Hollywood's New Don

Already Hollywood appears to have decided to be afraid of Emanuel. (No one wants to talk about him on the record.) Aside from having a larger-than-life version of his larger-than-life self on television (Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold on Entourage), Emanuel has the ties to Washington that Hollywood bosses have always craved. He derives prestige from the fact that his older brother Rahm serves as President Obama’s chief of staff though, the connection is not nearly as useful as, say, Lew Wasserman’s ties to Ronald Reagan. (The Emanuel brothers may be close but no one believes Rahm would involve himself in Ari’s business.)

There are three Emanuel brothers (the third one, Zeke, is a prominent oncologist working with the Obama administration on health-care reform) and one has to wonder what their parents put into their Wheaties. As The New York Times noted way back in 1997, all the Emanuel brothers have been described as “obnoxious, arrogant, aggressive, passionate and committed.”

It surprises exactly no one in Hollywood that as a child, Ari was diagnosed as hyperactive and dyslexic. He is still described as having the briefest of attention spans—and the hottest of tempers.

Emanuel famously antagonized NBC by challenging network Co-Chairman Ben Silverman in the corporate dining room over his alleged partying and his penchant for missing meetings with Emanuel’s clients. He also called Jeff Zucker, Silverman’s boss, to complain.

Emanuel had the whip hand with Fox, where he held up renewal of a major deal with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane while demanding that his agency receive a mutimillion-dollar fee for “packaging” the show. Studios routinely pay those fees when an agency puts together key elements in a program—say a writer and an actor. What’s extraordinary in this case is that the show had been on the air since 1999. Fox was staggered that Endeavor demanded the fees—outgoing News Corp. President and COO Peter Chernin is said to have described Emanuel’s demand as “extortion.” But the show had a break from 2002 until 2005, when it returned thanks to strong ratings in re-runs and big DVD sales, so Endeavor argued that it was entitled to the money, and Fox, normally one of the toughest customers in the business, caved.

“The thing [Ari] has going for him is when he’s on your side, he’s a great guy to have in the ring,” says a former studio president. “He’s indefatigable. He does not get tired. Take [Entourage executive producer] Mark Wahlberg. If Mark Wahlberg wants something, he will stop at nothing to make it happen.”

Those who have worked with Emanuel say he is deeply pragmatic in his friendships and his dealmaking. “He’ll figure out what you want to hear,” says a producer who has known Emanuel for years. “He’ll promise it and if he can’t deliver, he moves on. He has no shame, no guilt... He’s not addicted to love.”

Emanuel’s toughness serves him well but he faces much stiffer competition than Ovitz did when he started CAA. Ovitz “capitalized on the sloth and incompetence” of other agents at the time, says a well-known producer. Ovitz invented an agency culture that was disciplined and unbound from the gentlemen’s agreements that had stood among competitors in the past. Today, CAA remains neither slothful nor incompetent and it remains to be seen if Emanuel can invent something that works as well.