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Entourage/Real People Fiction

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Building Steam from a Grain of Salt: The Story of Ari Gold

Art by Slodwick.

From the Inside Jacket:

Once upon a time there was a Jewish boy from New York named Ari. He was the baddest motherfucker in the Valley. Actually, he had to move to California to be the baddest motherfucker in the valley, because the valleys back east couldn't contain his brilliance and magnetism. Or his dick. Ari was hung like a horse. (Please note that the ghostwriter of this book has tried to keep herself from making such potentially libelous statements, but the subject matter actually dropped his trousers in front of her, so she can say with certainty that Ari's at least in the 6 inches plus category.) We're digressing. This is the story of the Little Jewish Boy who decided to take L.A. by the balls and squeeze until they said, "Oh, fuck, you win."

Sometimes, if you're lucky, and you squeeze hard enough, you get Gold.

This book is dedicated to George, because he keeps me in Armani and Ferragamo, and because he paid for the plasma screen television in my bathroom and introduced me to my wife.

This book *should* be dedicated to my wife, but she's got me on blow job lockdown right now, so, fuck that -- kids, don't read this book until you're 45. Daddy says so.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ONE
Westchester, represent.

TWO
How to run Harvard Business School from your dorm like the pimp you are.

THREE
Fuck the little people. The mailroom is for suckers.

FOUR
Ari Emanuel is a scruffy-looking nerf-herder.

FIVE
Mrs. Ari

SIX
George, period.

SEVEN
ER AKA We're rich, bitch!

EIGHT
Building steam from a grain of salt (or how drinking sake with John Woo and George Clooney will fuck your shit up).

NINE.
You've got Gold

TEN
How to survive in the clusterfuck known as Hollywood.

EPILOGUE
Let's hug it out, bitch.

Introduction

I've known Ari Gold for more than fifteen years, and in that time he's insulted me, my family, his family, my friends, his friends (who believe me, are few and far between), and pretty much everyone and anything that moves, breathes, or exists. Ari is not a nice guy. He's not a tactful guy either. If Ari is employing tact, you've probably just lost everything you own and he doesn't want you chaining yourself to his desk. But this is just how Ari is; you either accept it or file a lawsuit.

It's not easy working with Ari, either; he has an uncompromising vision that doesn’t leave a lot of room for other people or bathroom breaks, but you will never find someone who is more loyal. If Ari believes in you, you'll get that house in Lake Como. If he doesn't like you, El Pollo Loco is always hiring, Bradley.

[content redacted by the law firm of Holland, McDonald and Morgan]

And that's the story of how Ari drove Michael Ovitz to the bottle and ruined Ben Affleck's career forever. Never under estimate the power of a good voodoo practitioner.

There were all these things that I was going to say in the introduction to try and prepare you, the reader, for the Ari experience, but the fact of the matter is that nothing can ever prepare you for Ari. He is loud and brash and offensive and brilliant. There are lots of people who are still in therapy for just having brushed past him at The Ivy.

Ari is Ari, and he will never change, but this is why I love Ari.

I have to go have a large whiskey now.

- G. Clooney

ONE: WESTCHESTER REPRESENT

I was born Ariel Hiram Gold on May 2, 1965, to Ruth and Matthew Gold in Westchester, New York, and the first bitch to mock me about my name will get a smackdown that'll have you eating through a straw for a month.

The first thing that you should know is that I was born with a big dick, no matter what that bitch Elsbeth Hubert said in high school, and this is why I pissed on the rabbi at my bris, because nobody will ever touch the family jewels with something sharp, ever.

Unfortunately, I was too young to really enforce this rule, but as I got older you better believe I was running shit. If anybody was going to be wielding sharp objects and sending people to therapy for life, it was going to be me.

The second thing you should know is that, yes, my mom is that one hot MILF that everybody wanted. Yes, she was Miss Jewish New York 1956. Yes, this is all I have heard my entire fucking life. And okay, it's one thing to charge admission to seeing your cousins change on Martha's Vineyard, but it's something else entirely to talk about the Original Mrs G-Money.

Do not ever talk about my mom or they'll never find your body, because I'll chop it up while you're still breathing and feed it to the piranhas that live in my koi pond. They ate all the fucking koi -- you get the picture.

And to all those cocksuckers who said I was bred in a test tube, fuck you, you're just jealous that I'm this handsome.

I was the last of three boys –- but fuck them, because all my life I've been "the baby" -- and let me tell you, that shit is rough. There's nothing like continually getting your head flushed down the toilet to make you a man, and if that won't do it, being Jewish will.

How many other religions do you know of that have a party to commemorate chopping up a baby's dick? Too blatant for you? Fuck you. That's life in the trenches, and it's the sort of shit that prepares you for working in Hollywood. Let me tell you right now that having your dick chopped when you're little is nothing compared to the meat grinder that is working for Ari Emanuel or Terence McQuewick, and now that I have kids, I flush their heads at least once a week to bring'em up right. Just kidding, sweetie.

Note: That was for my wife, not any of you half-breeds. And I'll tell you right now, life is better when you're married, because then you can stop lying all the time. Martin Lawrence had that shit right. There are other reasons to get married, like tax breaks and shit, but if you hire yourself a good attorney you can normally get rid of the tax thing altogether.

Now, back to me as a kid. The third thing I'd just like to tell you is that whatever you heard about the Jewish mafia is totally true. My mom was a princess, seriously, and if you pissed off the princess, your life was fucking hell.

My Uncle Rudy used to carry around a set of brass knuckles to "take care" of anybody who upset my mom or my Aunt Sarah. Aunt Sarah was a tough bitch, too, she once ran over some schmuck who was crossing the street too slowly.

Life with my mom totally prepared me for life with my wife. No matter what self-help shit your Park Avenue therapist tells your parents when you're caught smoking up at Exeter, Chris Rock and I'll tell it to you straight, when you are married your life is all about your wife.

You can pretend otherwise, but the only thing that's important is making that bitch happy; I learned this from my dad. Who learned this from his dad -– you get how this shit goes.

Now, I know a lot of you are like, why the fuck is Ari putting all his business out in the street like he's fresh off the boat? Why is he talking about that one time he sold lemonade spiked with his dad's gin and got the rabbi drunk? Why is he admitting that he shared a hooker with George Clooney, and I'll tell you why up front –- because it's all about getting in there first.

If you think some motherfucker is gonna cockblock you or spill your business in the street? Get in there first.

Damage control, bitches, it's the only way to survive.

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER TWO

I used to sell marijuana at Harvard, and let me tell you, I made a fucking killing. I had people offering me their cars, their first borns, and their moms. I had people offering to suck my dick 25 hours a day and 8 days a week. After a while, I had to stop taking blow jobs as payment, because my dick started to chafe, but that was only a 4-day weekend. And you know the best shit about this? My supplier was my roommate, Warren Rubenstein, and that, kids, is how you run shit right.

Wait, let me back it up.

The first thing you learn at Harvard is how to smoke weed. They don’t tell you this shit in the brochure, or when you're doing that walkthrough with your parents, or when you're slaving your ass over that goddamn fucking Kaplan prep for the GMAT, but that's another story altogether. Let's just say that you're one of the smart few who know how to fuck, blow, or blackmail their way through the illustrious Ivy League gates –- this is when the fun really fucking begins.

Once you've actually gotten in, you'd have be dumber than George Bush -- either iteration -- to get your ass kicked out. Hell, I know guys who never went to class, never took a fucking exam, never wrote a fucking paper, and still managed a cum laude –- but I guess that was all their parents could afford to buy them.

Anybody worth their salt is going make sure their parents have coughed up for a summa cum laude (at the very least) before they sign those admission forms or you might as well just save up the money and buy your ass a double-wide instead.

Now, about Harvard weed. Every Ivy League has their drug of choice: Columbia is all-coke-all-the-time, too much New York shit fucking with their brains. Brown is LSD, because anybody who gives themselves their own grades and doesn't ace everything has to be higher than Rush Limbaugh. Dartmouth and Princeton are more into heroin, because they all want to be edgy and because you know those uptight legacy motherfuckers have to look good for mommy and daddy.

Yale is crystal meth because they want to be creative, which is really over-fucking-rated. Cornell and Penn motherfuckers are so far down on the scale I'm pretty sure they're smoking crack.

Harvard kids smoke weed, because we have the smartest fuckers in the country and therefore we can grow the best shit ever. Any Sudafed snorting motherfucker can whip you up a few tabs of Ecstasy, but it takes real art to make quality marijuana.

The only person I've ever come across who had better shit than the stuff we smoked at Harvard is Snoop, and that's just because he has a team of Harvard scientists working on his shit around the clock.

Right, so, back to me being The Ganja Scarface.

--27--

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER THREE

I graduated from Harvard Business School in May of 1989.

I was second in my class of one-hundred and three students, but only because the lesbian bitch that finished ahead of me took one for the team and sucked off the male head of the Marketing department. I didn't fucking fall down on the job. I'm Jewish for fuckssakes, we don't slack; although it probably didn't help that I'd stopped selling dope in the fall of my third year after the head of campus security got caught blowing Warren for an 1/8th.

Normally, that shit wouldn't even have slowed production down, but some fucker from the Dean's office found out –- probably a goddamn fundie -- and the Student Union got called to task by the administration for their lax discipline. It's not like those bitches were gonna shut me down themselves since at least 60% bought from me. Plus, if they shut me down the other 40%, who bought from my competitor –- some fucktard that's picking up your garbage if you're living in Jersey now -- never would've beat me otherwise. That beady-eyed motherfucker Chris Furness would've sooner cut off his own dick than admit I'd whupped his ass up and down the Quad profit-wise.

It is always about the money, kids. Don’t ever let anybody tell you otherwise. In this business everything comes down to how much money you can make for somebody else, and don't ever think anyone's looking out for your interests, because they're not. All your manager/agent/fuckbuddy/publicist/PR flack/assistant is thinking about is how to sell your ass for more money and how to get more blood from the industry stone.

Having said all that though, to get the Benjamins at the top of the pile you have to whore your ass out something fierce. When I came to the City of Fallen Cocksuckers, I was fresh out of school and thought my diploma was more than something that someone else would wipe their ass with.

Boy was my ass wrong.

I graduated on a Saturday and got to Hollywood on a Monday, when you know what you want, there's no point in fucking around and picking your nose. Go get whatever the fuck it is you want, chop suey. So, to Hollywood I went to become an agent, because any motherfucker can make money on Wall Street. That's where the proles and the ass-monkeys go to make a quick buck. How hard is it to rape the market? Not very. That bitch'll spread her legs faster than a Playmate, and those Wall Street queers wouldn't know a hard day's work if it fucked them up the ass.

You want to make a name for yourself? You go to L.A.

So, I went to L.A. and got my ass a job in the mailroom at William Morris. Now, I know all you fuckers are like, you pansy-ass bitch! You worked in the mailroom? Well, let me tell you: Every motherfucker works the mailroom. You mother worked the mailroom. She's still there now taking quarters for blow jobs in the bathroom. I think your dad's still there, too, taking his 10%, you stamp licking bastard.

What distinguishes the men from the shark food are the people who get out of the mailroom, and after six months of dogging Ari Emanuel's feet and getting his pasty ass lattes every fucking morning, I was promoted to a Junior Agent. Let me tell you that was truly one of the best days of my life. Since the moment I'd graced the West Coast with my presence, all I'd wanted was to follow in the footsteps of my idol Terence McQuewick; I was now, officially, on my way.

My first client?

Dr. Dre from Yo MTV Raps

You may laugh, but let me tell you, I got more ass as his agent than Hugh Hefner got the whole first year that Playboy was on newsstands. I know this because I've been to the mansion -– about twenty times –- and he told me this when we were hanging out in the reptile house. Yeah, the mansion has a reptile house. And a zoo. And a 24 hour butler and a chef. And two satellites dishes bigger than your house. And a guest house, or two. And tennis courts and all kinds of shit. Hef's living it up, kids.

Anyway, I tell you this to point out that every agent has to fucking start somewhere. Don't knock your first client, because he might make you very rich. Or at least get you paid.

Never underestimate that $50 commission you get from your Z-List client, it'll probably be what you use to pay for that dinner at Dolce.

--41--

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER SIX

I know everybody's waiting for the part where I slobber all over myself talking about George Clooney. Well, all you motherfuckers might as well exhale because it's not going to happen.

Why not?

Well, because one) this is in print and I can dine out on being a drug dealer for the next twenty years, but talking about George will get me canned by my wife for about fifty. She doesn't like it when I talk about the Other Mrs Ari, and two) since I'm not 25 and into sucking cock, George won't put out for me either. So, you see how it goes.

I will let you guys in on a little something though. When I first met George he wasn't the hot, suave bastard you see before you in People Magazine grinning and killing them dead with his leftist shit.

Hell, George he wasn't even trying to bring Caesar back from the dead on ER when I first got my hands on him. No, when I first met George, in the winter of 1989, he was a Z-Lister that you'd pass by in the supermarket and think, "Do I know him from somewhere? Did he valet my car last week at Spago?"

He was stale off of guest spots on Roseanne for fucksakes. He wasn't even a recurring character, he was just that guy that came by every now and then and got his dick out and made faces with it. So, you can guess I was real fucking excited when he became my fourth client.

Our entire first conversation went a lot like this:

--

SCENE INT WILLIAM MORRIS. ARI GOLD wheeling and dealing at my cubicle.

ENTER: George fucking Clooney.

ME: Who the hell are you?

HIM: George Clooney.

ME: Who?

HIM: George -– George Clooney, you're my new agent, right? Ari Gold?

ME: Oh, hell no. Is this a joke?

HIM: I can see we're going to get along real well. [insert droll George voice here]

ME: Fuck that, G-Money, I am not representing any achy breaky hillbillies. You want Gold? You have to get rid of the mullet; I'm calling Jose Eber right now. Who the hell is going to hire a Fast Times as Ridgemont High reject?

HIM: [insert that sly-witty smirk thing that makes all the women and fudge-packers swoon]

ME: Fine, fine, I'll represent you, but don't think I'm letting you fuck me too.

HIM: You're not my type, Ari.

ME: Please, bitch, I'm everyone's type.

--

I'd be lying if I said that I saw stars and dollar signs the first time we met; after all, George's big claim to fame was that he'd done The Facts of Life four years earlier.

That's not glam, kids, that's sleeping in the literal closet of your best friend, because you can't afford a place of your own, and moving up in the world is sharing a place with John Travolta's future beard.

But you know, George is George, and he will work his ass off when he has to. You know that Sarah Vaughn song about 'What Lola Wants' – well, Sarah never met George or she'd be singing a different song.

George is the sort of fucker who can make gold from straw or wear the same tuxedo for ten goddamn years and make it look flawless.

They can't teach you that shit in acting class; you either have it or you don't, and Mrs Ari and I thank the good Lord every day that George has it.

It's like I said earlier, you don't have to have fifty famous clients -– although that shit doesn't hurt (Hi, Sharon) -– all you need is one client that you believe in, and strangely enough, I believed in George's ass enough to try it move him from the Z-List to the Y-List.

I think Sisyphus did less fucking work pushing that rock up the hill.

In 1990 we got a pilot that didn't take and a couple movies that did fuck all, but I did bond with my client, and yes, George was my best man at my wedding to Mrs Ari. This does not mean that every client will be your best friend. Most will leave you with the fucking check at the end of dinner and a syphilitic whore in your bed the next morning.

Those aren't the kind of clients you want to keep around.

You want the kind of clients that'll help you get rid of the syphilitic whore's body the next day. Unless they're calling you from a jail cell in Tijuana because they picked up a transvestite -– but that's another story called Gary Busey.

George did play a lip-syncing transvestite in a movie called The Harvest once though -- I bet you didn't know that. Those were really lean years too, so, clearly it was before the $10 million dollar home videos shot by Steven Soderbergh and taking a dollar for Good Night, Good Luck. Hell, there were shows like Bodies of Evidence and Sunset Beat, and I can already hear everybody saying "Never fucking heard of them" –- well, duh, motherfucker. That's why they're not on the air now.

But everybody's gotta pay their dues, and if you pay enough, eventually, you'll make good. Or you just get really fucking lucky. Or you'll go back home to Utah to fuck sheep or whatever the fuck they do in the Mid-West.

If your name is George Clooney though, and you've got someone like me getting kicked out of his marital bed on a regular basis because I keep coming home late, and I've let you come over one too many times, well then eventually you get lucky and a good script comes along.

It was for a little show called ER.

--78--

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER TEN

Here's some shit they don't tell your ass when you're fresh off the Greyhound from Podunk – write it down, memorize it, fucking tattoo it on your pasty forehead, I don't care –- just remember it.

1) Nobody's going to give you anything besides genital herpes. *coughColinFarrellcough*

Everything you want from this town you're gonna have to work for, bleed for, and suck somebody's cock for. If you want money, you're gonna have to steal it. You want the good parts, you're gonna have to spread your legs or bend over and be pre-lubed.

You want loyalty, you're going to have to inspire other people to give it to you too, or you're gonna have to find my assistant Lloyd, but the first one of you to try and poach him is gonna get beat down like your name was Nancy Kerrigan.

See, I told you I'd mention you, you shirt-lifter.

2) There is no shame in knowing your asshole from your ear hole -- it just doesn't pay well.

At the end of the day if you want to swim with the big sharks: you need to know it-fucking-all. Common sense wins out over book smarts every time in this town. Harvard may have taught you how to roll a joint, but the industry can buy you your own sherpa. The big boys at Sony don't care if you've read Plato's Republic fifty times, they care if you've been in The Hollywood Reporter fifty times.

You need to know the hottest spots, the hottest drugs, all the trends, all the people, all the dishwashers. You want the connections that can get you those Manolos, so you can fuck that starlet. You want to know that Jose can provide you with filet mignon at 4am so your client won't pull an Ashlee Simpson at McDonalds. You want to know Jesse at People can put your client on page 4 instead of page 45.

3) Always listen to your gut.

If something smells shady, you're either working with somebody who doesn't wear deodorant like Angie Jolie or Matthew McConaughey, or you're about to get fucked.

You don’t want to get fucked; you want to be the one doing the fucking.

4) Always carry more than one condom.

People who don't do this end up with pregnant beards, Matt Damon.

5) Don't let anybody punk you.

When you're not the biggest fucker in the room people tend to mistake that for softness. Don't be soft, kids, that's how you get picked on. What you have to do is hire people to watch your back -- if you don't have an army of your own, like my boy Vince Chase –- and then, when shit gets hectic, you call those motherfuckers to come running.

Or, you can do like I did with John LaBruglia when he tried to take my lunch in fourth grade and kick that fucker in the nuts. Literally, metaphorically. Whatever works for you.

The overall lesson here is know your enemy's weakness. Know how to take him down. Don't ever let somebody else fuck with you and yours.

In other words -- protect your shit.

Don't ever let another man try and take what belongs to you. Your wife, your parking space, your floor seats at the Knicks. If it's yours that means it doesn't belong to somebody else, and when you sign a client that client belongs to you. Nobody should be able to interfere, ever.

I used to have a business partner, Terence McQuewick, a man I idolized forever and who is famous for making Barbra Streisand cry like a bitch. I used to fear him and adore him at the same time. He tried to take George from me during the ER days, and when I fought him hard, he made me his partner. Of course he kicked me out when he wanted to take Vinnie Chase, but I'll beat the old mother fucker with his own walker before he'll take a goddamn penny from me again.

The point is that it is up to you to nurture, encourage, get your fucking 10%, and make sure your client doesn't do something stupid like From Dusk Til Dawn or Batman and Robin.

Note: Sometimes, you let your clients do stupid shit like Batman and Robin because they're being difficult and talk politics too much at dinner. It's okay to get revenge on your clients sometimes, but only if you know you can recoup your loss later on. If you think your client is dead weight, drop that bitch off on a junior agent faster than you can say Us Weekly.

Seriously though, to me, it’s all about loyalty. If you do for me, I'll do for you. I will build you a goddamn house from a grain of salt or a bottle of sake or a Z-List career. I will give you everything I have, but you've gotta trust me. You've gotta be loyal to me.

There are a lot of people in this town who'll tell you that doesn't count for shit.

Don't believe them. You have beef? Hug it out, bitch -- and don't let the bastards grind you down.

--121--

AUTHOR'S NOTE

When my editor told me about this assignment, I literally laughed in her face. Really, you can ask her. I mean what sane person would want to work with the man who'd made enemies of half of Los Angeles? Still, I had rent to pay, and it was either ghostwrite for Ari Gold or for Harvey Weinstein -- talk about the greater of two evils.

The day I met Ari, I called my editor back, and in very colourful language told her there was no way in fucking hell I was going to take this seriously fucked up assignment and that she could go suck a dick.

She said I should sleep on it. I told her I didn't need any fucking sleep. Already the Ari influence had begun.

And that's really why I stuck this project out, because it's really easy to hate Ari, but when you see him in action, and understand what makes him tick, he's fucking fascinating. I mean, this is the sort of cocksucker you know you want to work with, even if he sends you to yoga three times a week and single-handedly buys your therapist a house in Tahoe.

There are days when you love Ari and days when you want to cut him, but he will change your life, and if nothing else, my insult lexicon thanks him for this experience

-

hackthis

Reviews of Building Steam from a Grain of Salt:

"A truly compelling work of fiction brought to you by the delusional megalomaniac at The Gold Agency. Hey, Ari? Get a reality check!"
- Leslie Sloane-Zelnick, agent to Lindsey Ho Han

"If you mentioned www.seewarnerbrothersexecsnaked.com in the book, I will kick your ass, Ari."
- Dana Gordon, WB VP of Development

"Die, Ari. Die."
- Eric Murphy, manager to Vinnie Chase

"Ari's got an autobiography? Does that mean he's dead? No? Damn."
- Brad Pitt

"I thought it was pretty funny actually. Ari, Austin says thanks for the fruit basket. Are we still coming over for brunch next week?"
- Jake Gyllenhaal.

---END---

And because no

hackthis production is complete without music:
Building Steam from a Grain of Salt: Songs Hand-picked by Ari Gold*

Foo Fighters – 'Best of You'
Wu-Tang Clan - 'C.R.E.A.M' (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)
Wings - 'Let Me Roll It'
Kanye West – 'Spaceship'
The Beatles – 'Taxman'
The Jam – 'A Town Called Malice'
Al Green – 'Love and Happiness'
McFadden & Whitehead – 'Ain't No Stopping Us Now'
James Brown -'The Boss'
Jay-Z – '99 Problems'
The Verve – 'Bittersweet Symphony'

*Mirror file here

First and foremost, thank you to

slodwick from whom all brilliant art flows, for inspiring me to write the longest thing I've written in months.

Secondly, to

literaryll for all her musical inspiration. Ari and I hope you enjoy this and that it makes your day a little brighter, because you always make our days a little brighter, too.

To

serialkarma who is so stubborn, and so difficult, and so very appreciated and loved. You can whip me up and down the street anytime.

And as always to George, err,

ethrosdemon, just because Nashville doesn't even know.