could share work with and things like that.

Yeah, I want to take a step back to, you know, someone that we brought up, brother Mark Wahlberg. How do you. How did you meet him and what was that relationship in your life?

So Steve Levinson was my friend from college, and he moved out here after me to become an agent manager. He's now produces and writes and whatever. But he was an assistant at Mark's agency, and him and Mark got close. However that relationship happened, and he ultimately became the guy with Mark. So I knew Mark through him for years. And you know, Mark, he's just. He's a fucking killer. He's a motivated, talented guy. And I was lucky enough that he was willing to let me, you know, do stuff. And the only thing he really ever said with Entourage is like, don't make me look stupid. That's it, you know? And honestly, I don't have a lot of fear of a lot of people. When Mark says it, you feel like a. You feel a power and a presence. And after. He was a big supporter of the show from the beginning. He liked the scripts, he liked the show. So he was just an amazing producer supporter. If I needed Tom Brady, Mark would get him. If I needed Martin Scorsese, Mark would get him. So that's how it went.

That's cool. Talking about your new podcast. So you recently launched a podcast. I'd love you to touch on what the podcast is, why you launched it, and what's it about.

Victory, the podcast. And, you know, we've literally done just like you. No advertising, no nothing. And we. We hit number one in the TV and film department the other day, which was nice, but really, it's a. It's almost. Why did I do it? I've been asked to do a podcast for five years and I missed the boat. You guys have all been out. This. I wanted. Like I said, I came out to start as a stand up, sitting in a room. Writing by myself was never like my goal, my dream, or my enjoyment. And so people have been asking me to do a podcast for years. I didn't really get it. And then Kevin Connolly said, you know what if we put you with Dylan? And it's. I didn't want to. Like, Entourage is not something I want to focus on anymore. I really don't. But again, like the show. The three of us have been best friends for 20 years, and of course we're going to talk a lot of Entourage, but it's really. And what people are responding to, which is great. It feels like hanging out with your friends and we're going to talk about everything from sports to relationships, and we'll get into the details of behind the scenes entourage, but that's far less interesting to me than the other stuff that we're talking about. So what I feel like is a couple of things. One, it's a chance to just like, chill with your buddies like the show was.

But.

But it's also a chance for me to readdress some of the narrative and as the world has changed. Where Entourage was this Emmy nominated show every year, critically acclaimed show every year, that now there's been some revisionist history of this misogynistic show. And so we're bringing female cast members on to talk about that and we're addressing how 2020 is different than 2002 was. And I think it's with everything that's going on in the world to look at the lens of art and history through both the moment that's happening and the past and not be so judgmental of what was happening because it was never a show. No women had any problems with Entourage in 2010, even in 2012. It really wasn't till the movie came out when the MeToo movement started really forming, that all of a sudden it was like, these guys are animals. And the truth is the show was never about predatory guys. It was about a group of friends. And, you know, so anyway, it's been a lot of fun.

Yeah, I love that when you go into writing mode, like you said, your goal wasn't to sit in a room and write. Do you have a, like, workflow that you get into when you're writing scripts or is it something that, you know, you don't really have a plan or how do you, you know, what's your writing style?

I am. There's not a single thing I would recommend about my writing style to anybody. I am make it up off the top of my head, back myself into corners, drive myself to the point of insanity, and try to figure out an exit strategy. To me, the best way to do it is to really figure out your plan beforehand to be sure that you're happy with your idea. But it worked for me for 10 years. But it put a lot of extra pressure on myself and people who worked around me because I have. I, you know, as a person on a TV show, when you're writing in a group, it didn't work well for me. I, you know, usually would have to just write pages and then have my team kind of tell me what they hated, what they liked. It's a far more collaborative process when you can kind of figure it all out beforehand. So my style possible. It's a very destructive, torturous style.

Totally. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Jess. If you were to give your 20 year old self advice on the TV show business, movie business, what advice would you give to yourself in the year 2020 to someone that's out there looking to really build a career in that world?

Yeah, well, I would have said the Same thing beforehand. Don't take things personally. I mean, you know, with the exception of, honestly, with the exception of, like, Mark, everyone I know in this business has had such crazy ups and downs. And the most important thing to me is to not take stuff personally because the rejection is constant, no matter who you are, no matter what you're doing. And, you know, I always tell young people some of the best shows in the history of television. Seinfeld, all in the Family, Cheers, were not instantaneous successes. Many of them almost didn't make it. You know, Family Guy was cancelled. You know, I mean, the show was canceled. And without the DVD timing, without the DVD being out at that time and people finding it and going, what the hell is this? Who knows Seth MacFarlane's career? I mean, he's a genius, but it may have been very different. So I think it's important to believe in what you're doing. Really the most important thing is to really not want to do anything else because I do believe if there's any other business that you can go into and make a living and be happy, it's probably a better move than this one. I think this one has so many downsides to it, but the upsides are obviously pretty incredible.

How have you dealt with the downsides in the business?

I mean, you know, I do take a lot of shit personally, so I, you know, I've dealt with them every way, from lashing out to, you know, to being self destructive. But it's every time you sit down and write and create something, it's not that you think it's the best, but you want people who look at it to embrace it. Of course, you know, and, you know, the smarter person cannot worry about what anyone else thinks and continues to move on. And at 52 years old, I still try to do that to the best of my ability. But I do have strong defensive side and aggressive side and that often comes into play as well.

Yeah, totally. What's your thoughts on, you know, everything happening this year? 2020 lockdown, you're in LA. How have you dealt with this, you know, culture shift that we've experienced the last six, seven months?

I mean, well, two different things. The pandemic, obviously is horrible. I've got two kids. One is supposed to start college in a month. And so it's been really hard for him. As I said earlier, for me, I'm kind of a homebody, so I'm obviously very fortunate that I can afford to be at home as much as possible. But it's still, it's been depressing. As far as the culture shift. I mean, there's, you know, there's two sides to it. I mean, I think all decent, reasonable human beings want there to be a full, fair system for everybody. But the cancel culture that's going on is insane to me. And rewriting history, I find to be very scary and very dangerous. And that's not specifically speaking about any specific event. But I think that a lot of the stuff going on, you know, watching, you know, old comedies and being uncomfortable now that, like, you can't even embrace this, whether it's, you know, I used to, you know, Eddie Murphy's Delirious, I can still recite the entire thing verbatim, which in 2020 is probably offensive to a lot of people. But I think there's a lot of people out there that are just so desperate to find targets that it's set. And that's not to say. And I think it also, it gets away from the message which, you know, I have police officers in my family. I believe in law and order. But of course, police brutality has to stop. It has to be. The laws have to be enforced, whatever. The union bullshit has to come down. But we need cops. And to see smart, decent friends of mine just randomly going after police officers, I find horrifying. And to watch on the news, people spitting in cops faces, again, to me, they're all individuals. And just like as a Jewish person with lots of black friends, it's like we all have to not judge anybody in a group and judge everybody individually. And I find the scapegoating and the lumping in groups very scary.

So I love the. Appreciate the, you know, your thoughts on the situation. Definitely very valuable. I want to touch on. Do you have a favorite show that you watch currently or pieces of content that you recommend, people that people may not know about?

You're gonna put me on the spot to find something obscure. But I. Especially in this pandemic, I mean, it's been harder and harder for me to focus on good stuff. It really has been getting. I've been getting either watching my comfort stuff, which is legitimately still Seinfeld and Curb and Shears and Taxi and all the family like, shows that are, Besides Curb, between 20 and 40 years old. And then I'm like, into shit I would have never watched in my life, like Love Island. I can sit there and watch it because it's so mindless. But the great stuff that I've been watching recently, I'm trying to think. I mean, better Call Saul. I watched in like, three days, the whole five seasons, because I was behind on it. And Bob Odenkirk, I just. I mean, I love everyone on the show, but I love Bob. He was actually the initial inspiration for Ari when I first started it because he was an agent on Larry Sanders Show. I've been watching Larry Sanders. I don't know how many people know about Larry Sanders show, but that's, to me, top five sitcoms ever made. And it was one of the first HBO shows they made with Garry Shandling. That's brilliant. But I'd have to really think, what's Alfouda? Yeah, Killing Eve, Fleabag. You know, there's a lot of stuff, but, yeah.

Outside of, you know, writing scripts, where do you focus your time, you know, outside of writing on a daily basis? Daily habits, just passion projects. What does that look like in your life?

It's not looking like as much as it used to anymore, to be honest with you. I've tried to, like, enjoy my life more. I had lots of passion projects. I did, you know, the 30 for 30 on the Knicks, you know, I had a. A show called Da Brick that I did with John Ridley and Spike Lee that I really, you know, seven, eight years ago. That was one of the first. Almost the entire cast was African American before every network was looking for that. I was really, like, excited about that. It didn't go. I had Viola Davis attached to this Harriet Tubman project that didn't go, and then they made a different one. So right now, I mean, I have a couple of things I'm working on, but I work now more as it's a job and it pays the bills. To be honest with you, right now I'm pretty passionate about the podcast. It's just far more enjoyable than the, you know, because it's the difference between, like, you know, what you guys are doing where you don't need a team of people to approve it. You don't need to hear everybody's opinions. You put it out there and people either like it or they don't, you know, so when you're making a TV show or you're making a movie, and I just. I finished the script yesterday that I'm very excited about. It's set in the international world of football. It's. I'm doing it with Thierry Henry, very, you know, famous football player from France. But it's not like the passion project of my life. It's just something that'll be fun and good, and if it happens, it happens, and if it doesn't, it Doesn't. So that's kind of how I operate at this point.

Very cool. Speaking on podcast industry, I'd love to get your thoughts on just the industry itself, how it's been growing year over year. Where do you see the podcast industry going in the next two to five years?

I mean, it's hard to imagine because like I said, people were asking me five years ago, and I think, God, if I would have done this podcast five years ago, how much smarter that would have been. That just seemed like a joke to me. But now where the industry and where the world is going is you are your own brand, and people are gonna be able to get power and be able to get content by creating that cult of personality, which I think is pretty unbelievable. So I think that everyone's gonna have a podcast. I've been watching this over the last three years where everyone from my dentist to my divorce attorney to my, you know, fucking realtor, are all going, want to come on my podcast. And I'm like, what the fuck do you have to talk about? But the truth is, there's a lot of funny, interesting people in a lot of different walks of life. And I think the podcast is actually an incredibly amazing thing that you can get on there and find content about anything you'd like, listen to it on your time and when you want. So I think it's going to keep growing. The cost of entry is nothing. So it's a good time for creators. It's a scary time for misinformation that is put out there, obviously, from so many, but I don't know where it goes from here. I think it just keeps growing.

Love that. Well, last thing, Doug, before we wrap up is there's a lot of young entrepreneurs listening to the show, 18 to 25, starting their careers. If you were to go back in time, and I know that we touched on this earlier, but to tell your something, hey, look out for this, or, you know, make sure you don't do this, what would you tell yourself? Because I think at the end of the day, you know, you can hear the things you should do, but sometimes you need to hear the things that they shouldn't do. And I'd love to hear your opinion on that.

I mean, to me, I don't know about what you shouldn't do, but the most important thing in getting into the entertainment business to me is finding a focus quickly and maximizing your potential at that. I think a lot of people come in with, you know, I'm a dancer, I'm a singer, I'M a this, I'm a that. And some people are, you know, and if you're Jennifer Lopez, God bless you. But most people should hone a craft, really, not waste a lot of time. I came out here, I met a lot of people. A lot of them were far more interested in hanging out at the clubs and partying all day and all night. And 25 years later, it hasn't gone so well for them. The ones that I came out with here early, and some of them were really talented people, but just no focus. But a lot of the people that I came out with who, again, have all been through ups and downs, a lot of them made it by persistence and continuing to, you know, focus on their goals. So I think the most important thing is to come up with your goal and to strategize it and figure out how to get there again. I didn't do any of that. I was a fucking, like all over the place. And I did have a lot of lucky breaks, fortunately, and maybe some talent that shown through. But I think, you know, working hard and focusing is the key to it all.

Love that. Well, Doug, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on the show today. Where is the best place for everyone to stay? Updated on your podcast and everything you.

Have going on Victory the podcast, you can check it out. Apple podcasts, Google Play, Spotify and all other major platforms and Mr. Doug Ellen on Instagram. And check it out. Let me know what you think.

Love it.

Foreign Legacy of Monsters An Apple original series. The world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours. Believe me, the most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise. My God. Go. Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV.

Plus.