in Ari Emanuel’s memoir, no one is safe, not even his brother – The Forward

Ariel Emanuel attends the UFC 300 event at T-Mobile Arena on April 13, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

By Julia M. Klein

September 26, 2026

Start the Calls: A Brief
By Ari Emanuel
Button, 432 pages, $35

It must be exhausting being super-agent Ari Emanuel: getting up before dawn to train, ingesting live worms to consume bacteria, then making hundreds of phone calls daily to clients and network big names. It’s frankly exhausting to read about, despite (uncredited) ghostwriter JR Moehringer’s intelligent, jerky account.

The point of it all, Emanuel keeps insisting Start callsit’s not the dollars.

“It’s not money that makes me get up at 4 a.m.,” he says. “I’m just not sure what it is yet.”

Perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy, he takes bold entrepreneurial risks to survive in an industry ravaged by worker discontent, bitter infighting and technological change.

The goal, if there is one, seems to be simply to win – to bend everyone around him to his will. And, for the most part, it does. From the mailroom, Emanuel rose to the top: executive chairman and CEO of TKO and executive chairman of WME Group, “two companies,” his biographical blurb says, “that are at the center of sports, entertainment and culture.”

Emanuel is probably best known as the model for the abrasive Ari Gold, the talent agent played by Jeremy Piven in the HBO series. Surroundings (2004-11). The series’ protagonist, Vincent Chase, is loosely based on one of Emanuel’s clients, actor Mark Wahlberg. Emanuel says he could never stand watching the series, but notes that it helped boost his career.

The entertainment industrial complex, he says, is a transactional, amoral, brutal, and (although Emanuel doesn’t use that phrase) testosterone-fueled world, where the key players are almost all men. It seems impossible to imagine a woman getting by – let alone thriving – with the disjointed, crude approach that has become Emanuel’s trademark.

Even in this environment, there are, according to him, particularly disgusting players. Among them is Harvey “Scissorhands” Weinstein, whom Emanuel accuses of negligence, intimidation tactics and editorial interference. Even without mention of the producer’s alleged history of sexual harassment and assault, Emanuel’s assessment of Weinstein is distressing. “Empty at his core,” Emanuel writes, “Harvey’s only motivation is to thwart and toy with others.”

Emanuel also expresses disdain for other boldface names, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and co-founder of the DreamWorks film studio, and Hollywood scribe Nikki Finke, with whom Emanuel had a codependent relationship. He takes Donald Trump as a client, doesn’t vote for him for president and dumps him, without regret, when he wins and can no longer generate commissions. None of this necessarily makes Emanuel a reliable narrator.

The memoir begins with the word “rage”, which Emanuel says is also the first word in Homer’s story. Iliad. The allusion defines Start calls until it’s just as epic. But its angry protagonist is, at best, an anti-hero, and the stakes of his success are surely far from mythical.

What are the origins of Emanuel’s anger? It highlights his lifelong struggle with dyslexia and the resulting bullying and humiliation. The Emanuel family philosophy was decidedly competitive. In life, he learned, “the loser is fed to the lions,” so “keep your fists clenched and your head swivel.” And fights with his older brothers, whom he jokingly calls “two violent psychopaths,” may have left Ari bruised and resentful.

Prominent oncologist and bioethicist Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel and former Chicago mayor and future 2028 Democratic presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel are both known for their combative personalities. Ari suggests that the family is close-knit and loving. But one of the book’s quietly shocking revelations is Rahm’s mockery of his brother’s dyslexia when they share a stage during Chicago Ideas Week.

Emanuel maintains that his anger, which can become threatening, constitutes an advantage in negotiations by intimidating opponents. He cites a study showing “angry negotiators had the advantage.” At a bar, he calls Michael Moore an anti-Semite (expletive deleted) for the views the director has expressed about Israel; Moore denies the accusation, they continue talking and Emanuel finds himself with a new client.

“You have to be a little psychotic in this city,” argues Emanuel. To be successful, “you have to show that you can color outside the lines and that, every once in a while, you might eat the pencil (expletive deleted).” Memoirs do not remove swearing.

Yet Emanuel understands the personal costs of his anger well enough to have devoted years to psychotherapy aimed at moderating it. (The results seem, at best, mixed.) Emanuel also admits to having a habit bordering on harassment: constantly calling potential clients, business partners, and others until they succumb to his sales pitch.

This relentless hounding landed him a job in the mailroom at the Creative Artists Agency, from which he quickly moved up until he left, with allies, to start his own company. Similar persistence earned him the business (and, later, friendship) of the famous Larry David, who declared, over lunch, that he would sign with Emanuel — if only the agent would stop calling.

After the (unsurprising) dissolution of his first marriage, Emanuel deployed his telephone courting tactics—not a method, one imagines, that would have worked for a lesser man. In Emanuel’s case, relentless pursuit led him, after some drama and heartbreak, to his second marriage, to a much younger woman who had initially resisted his overtures.

None of this means that Start calls isn’t worth reading, especially for anyone interested in an unapologetic, jaundiced insider’s account of how Hollywood works. The book is fast-paced, sometimes funny, and full of acidic observations and gossip. It’s also horrible.

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