Column: What does the youngest Emanuel brother, Ari Emanuel, have to say in 'Roll the Calls'?
Published in Books News
If you think Chicago's former mayor Rahm Emanuel has an affection for (problem with?) profanity, wait until you meet his younger brother Ari Emanuel in the pages of his lengthy, if ultimately unsatisfying memoir “Roll the Calls.”
There are 57 chapters here, across 413 pages, so many of them (even the final line) peppered with expletives. There are no photos but for the cover shot of the author. No Oprah, Matt Damon, Larry David, Conan O’Brien, Martin Scorsese or any of the talented clients who have made Ari Emanuel arguably the most successful talent agent in history and certainly a very wealthy man. There are very few stories about the stars either, so for those coming to this book for star-studded insider stories, better luck elsewhere.
This is really more of a business book, that business being show. Perhaps some kid working in the mail room at some Hollywood firm can pick up some pointers, but there aren’t many of those either.
Its title, “Roll the Calls,” refers to all talent agents’ practice of daily going down a list of names (industry executives, clients, bankers, journalists) to be called to pitch, cajole, placate, complain, trade information, gossip or lie.
This is not the first book to emerge from the three Emanuel brothers. That would be 2014’s from the eldest brother, the highly regarded oncologist and bioethicist Ezekiel and his book “Growing Up Emanuel,” which got mostly positive reviews along the lines of the Hollywood Reporter writing that it felt like an “extended wedding toast.”
“Roll the Calls” has been, in promotional hyperbole, “highly anticipated,” with a first printing of 250,000. It debuted last week as an exclusive excerpt in the Wall Street Journal and a couple of days ago as a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview segment, during which Emanuel was bleeped but twice.
Why the secrecy? Hard to imagine fireworks or headlines coming from these pages. Emanuel thinking Harvey Weinstein “empty at his core” is unlikely to make the internet sizzle.
This agent knows how to keep secrets, about a lot of things.
There is very little about his formative years, though we learn of his being diagnosed in fourth grade with dyslexia, as well as ADHD. This is one of the things that sparks rage, one of his most prominent qualities. He writes, “Rage first, ask questions later, that’s been my philosophy.”
He grew up in Wilmette with his parents and older brothers Rahm and Zeke. But Wilmette is not, as he writes, a “middle-class suburb,” but among one of the most affluent in the nation. And in New Trier High School he comes to the defense of a classmate being bullied: “Tap the biggest bully on the shoulder. Not big myself, but zero body fat, standout on the wrestling team. Within sixty seconds I’ve beaten that bully’s ass. Finishing touch: smash a lunch tray on his head,”
Thus begins a life and career of not only beating bullies but being one when need be.
That is about it for his childhood, but for such tidbits as, “All my parents’ stories had the same moral: Life’s a fight. … Keep your fists clenched and your head on a swivel, unless you want to find yourself lying in the street bleeding out.”
What was his time like at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota? Who knows. How did he wind up working in New York City for Robert Lantz, an aged agent for such literary heavyweights as James Baldwin and Tennessee Williams, such stars as Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Nichols? Nothing there either.
Then he’s off to Hollywood, into a mailroom and onto the road that starts with him fetching coffee for senior agents and delivering scripts all over town. Told in episodic fashion, it’s fast-paced but not very substantial
Mostly, we get snapshots of his personal life. He gets hit by a truck. He gets married in Chicago, where his brothers are “loud, brash, zany … like some Chicago version of Zeppo and Harpo.” He has three boys and adopts the daughter of his adopted sister. He golfs. He makes deals. He aspires.
He gets up at 3 a.m. “Work out, shower, hustle downstairs, dig into the reading pile, struggle with English as if it’s a third language until 6:30.”
His routine also often includes “dive into the sauna, then twenty minutes of meditation, then ten minutes in the ice plunge, then twenty minutes of light therapy.” At the office, he works at a “treadmill desk.” He’s a vegan.
And he makes those phone calls, as many as three hundred a day, writing, “Without our Rolodexes, none of us is more than a meat puppet in a nice suit.”
His personality was so colorful (and peculiar) that he inspired and informed the character Ari Gold, played by Chicago’s Jeremy Piven in the HBO series “Entourage,” which began in 2004.
Though he helps the show’s creative team, he claims never to have watched the show. He writes, “People say it’s one of the most popular TV shows of the last 30 years.” So hard to believe, that “people say,” but he lets us know that brother Rahm “liked Fake Ari better than Real Ari.”
The Real Ari is filled with these sorts of dime-store assessments:
“My brand of unfiltered honesty doesn’t always play well.”
“Self-belief, that’s half the game, in any occupation, but it’s everything for an agent”
“There are moments. I admit, when I have nothing in my eyes but Visine and dollar signs.”
Abetting all of this is J.R. Moehringer, author of the masterpiece of a memoir, 2005’ “The Tender Bar,” who has found fortune if not fame as the leading celebrity ghostwriter of such books as Andre Agassi’s 2009 “Open: An Autobiography” and Prince Harry’s “Spare” in 2023. He must be admired for trying to keep this story moving briskly through what becomes a corporate tornado of acronyms as in CAA, ICM, UFC … and on and on.
Emanuel is 65 years old now and is (ho, hum) executive chair and CEO of TKO Group Holdings and executive chairman of the WME Group. He is a billionaire and has left bruised and broken bodies in his climb to mogul-dom. As he writes, “I recognize, sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with a shrug, that there’s been a great deal of leave-taking in my life. … I stopped saying goodbye on the phone in order to save time; I stopped saying goodbye in relationships in order to save myself.”
He seems to take pride in his therapist calling him “the simplest and most complicated patient I have ever had.”
His first marriage is gone. The kids have grown. Many of the book’s later chapters are given to the story of his wooing younger fashion designer Sarah Staudinger, filled with boyish, almost puppy dog enthusiasm. He wins, well, of course. They marry, in Saint-Tropez in 2022, with Larry David officiating in what reads like a disgustingly crude affair.
Yes, he and his wife attended the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez in Venice. He can get Elon Musk on the phone. Donald Trump too. There may be more deals to be made, more money to be made.
But as he writes, “At times I wonder if the fight has gone out of me?”
One can only hope. He needs to relax.
©2026 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.












Comments