It's probably very, very difficult to be Adrian Grenier, aka Eyebrows Guy from Entourage—to spend most of your time playing a womanizing, A-list pile of ughs who is constantly spinning his irrelevant wheels, while in real life you're a womanizing C-list pile of ughs who just has so many important, relevant stories to tell inside just waiting to get out there! Stories like, "I'm going to meet my dad for the first time in a long time. That's interesting, right?" (Answer: No.) And "I met this teen paparazzo while he was taking my picture cause I'm a celebrity and isn't the culture of fame craaaazy?" (Answer: …) And so you make documentaries—essential, important, thoroughly self-absorbed Adrian Grenier home movies like Shot In The Dark and the upcoming Teenage Paparazzo, but people just don't see you as the serious, sensitive documentarian that you are.
Take, for example, this recent interview with Vinny Chase: Documentarian in Us Weekly:
Q: You directed a documentary about media and celebrities [Teenage Paparazzi]. In a nutshell, what did you learn?
Adrian Grenier: I don't give nutshell answers about something so important. I'm sorry. I'm very sensitive about it.
Amen, Adrian. I mean, would they ask Errol Morris to give a nutshell description of his latest documentary? Probably, yes. Of course they would, because that's how promotional interviews work: reporter asks writer/director/actor to summarize latest/next project, writer/director/actor gives short, occasionally interesting answers, snappy quotes are pulled and printed next to a picture of the writer/director/actor's face, the public reads it and hopefully becomes interested enough to go see the movie. Welcome to society.
But Teenage Paparazzi is too big, too smart, too important to squeeze into a one-or-two sentence summary. I mean, it's about two virtually unexamined, not-at-all-beat-into-the-ground topics: media and celebrities. How can anyone expect Adrian Grenier to crudely summarize what he learned in the making of a film so revolutionary?
Q: Can you describe it at all?
Adrian Grenier: I'm reflecting on my experiences becoming a celebrity and playing one on TV.
See? Was that so hard, Adrian Grenier? Next time, try to skip the asshole answer, and go right to the nutshell answer. You can do it.
So Teenage Paparazzi is about Adrian Grenier reflecting on his experiences becoming Adrian Grenier and playing Vinny Chase? Fascinating. Lemme guess: it's hard? Or weird? Sometimes hard and sometimes weird with a little fun mixed in? Maybe crazy? I guess we'll have to watch the movie to find out the exact mix of obvious observations and tedious reflections.