BANFF -- Sex can sell. Or it can just get you slapped.

It's something Doug Ellin knows all too well. As the producer of HBO's racy Hollywood tell-all Entourage, he has a hit show soon entering its fifth season in September.

But he also receives plenty of ire -- verbal, not physical -- from women rankled by what they perceive as the show's unmitigated sexism.

"I just got told by a (female) journalist that women didn't like the show," he says during a break at this week's Banff World Television Festival.

"I go to these panels to speak, like today, I'm sure there's going to be a woman there who is like: 'It's masoginistic and the show's mean' ... The truth of the matter is all of my celebrity friends tell me the show is tuned down compared to what really goes on with a celebrity when women want a piece of them."

The fast-paced comedy is based loosely the lives of Ellin, fellow producer Stephen Levinson and A-lister Mark Wahlberg.

"Mark and Steve came to me and said, 'Let's do a show about Mark and his friends.' They wanted me to write it and that's how it started," Ellin says.

Adrian Grenier was cast as the presumed Wahlberg surrogate: a fast-living Hollywood turk attached at the hip to his best friend-turned-manager Eric (Kevin Connolly), older brother Drama (Kevin Dillon) and hanger-on Turtle (Jerry Ferrara).

Jeremy Piven's near-sociopathic uber-agent Ari Gold rounds out the posse.

Despite Wahlberg's marquee value, Ellin says the star of The Departed and The Happening has stepped back from the series' day-to-day production.

"Mark is not really involved much in the show now. When I hang out with him it's basically for fun -- not work. He's a fan of the show and he lets us do our thing. We call Mark when we need celebrity cameos or something -- we will get Mark to call his famous friends."

As for his own personal life, Ellin, who has a wife and two children, says he rarely indulges in the Hollywood lifestyle Entourage glamourizes. "My kids and wife are way more important to me than going clubbing 'til four in the morning," he says.

Moreover, he believes it's important to populate the show with strong, smart women.

"Take Shauna (Debi Mazar) or the character of Ari's wife for example. But the thing is, at the end of the day, this is a show about men. We hope that women will like it because there's some insight into men that women don't usually hear. That's the way they talk though -- that's how they are. Men are animals -- it's just a fact. But these guys have hearts and I hope that's what women will see," Ellin says.

As for next season? Ellin says it will be full of the same bravado as the previous four -- and naturally include at least a few big-name cameos.

"Tom Rothman, chairman of Fox, is going to be on the show -- he's a fan. So, that's great," says Ellin. "But I don't think about the show much in advance. I take it one script at a time and right now I want to finish up writing and take some well-needed time off."