Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel says agents recruit actors, writers and directors by asking a question: Are you happy?
People rarely say they are happy. Their answer opens the door to a new agent.
Asked if he is happy, Emanuel said yes – sometimes."I'm not sure if you're really engaged in life [that] you're happy," he told NPR's Steve Inskeep.
Emanuel's new memoir, Roll the Calls, offers an account of his rise from obscurity to Hollywood power broker, representing clients ranging from Oprah Winfrey to Martin Scorsese to Vince McMahon.
Ari Emanuel got his start in the mailroom at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), later becoming an agent at ICM Partners. In 1995, he co-founded Endeavor, which merged with William Morris to form William Morris Endeavor. Today, he is also an entertainment mogul in his own right, leading TKO Holdings, which dominates pro wrestling and mixed martial arts.
From the first page of his memoir, co-written with J.R. Moehringer, Emanuel emphasizes feelings of rage, which he channeled into his career. He said his rage enabled him to challenge powerful people, "not giving into their will… and believing in your own will."
What is the source of that rage? The memoir says he grew up with dyslexia and ADHD, and was at one time placed in a special education class.
"It causes anger issues, especially if somebody touches, for me, the third rail and questions that I'm not intelligent or tries to pull one over me, as if I'm not smart enough to realize what you're trying to do with me," Emanuel said.
Emanuel is the younger brother of Rahm and Zeke Emanuel, who both excelled in school. Rahm went on to serve as President Barack Obama's chief of staff and mayor of Chicago, while Zeke is a doctor who helped to structure Obamacare.
"In my family, intelligence was about reading and grades and everything, and that stuck with me all the way," Emanuel said.
Emanuel says his dyslexia ultimately helped him to see the world differently, and that he gradually became less angry through therapy.
The art of agenting
Rolling calls was the heart of the job of an agent as Emanuel conceived it, having his assistant line up one phone call after another, sometimes hundreds in a day.
Emanuel said he sees packaging deals for TV and movies as an art.
"The art of agenting is being relentless in the pursuit to fulfill the dreams of your clients," Emanuel said.
"Relentless" is an adjective that Emanuel's admirers and detractors would endorse.
Emanuel is famous for profanity-laden tirades, and his memoir describes him rising at 4:00 a.m., working through family vacations, and ruthlessly cutting down rivals when they aren't looking.
When his client Mark Wahlberg made the HBO series Entourage, Emanuel was the model for Ari Gold, the over-the-top agent. Emanuel was never able to watch very much of the character based on him in Entourage, until now.
"I've just started watching it," he told Morning Edition. "I'm at the end of season 2. Twenty years ago, it gave me anxiety."
The memoir contains withering depictions of Hollywood giants from Michael Ovitz to Jeffrey Katzenberg. It confesses to Emanuel's own repeated explosions of fury, and the extreme ways he pursued his goals. He describes recruiting Larry David as a client by calling ceaselessly even after David said no, making him so "uncomfortable" that David surrendered.
"People realize that I'm a ride or die guy with them, when I commit to people," Emanuel said, adding that he changes only if he feels betrayed.
In the NPR conversation, the 65-year-old also said he felt "gratitude" — a word that he dwells on in his memoir as a negative. The younger Emanuel came across a Harvard study of negotiations, which found negotiators who felt gratitude fared poorly. Angry negotiators were more successful. To Emanuel, gratitude was just a concept promoted by Oprah Winfrey, until Winfrey later became his client.
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