There’s a rule of thumb in which I’ve always believed:  if you are writing a story in which a protagonist is an artist (of any kind,) you should never ever show the artwork your character is making.  Maybe, if the artist is supposed to be bad, you show a sample of his work, probably as a joke.  Maybe you show tiny pieces of a good artist’s work, but not the complete artwork.  The moment we see that charcoal sketch our artist has been creating (on which the artist no doubt is sketching a few last lines, without making any marks) the illusion is over.  But if the story calls for an artist’s work to be genuinely good, the characters will say so, and our imaginations will do a better job of filling in the blanks than showing us could have done.

It’s the one thing in a script you talk about, instead of showing.

So when the last episode of Entourage included a trailer for the fake Medellin movie, my instincts screamed, “bad idea!”  This was especially so given that this season’s story promises that the trailer is good enough to sell the movie, all by itself.  Heck, they already broke their illusion for me a little bit by showing Vinnie Chase acting.  When everyone SAID he was a great star, I believed it.  When Adrien Grenier assumed the role of Pablo Escobar, my belief was hurt a bit.

In the end though, it was a great trailer.  It actually made me want to see the movie.  I guess every rule is meant to be broken.

Also, bonus points to the show’s creatives for naming the site medellinthefilm, as opposed to medllinthemovie