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:

Variety reports that agent Michelle Bohan has finally, officially moved from William Morris to Endeavor, ending a process that "unofficially" began over a month ago. (It takes a long time to construct a false, pregnant stomach big enough to sneak out clients like Salam Hayek, Kevin Bacon, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, and Ashley Judd—hey, the security guards at WMA aren't paid to knock on ladies' bellies to make sure they're real, OK?) And just to prove that she's been made an honest woman, Bohan's a partner at her new shop.

At the time of this posting, there's only 89 days, 8 hours, and 51 minutes until agent Patrick Whitesell of Endeavor and local TV personality Lauren Sanchez dive into the heated, Olympic-size Infinity pool of wedded, entertainment-industry bliss. How do we know this? The happy couple's erected an online monument to their impending nuptials. Here's an excerpt from their proposal story, related by Lauren. SPOILER ALERT: She says yes, and the rock is huge:

In reporting an item about William Morris' party at the upfronts a couple of days ago, Page Six finally puts away the long knives and plays nice (sort of) with the agency:

The NYT gets around to offering their ten percent about William Morris' retaliation against Page Six: hurtful rumors, Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields, strongly-worded letters, the New Yorker profile of "unorthodox" WMA president Dave Wirtschafter, Sarah Michelle Gellar, etc etc. But the Times' Sharon Waxman does manage to extract some off the record denials from the suspected "amoral snakes" at rival agencies who may have been responsible for leaking some of the WMA items, then this wonderful money shot:

After gleefully noting that William Morris has sicced Unfrozen Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields on rival Page Six for its recent WMA beat-down, Rush & Molloy report a pair of defections from the agency:

Fishbowl LA points us to this deeply depressing Vanity Fair Q & A with Sue Mengers, the "first superagent," an interview so bleak it makes Sylvia Plath look like an aerobics instructor on uppers by comparison:

Variety obtained the strongly-worded letter that Bert Fields sent to Page Six regarding their recent William Morris items, the first weapon in the Scary Hollywood Lawyer arsenal. An excerpt:

Last night, a window on William Morris Place was thrown open, and the screams of anguish could be heard from Shutters on the Beach to Dodger Stadium: "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke sent out an e-mail blast reporting that WMA has hired Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields to "go after" the NY Post's Page Six (quotes hers, we would've gone with "deliver a legal donkey punch") for spreading "blatantly inaccurate" gossip that is "fed by rivals." The gossip rag frayed the agency's last nerve on Sunday, when they printed a rumor that the agency was so cash-strapped that they were looking to sell their spiffy headquarters to make sure they were kept in Cristal, Armani, and only the freshest babies for their breakfast buffet for a little longer. WMA, of course, is filthy rich; five minutes spent wading through the room where they discard the teeth yanked from the mouths of departing agents would yield enough gold fillings to pay all of their overhead for at least two years. Tears, retractions, and unprotected make-up sex to follow...developing.

Yesterday's Page Six [Ed.note-They do a column on the weekend? Who knew?] lobbed a couple of more grenades at William Morris, reporting a rumor that the agency's elders are planning an "emergency meeting" at Shutters on the Beach this weekend to get their collective shit together after the turmoil of the past few months, and that the WMA braintrust might be considering selling their headquarters to raise some cash. Both rumors were rejected out of hand by Morris' flack in the piece (doesn't everybody know that agents dissolve instantly upon contact with salt water?), which is a great relief for the entire industry. No one wanted to wake up Monday morning and discover that the whole WMA staff was found "asleep" in a Shutters conference room in matching black outfits and Nikes, having hitched a ride in the tail of a comet that would deliver them to a higher plane of existence, one where agents keep 90 percent and the Sarah Michelle Gellar space is suddenly not so meaningful.

Hey, aspiring actors, are you looking for a high-powered agent to help kick-start your career and get out from behind that bar at the Standard? The answer to your problem couldn't be simpler: Blow an agent's assistant!

Word on the ten-percent-earning street is that Michelle Bohan is fleeing the warm, elderly embrace of the William Morris Agency for Endeavor's come-hither-so-I-can-lift-your-wallet-while-hugging-you stare. We hear she's taking clients Ashley Judd, Kevin Bacon, Alfred Molina, and Benjamin Bratt with her, where they can all willfully ignore recent Endeavor signee Paris Hilton at the firm's next potluck dinner at Agent Dance mascot Ari Emmanuel's house (pictured, as always, at left). That chick cannot cook a fucking tuna casserole to save her life!

OK, Hollywood hotshot, pop quiz. You're a small time management firm/talent agency, and one of your clients lands a totally sweet, three-line role as "Wine Hostess" on The OC. What do you do?

The THR reports that Endeavor has been delivered a little bundle of tabloid-swaddled joy, as Paris Hilton has signed with the the agency to handle all aspects of her...what exactly does she "do," outside of, you know, the night-vision doggystyling and the VIP room vagina-flashing? Perhaps that's why she needs the agency—to focus and assist the more efficient monetizing her assets. In any case, a word of advice to her new shop: When you're fucking Paris, you're fucking every agent she's ever been with. Be safe.

They infest the industry's hottest parties, hang with the town's most rarefied crowds, they're rich, and they often wear lovely suits while trying to siphon millions from celebrity bank accounts. We know what you're thinking: It's another post about agents. Well, you're half-right! Welcome to another fascinating, enormous commission-generating part of the high-level service sector, the world of real estate agents. Peruse in gape-mouthed horror these excerpts from a Details profile of Hollywood's Century-21-but-with-better-blow set:

· The Agent Dance Mini: CAA agent Michael Wimer is getting ready to bolt to form a production company with Roland Emmerich at Columbia, where the two will attempt to make movies where lots of shit blows up; to maintain a proper agent-equilibrium, Endeavor's Spencer Baumgarten fills a spot a CAA. [Variety, Variety ]
· Ed Burns will write, direct, and star in The Groomsmen, and somehow wrangles a cast of Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, Matthew Lillard, Jay Mohr, Jessica Capshaw, and Donal Logue, an ensemble who clearly haven't seen Sidewalks of New York (and that includes Murphy, who was in the movie). [THR]
· NBC signs Fear Factor executive producer Matt Kunitz to a two-year development deal; Kunitz will spend the pact's duration trying to figure out even more ways for desperate actors and actresses to devour the genitalia of animals. [Variety]
· Sun rises, sun sets, American Idol crushes its competition in the ratings. How far can we be from an all-Idol, all-the-time Fox schedule? More importantly, when is America going to vote off the off-key singing fat guy who looks like a giant, scary baby? [THR]
· Superhero villains Ian "Magneto" McKellan and Alfred "Doctor Octopus" Molina score roles in The Da
Vinci Code adaptation, which is apparently undergoing a slow transformation into a comic-book movie. [Variety]

Following agent Steve Dontanville's "abdication of the queen's throne" (queen imagery his, not ours) at William Morris last week, perky superstar Reese Witherspoon has canned the agency. (It must be such a relief for the WMA gang to have someone fire them for non-magazine related reasons! Do you think they had cake?) Witherspoon's on the cutting edge of the new, agent-dumping hotness, in which stars dismiss their reps without lacerating themselves and submerging their bloody bodies into another ten-percent shark tank. Trailblazing daredevils such as Bruce Willis (CAA), Ice Cube (same), and Halle Berry (WMA) have all recently jettisoned their extraneous agent cargo, bravely making a go of their careers with a tiny support system of managers, lawyers, and publicists. They are heroes for a new era—at least until they give up and sign with ICM or Endeavor...or go running back to their old shops for some sloppy make-up sex.

We apologize to those of you who forwarded us copies of William Morris bigwig Steve "Ten Percent of the Reese Witherspoon Space" Dontanville's highly amusing e-mail announcing his retirement from The Life yesterday. Between the shockwaves at Universal and the shocking—shocking!—revelations about the disposition of a certain pop-star's uterus, we lost track of what's really important—properly chronicling the cute goodbye notes of an agent who's putting himself out to pasture. Here it is, and make sure you read through to the end.

Admit it. For a second there, you thought that somebody finally scraped up the cash to buy William Morris.

Yesterday's Page Six item about director Matthew Vaughn leaving William Morris for Endeavor also featured this seemingly inconsequential throw-in: