Ben Silverman Could Have Sworn His Meeting With Ari Emanuel Was Next Week
What's the bigger scandal in Kim Masters' recent rundown of the kerfuffle between Ari Emanuel and Ben Silverman: That Slate published the whole thing with Emanuel's name repeatedly misspelled "Emmanuel," or that Silverman would dare stand Emanuel up not once but twice in meetings with Marvel boss David Maisel and producer/director Peter Berg? We honestly don't know, but for sheer cafeteria-slapfight drama, we're leaning toward the latter:
While still simmering about the Berg incident, Emmanuel [sic] arrived at the executive dining room at Universal, where he was to have lunch with film studio chairman Marc Shmuger. As fate would have it, Shmuger's boss—Universal Studios chief Ron Meyer—was meeting Silverman there that day. In fact, the two couples were in adjoining booths. When Emmanuel [sic] spied Silverman, he delivered a tongue-lashing, touching on Silverman's lifestyle and its impact on NBC-Universal's business. He didn't whisper. ...
At the lunch, the almost-always-affable Ron Meyer tried to keep out of the line of fire. But we're told that afterward he advised Silverman to mend fences with Emmanuel. [sic] Eventually, the two met and at least nominally made up.
Great! Now that that's resolved, it's on to Slate's copy editors. Here's hoping the resolution is as swift and serene, if perhaps more permanent; Masters also reports that Silverman was back to talking shit by the end of the day. Kids these days, seriously.
