Ari regretted sitting Larry David and Elon Musk next to each other at his wedding. WireImage While Ari Emanuel spends much of his new book, “Roll the Calls,” detailing his highs and lows in the entertainment business — from screaming at Goldman Sachs bankers about a botched IPO to telling HBO execs he won’t accept a “no” to his “Entourage” pitch — the tome does have some wild behind the scenes details about celebs, too.
Larry David and Elon Musk had to be physically separated when they were (unwisely) seated together at the superagent’s wedding to fashion designer Sarah Staudinger.
The wedding, you may recall seeing at the time, was featured in the pages of Vogue. But what didn’t make the 2022 Conde Nast spread was the near fist fight between two guests — “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk.
Tensions were already running high at Emanuel’s wedding to Staudinger in St. Tropez when David was scheduled to officiate the nuptials.
“Some of my friends, family, are nervous about what Larry might say in his sermon,” Emanuel writes in his tome. “I’m not nervous, because I know it’s going to be awful. I bow my head and brace for impact.” (The “Seinfeld” co-creator proceeds to eviscerate the groom, repeatedly and proudly calling his agent the c-word and prompting Emanuel’s own mom to ask other attendees, “He’s calling Ari a count?”)
After the dressing down — which ended up having the crowd in tears, of laughter and joy, the agent writes — Emanuel recalls, “Seating Larry at the same table as Elon Musk: Not my best decision.”
As soon as the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star sees the Tesla mogul,”he starts cursing, yelling, saying things many people would like to say to Elon” about the SpaceX’s leader’s politics.
David was “right up in Elon’s face, before the dinner starts,” and, guests had to separate them.
Liberal Emanuel also recalls he first met Musk in 2008 when he called him out of the blue, because, “I was hating my Prius but feeling guilty about going back to a gas-powered car. Tesla seemed the ideal solution.”
Emanuel argued (unsuccessfully) to help Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson keep a scene in “The Departed” that the head of Warner Bros. at the time said was pornographic and needed to be cut — while the film’s set was filled with drama.
When Scorsese was making “The Departed,” Emanuel recalls of the “Raging Bull” and “Taxi Driver” icon: “He’s made half a dozen masterpieces,” but felt the new film could be Scorsese’s Mona Lisa.
But the agent says of the cast — which included Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leo DiCaprio, Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg — “All those male egos running around one closed set, there’s bound to be problems,” and that he soon started receiving “SOS calls”: “Someone’s having a mental health episode, threatening suicide. Someone doesn’t like their trailer.”
But when Emanuel receives a series of frantic calls from Scorsese himself “having a beef with a Warner Bros. exec named Alan Horn,” the devoted agent makes five cross-country trips to the set trying to mediate the dispute circa 2006.
“The beef involves a sex scene,” Emanuel writes, which Scorsese and Nicholson liked, but Warners’ president Horn was against.
“I haven’t seen the dailies,” writes the the agent, “but Marty describes the scene in meticulous detail until I feel as if I’ve not only seen it, but lived it. It involves a man placing something in a woman’s mouth, a ball gag or jawbreaker, during their… congress,” Emanuel writes. But Horn said it was porn.
Ari is especially worried as the ire escalates, since, “once upon a time, in the 1970s, Marty talked openly about shooting a studio exec” over creative differences.
Ari recalls that after trying to settle the dispute, “I feel as if I’m the one gnawing the ball gag.” Whoa.
In the end, he reassures Scorsese that, “The film, with or without the ball gag, is brilliant,” and the director relents.
Ari Emanuel’s real career was bolstered by his fictional alter-ego on “Entourage,” Ari Gold, who the WME agent even channeled in his deal-making.
When Emanuel wanted to turn the 2004 movie “Friday Night Lights” into a TV show for his client and close pal Peter Berg to direct, he called the film’s legendary producer Brian Grazer to make his pitch.
But when Grazer says “nah,” Emanuel goes full Ari Gold.
“What nah?” he tells Grazer, who allegedly called Emanuel “f–king crazy” after a spirited back-and-forth.
That’s when, “I tell him I’ll show him crazy.”
“Ari, you sound like Ari Gold,” exclaims Grazer.
“I’ll show you Ari Gold, bitch!” yells Emanuel. The show ran for five seasons.
