Ari, Ari, Jeremy, And Marky Mark
With last night's disappointing Entourage premiere (and it's not like the bar was set so high last season, other than the Jeremy Piven scenes) out of the way, we're reminded that Piven's fictional, bitch-hugging agent Ari Gold is at least partly based on reportedly real, ten percent eminence/Agent Dance mascot Ari Emanuel. NY Daily News JV gossipist Lloyd Grove induces executive producer Mark "Hey, What About My Life? That Could Be A Show, Right?" Wahlberg to discuss the intersection of the real-life and make-believe Aris, as well as his own Emanuel run-ins:
"Ari used to represent Jeremy, and Jeremy says he fired him. Ari says he fired Jeremy," Wahlberg said. "I believe Ari, because Jeremy's probably had, like, 30 agents!"
Wahlberg confided that he's had his own issues with Emanuel.
"There's been a couple of physical altercations. You know what? He's pretty feisty," Wahlberg said. "We're on-again, off-again. Mistakes are made. S—- happens."
Endeavor's in-house flack, Michael Donkis, wasn't amused.
"I don't believe there were any altercations - and perhaps Mark is joking," Donkis told me. "They have a close relationship."
How long are we going to have to wait for the inevitable, in-jokey Emanuel cameo (if he's done one already, we missed it), where the agent and his HBO doppleganger grapple for the affections of Adrian Grenier ("Hug this out, bitch!" "No, you hug this out!")? And will it be the real Grenier, his character Vincent, or a Calvin Klein ad-era Marky Mark? Can the loser of the Ari-Ari war be forced to rep the profoundly sad Valerie Cherish of The Comeback, a truly humiliating punishment? We have to stop considering the reality-bending possibilities immediately, lest our brain smooth out any further. This shit's way too heavy for Monday morning.