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Fast & furious

Jeremy Piven is big time. Like, really big time.

The Chicago-area native has always been the character actor, the guy behind the guy whose name’s above the credits. But not anymore.

At 44, he’s finally toplining his own movie — “The Goods,” which opened Friday. And he’s counting on making a splash.

“You apprentice a job, and then you get your shot,” Piven said. “This is my shot, name above the title. None of this is lost on me.”

The three-time Emmy-winning star of HBO’s “Entourage” is feeling the heat these days. He’s followed by the tabloids. He got the full blitz when he pulled out of a Broadway production of “Speed-the-Plow” because of mercury poisoning — “too much sushi,” he said. Of course, it wasn’t until his doctor backed him up that people bought the story. And it helped that Web sites such as thefoodsection.com pointed out just how easy it would be to OD on sushi. “Sushi rehab,” they suggested.

None of this would have been possible without Piven’s critically acclaimed turn as the fast-talking Ari Gold of “Entourage.” Before that breakout role his work could be considered P.E. — or pre-“Entourage.” Those were the days when Piven could only truly count on work as a sidekick to his lifelong pal, Chicago-area native John Cusack.

Now Piven faces even more heat. He’s the lead in a movie. “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard” has him fronting a crew of hustlers — Ed Helms, Ving Rhames, Ken Jeong — as used-car salesfolk who “move the metal,” helping distressed dealerships slash prices and sell cars. And it all seems so, well, current.

“Car sales are down 40 percent,” Piven says. “This is happening right now. Guys who own dealerships have to call mercenaries like [his character] Don Ready in to turn things around.

“I read this script and said, ‘What, was this written for Vince Vaughn [another Chicago homeboy]?’ This guy is so Vince that I ended up doing homage to Vince playing him — that rapid-fire, swaggering thing.”

In the movie, Piven plays a fast-talker charged with dumping junkers off the lot. But the actor wasn’t always a motor-mouth. He says it’s the nature of his career that gave him his patter.

“Listen to me now. Am I a fast talker? Very slow talker in real life,” he says. “But working, I do feel the need to give my scenes some sort of pace. And you know, thinking about it, that must come from having tiny roles for so long. I would always see how much I could get into one scene. I still do that. You look at my first 20 movies — ‘Singles,’ ‘Say Anything … ,’ I was talking at the speed of light, like firing buckshot, trying a whole lot of things that might hit.”

He chuckles at that.

“Old habits die hard,” he says. “I have, ever since then, gravitated toward abrasive, fast-talking hustlers.” Seems to be working for him.

— REDEYE CONTRIBUTED.

Good cop, bad cop

After striking a chord as fast-talking agent Ari Gold in “Entourage,” Jeremy Piven seems to have keyed in on a type that works for him: The jerk, the huckster or the all-around bum. But it wasn’t always that way. Here’s a look at a few of Piven’s more memorable characters and where they land on RedEye’s personality scale.

— JIM WALSH, REDEYE

Where do Jeremy Piven’s characters fall on the personality scale?

Mother Teresa

Cupid in ABC’s “Cupid” (1998-99)

Dean Kansky in “Serendipity” (2001)

Alan Weiss in “Chasing Liberty” (2004)

James “Droz” Andrews in “PCU” (1994)

Mark in “Say Anything” (1989)

Ari Gold in HBO’s “Entourage” (2004-09)

Dean Gordon “Cheese” Pritchard in “Old School” (2003)

Spencer Pratt

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The Piven files

Think you know Jeremy Piven? Think again. Here are a few fun facts about the little kid from Evanston who grew up to be America’s favorite jerk on “Entourage.”

Though Piven is best known as an Evanston native, he actually was born in New York City and spent his toddler years in Texas before his family moved to Evanston.

Piven’s idea of high praise for a new acquaintance — Jamie Foxx or Terrence Howard, for instance — is to say, “I feel like he’s an Evanston boy.”

He graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1984.

Both his parents are actors and co-founded several theater companies, including Second City Rep and Evanston’s Piven Theater Workshop.

At one time, he shared an apartment with John Cusack (above).

In 2006, Piven apologized for the way he introduced his rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at a Cubs game by yelling his TV character’s catchphrase, “Let’s hug it out, bitch!”

On Thursday, Piven and his mom attended the Chicago premiere of “The Goods.”

Source: Tribune

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Fast-paised

By Matt Pais

The Goods: Live Hard, sell hard (R)

2 stars

A California used car lot will close if they can’t unload a huge inventory. Sounds like a job for hotshot salesman Don “The Goods” Ready (Jeremy Piven), who, in a shocking twist of fate, falls for the lot owner’s daughter (Jordana Spiro) who, in another wildly original twist, is engaged to a jackass (Ed Helms).

The buzz: With “Talladega Nights” director Adam McKay and Will Ferrell (who also has a cameo) getting production credit, and the team that scripted the DVD comedy “Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach” getting writing credit, “The Goods” sure seems like a carbon copy of Ferrell’s Competitive Moron Formula. This is the feature debut for “Chappelle’s Show” director and “Half-Baked” co-writer Neal Brennan.

The verdict: Is a comedy automatically a success if it sometimes makes you laugh? No. Is it a failure if its style of humor makes you feel awful? Sort of. Mean-spirited but occasionally hilarious, “The Goods” mostly just feels stale, leaning on jokes about boy bands and MC Hammer and a plot recycled from the already recycled parts of stuff like “Hot Rod.” Piven’s no Ferrell — his anger comes off as mean, not awkwardly funny — but the movie gets a big boost from Ving Rhames as Don’s badass collaborator who has never “made love” to a woman, but has 69’d, 89’d and 114’d.