Navigate your way to the website of the Chateau Marmont hotel, or maybe the Mondrian, or the Standard, work your way through the booking process, and then click to confirm. Done. You're in.

It might just be for a few nights. Maybe even one. It doesn't matter. Because just like that, you've made yourself part of the Hollywood fantasy.

It's that easy. Click that button and you've place yourself in the middle of this world of starlets and train wrecks, of next big things and last week's things, of overnight successes and overnight guests at the local rehab clinic. You're hanging out on Sunset Strip. You're in Laurel Canyon. You're in Beverly Hills.

You're at a rooftop party with a guy who reckons he's a Grammy Award winner who wants to come hang out at your hotel room with a few friends and party till the sun comes up. (But more on that one later.)

There's been criticism recently of the Entourage movie that was released last week – partly because it's just not very good (a 30 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and it limped into the no.4 spot for its opening weekend at the box office), but also partly because the Los Angeles it presents to viewers is an unrealistic one. It's a screenwriter's fantasyland, a hedonistic and vacuous place of fast cars and pool parties, of celebrity cameos and model rendezvous.

The argument goes that the LA presented on the screen isn't a real place – at least, it isn't a real place for you and me. For the non-movie stars; the non-celebs. This version of LA is a place about as genuine and believable as Vincent Chase's charisma.

It would be easy to sneer and agree with that assessment, but I have to tell you: the fantasy is all real. It's all true. And it's all accessible. It just takes the click of a button, and you're there.

Say you're staying at the Chateau Marmont. It's not cheap, but it's accessible. I stayed there once just for one night, as a kind of "live the dream" experience, paying $400 for a small room with some fairly crusty furniture in one of the coolest freaken hotels in the entire world. The Marmont oozes history and rock star cred – Led Zeppelin used to stay there; Lindsay Lohan used to live there.

Want to hang out with rock stars? You walk up the road a few blocks to the Rainbow Bar and Grill, a dingy little place set in among music venues like the Roxy and the Viper Room, where Lemmy Kilmister from Motorhead still goes to prop up the bar pretty much every night of the week. The spandex sparkle might have faded from the Rainbow, but the history never will.

Vince, Drama, Turtle and E, however, probably wouldn't hang out at the Rainbow. They'd more likely be up the road at the W Hotel, where the rooftop pool area doubles as a day- and nightclub, where Hollywood's beautiful people laze around in little bits of clothing and drink expensive drinks and nibble on expensive food. And you can go there. You can get in.

I went, a few years ago on that night I stayed at the Marmont. I met a guy at the W called Frank, who told me he'd won a Grammy. I ended up going back to the hotel with a whole posse of rock star buddies to party. Random encounters like that really happen.

I stayed at the Mondrian – another classic rock star hotel on the Sunset Strip – once on a night when a huge group of pre-teen fangirls was hanging out at the front waiting to catch a glimpse of 5 Seconds of Summer, who were also in residence. I hung out at the Skybar and did some casual celebrity spotting of my own. And again, this is something that's open to anyone.

But what if you don't want to spend the money on an experience like that? If you don't want to splash out on those hotels and those bars? Even if you steer clear of the Sunset Strip and the Hollywood glam, you can't help but be swept up in the fantasy in LA.

Maybe you'd prefer to stay in Santa Monica at a cheap hostel. That's a great way to spend your time in the city. But still, the fantasy doesn't fade. You're spending your whole time humming that Sheryl Crow lyric, "Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard" as you stroll around near the beach, eating street tacos and thinking you keep catching sight of maybe-famous people.

Or maybe you're hanging out at Venice Beach, watching the gym junkies pumping iron in the sun, seeing surfie dudes ride past on their treadlies, listening to the hippies get together for a drum circle on the sand while the sun goes down and you're sinking the first cold beer of the day. This is stuff you've seen dramatised in movie after movie, TV show after TV show – you can't help but recognise it and revel in it.

Sure, the LA that the Entourage movie presents might seem like a fantasy – but LA is a fantasy. It's a place people come to to live out their dreams. Maybe those dreams are fame and the sort of success that allows the lifestyle of Vincent Chase. But maybe those dreams are just to indulge in the illusion for a night.

Many of them come true. All it takes is the click of a button.

Have you been to LA? Did you live the movie star fantasy? Or did you find it tacky and touristy?

Email: b.groundwater@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater

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