Jack Bettridge

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Further Adventures in Spotting Smokers

Posted: 04:14 PM ET, June 19, 2007

Earlier I blogged about a game I like to play that I call “Seen Smoking.” Not much to it essentially except spotting people smoking cigars. Sometimes it’s on the street, other times it’s in the media or celebrity life.

Sunday, I had a particularly good sighting while watching “Entourage,” the HBO series that just began its second season of the year. (It ran for a number of episodes in the time slot following “The Sopranos,” then took a week off when “The Sopranos” had its final episode and it just restarted in what is being called a separate season—these things were easier to follow years ago when every season began in September, but I digress.)

Anyway, as the season begins the main character, actor Vinnie Chase, and his entourage (hence the title) of hanger-ons, including brother, manager and go-fer, have traveled to Colombia to film a biopic of the drug lord Pablo Escobar. Enter Billy Walsh, the self-possessed megalomaniacal bully who is directing the “film.” (His term. I prefer “movie,” as I think of film as something you scrub off your shower door.)

Owing to his inability to find a good ending for the picture or bed down the starlet, Walsh commences to chain smoke cigars in a sort of punctuation to his directorial meltdown in the jungle. (Shades of Coppola on “Apocalypse Now”?) Cigars can get you through a lot!

It’s not the first time “Entourage” has featured cigars, but it is the most in one episode. Jeremy Piven, who has made quite a splash—Emmy Award—playing Vinnie’s oily, hyperactive agent, is known to smoke off the set as well. Apparently HBO hasn’t the same compunctions as a lot of the rest of television has about portraying characters with cigars—case in point “The Sopranos." More power to ‘em.

(3 comments on this post) Submit your comments >

Reader Comments

User Name: Matthew Caruso, Jersey Posted: 10:46 AM ET, June 20, 2007

Nice, its like Gawker Stalker for Cigar Smokers!!

User Name: John Woods Posted: 04:10 PM ET, June 25, 2007

Next to The Sopranos, the next most Cigar friendly series has to be Boston Legal. Have you seen it? Alan and Denny end every episode having a Cigar and a Scotch on the fabulous penthouse patio outside Denny's office. Pretty Cool!

User Name: Jack Bettridge Posted: 02:59 PM ET, June 26, 2007

to john woods: of course. we recently featured william shattick on our cover

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