Jeremy Piven Ari Gold: This guy's for real

He shares a name with a character from HBO's 'Entourage' and works in the same industry, but there the similarities end. He's touting his movie on air drumming called 'Adventures of Power.'

The real Ari Gold travels without an entourage. He isn't angry. He's not swearing at anyone. But he may be a little more stressed these days than usual.

Jeremy Piven

It's a few weeks before the release of his first
feature film “Adventures of Power” and Gold, 39, a lanky, soulful redhead who wrote, directed and stars in the $2.5-million indie comedy, is gearing up for the big day. It took him four years to make his movie (currently playing at Laemmle's Sunset 5 in Los Angeles) about the world of competitive "air drumming." He shot it over 13 nonconsecutive months, guerrilla-style, whenever money came in. And now he's trying to promote it with the same limited resources. But this Ari Gold doesn't express his anxiety by smashing his cellphone into the nearest wall.

Gold the independent filmmaker might share the same name (and industry) with the hyperactive, fictional super agent Jeremy Piven plays on HBO's series " Entourage," but the two are worlds apart. Instead of tailored suits, Gold sports an outfit he undoubtedly pulled out of a wad in his backpack -- blue corduroys, blue T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Mucca Pazza," one of his favorite bands.

Originally from New York's East Village, Gold has paused in Los Angeles to play ukulele at the Troubadour with his band, the Honey Brothers, which includes his twin brother, Ethan Gold, who composed the score and all the music for the movie; two college buddies, D.S. Posner and Andrew Vladek; and "Entourage" star Adrian Grenier (which only adds to the Ari Gold confusion). The whimsical, new-wave folk band is winding up an exhausting, 10-city West Coast tour, but Gold is buzzing from his side trip up the coast to Oxnard, where he just shot a video with Neil Peart, the drummer from Rush (who makes a cameo appearance in the film). They went face-to-face as Peart played real drums and Gold played air drums to " Tom Sawyer," the song that "destroys drummers instantly! The hardest song in history!" as Gold's character says in the movie.

But wait. Grenier is a fellow Honey Brother? Is that where they got the name for Piven's larger-than-life character, who is loosely based on Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel?

The bio on the filmmaker's Twitter account reads: "Yes, they stole my name, calm down."

In person, Gold is more circumspect. "Look, the official story from the 'Entourage' camp is, 'What a coincidence' " The official story from the people who are named Ari Gold in real life is: 'How odd.' "

That description might also work for Gold's new film. "Adventures of Power" is about a copper miner named Power (played by Gold) who was denied the chance to play music and has become the ridiculed "air drummer" of his small town. When his union-leader father (Michael McKean) calls for a strike at the mine, Power embarks on a cross-country journey to become one of the best air drummers in the world.

"I thought it was a funny visual," Gold says. "The joke is one thing, but I thought it was a great opportunity to explore this idea of making something of nothing and finding your own rhythm."

That was the motivation for the movie, but Gold didn't think he'd be learning the same hard lesson. "Adventures of Power" premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, during a period when the indie world was "going through a convulsion, and a lot of companies were on the verge of disappearing," Gold says.

Sundance had welcomed him before, as a short-film director. (Gold won the Student Academy Award for his autobiographical short "Helicopter," an exploration of a family's grief after the unexpected death of their mother.) When he finally arrived in Park City, Utah, with his feature, which also stars Grenier as the hero's nemesis, as well as Jane Lynch ("Glee," "40-Year-Old Virgin"), Gold thought the studios would be fighting to make a deal.

That didn't happen. Instead, he left the festival without a buyer, and wound up securing Brooklyn-based Variance Films to distribute "Adventures in Power." Since then, he has been developing unconventional ways to promote his film. "I have volunteers in every city around the country. I have people getting the word out online, on Facebook, blogging about it, cartoonists submitting drawings for the movie. [There is] the feeling of a groundswell movement, which really fits the message of the movie perfectly."

So has his famous name proved to be an asset or liability when trying to convince people to check out his movie?

"Look, I could be named Jeffrey Dahmer," Gold says. "So it could be worse."

Source:http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-etw-gold17-2009oct17,0,2492821.story