The entertainment industry runs on freebies; gift bags filled with fur-lined DVD players and diamond-studded iPod holders, private jet rides to Cannes, dinners paid for by your agent or producer. If you are anyone in Hollywood, the world lines up to hand over its goods on a platinum platter. And in Hollywood, being handed a check is akin to being served notice that the world is wondering when you are going to remove your stinking carcass from its immaculately scrubbed foyer.

Today, The Wrap reports on the fallout from CAA's ultimate power move. A year ago, the uber-agency decided fatefully to make its guests pay for their own parking, a shot across the bow akin to making visitors sign a declaration that they are nothing, not even insects, before the might talent agency. Apparently, the Wrap has learned, the move saved the agency $800,000 this year in validations.

What are they doing with that $800,000 in blood money? Buying miles of rain forest or opening a new convalescence home for elderly development executives? Perhaps investing in a decent script for client Reese Witherspoon?

No, according to The Wrap, this draconian cutback comes in the face of massive bonuses this year. It seems the agency is planning, more or less, to take Hollywood's parking fees and give them to their agents in the form of one-thousand-dollar bills that they will use to light their illegally imported cigars. (Celebrity clients, The Wrap reasonably speculates, are still validated.)

Parking in Century City, where the agency is located, is indeed about the steepest valet tab on the planet, with a two-hour visit running as high as $34. The piece points out " visitors to CAA — really, I'm not kidding — have taken to parking at the Century City mall." The mall is a full half a block away, caddy corner across the intersection, in Earth distances. In LA distance, however, walking half a block is the equivalent of marching approximately 14 and three-quarters miles anywhere else on the planet, a marathon slog truly beneath the dignity of visitors to the most powerful agency in the world.

However, for the masters of CAA, who can stand, cigar in hand, currency smoldering in the ashtray and stare out the window watching their non-celebrity clients trudge foot after desperate foot down the block, waiting in anguish for the crosswalk light to change — for those with that privileged view, all must seem very right with the world indeed.

• The DVR playback numbers are in! Nielsen measures and tabulates up the number of people who ultimately end up watching a show, even long after they air, often boosting upwards a show's total number. The big winners for thus far for the new season: dramas seem to be the viewing of choice in playback mode, in particular, the season premieres of Gray's Anatomy and The Mentalist. The big loser: NBC in general, and The Jay Leno Show in particular which saw almost no playback viewing. [Variety]

• The world's Disney Stores are getting a "floor to ceiling reboot" according to the NY Times. The family entertainment giant wants to turn the experience of shopping for Disney merchandise into more of well, an experience and is considering rebranding the stores as Imagination Parks. [NYT]

• Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, the team behind Comedy Central's recently concluded Reno 911 (and long ago of MTV's The State) have signed a deal to develop a new comedy for NBC. [THR]

• Paramount has paid two million dollars for a pitch. The untitled, undescribed, unknown feature is to be fleshed out by writers Aline Brosh McKenna and Simon Kinberg, and — if you wondered why the big price tag — produced by JJ Abrams. [Variety]

• Matthew Perry wants back on primetime. The former Friend has signed a deal with Sony to develop a single camera sitcom. [THR]

• The Weekly World News tabloid, famed for chronicling negotiations between America's political leaders and extraterrestrial visitors has signed CAA as its agency. The firm will develop entertainment properties based on WWN's cast of characters. No word yet whether Bat Boy will be seated with his fellow client Steven Spielberg at the CAA Christmas party. [THR]

Now that Emanuel has successfully merged Endeavor, the agency he co-founded, with the venerable William Morris Agency, he has the opportunity to "fuck CAA," something that's been rumored to motivate him to get out of bed each morning. How will Emanuel do it? By controlling everything.

Ari Emanuel has made a bold calculation: in order to survive, talent firms are going to have to do more. They must stop being simple deal-makers, become "mega-agencies" – vast, multi-faceted companies with marketing departments, events divisions, and new media offshoots which help clients to leverage income from a wide variety of sources.

Agents will also have to take a more pro-active role in the actual creation of films, making them more likely to be called upon to "package" a production: attaching directors, producers, and actors from their own stable to a particular project, before selling it to the studios.

In such a business, larger firms boast a huge competitive advantage. CAA recently announced it will move into new territory financing new films. Taken to its natural conclusion, this could dramatically alter the sort of films that make it to cinemas.

Optimists, which Hollywood is never short of, believe that this represents the potential to produce a new "golden age" of film-making, where power is returned to creatives, instead of being stifled by studios. "Ari created his new firm because he knew he had to be big to be at the level where he could successfully do that," says a former colleague of Emanuel's. "It's a gamble, frankly, but if anyone can pull it off, he can."

Whether or not "packaging" and the ever-growing power of Hollywood talent management firms is a good or bad thing is open to debate, and frankly we're kind of torn on the matter, but for anyone to suggest, as the anonymous "optimists" cited in the article do, that the industry's progression toward mega-agencies is even remotely rooted in an idealistic desire to revitalize its level of artistic integrity is, well, just plain stupid.

The types of people who become agents are almost universally motivated by one thing—Money. And sex, but mostly money. Even more so than the people who work in studios, agents are driven by greed. Just ask anyone who's ever had an agent in Hollywood and we're pretty sure that they'll confirm that. Not that's there's anything all too necessarily wrong with that, we just felt compelled to address that ridiculous fantasy here and now.

Finally, with all this hype going around about Ari Emanuel, we're kind of eager to see how his inevitable downfall will play out. Will some renegade screenwriter step up to be the Joe Eszterhas to Ari's Mike Ovitz? Regardless, we give Ari's reign of terror somewhere between five and ten years, depending on how long his brother is working in the White House. Hollywood may be a town full of pricks, but it's a town with a history of taking down any one prick that dares to swell too much bigger than any of the others.

Ari Emanuel: 21st Century Hollywood Mogul [Independent]

Ominously named The Intelligence Group, CAA's market research subsidiary "builds creative solutions for (their) clients." But their "best known division" is Youth Intelligence. According to their language they're the "premier research group focused on Gen X and Gen Y (ages 14 to 39)," to all of which I say: nice demos.

But: do the higher ups at CAA know that the swarmy pollsters Youth Intelligence put a poll out in the field only a day after Michael Jackson's death, looking to do focus group work on Jackson's demise? The email:

From: YI PANEL
Subject: the passing of michael jackson
To: [Redacted]
Date: Friday, June 26, 2009, 9:05 PM

Hello friends-

The passing of Michael Jackson was a crazy surprise, and has left many of us truly saddened. He was a pretty incredible artist whose influence on pop culture is immeasurable. Because the impact of his music, his fashion, and his talents was felt by so many around the world, we're very much interested in your reaction to his passing.

What does Michael Jackson mean to you?
What kind of impact did he have on your life?
Are you doing anything to memorialize him? If so, what?

It would be awesome if you could send us your thoughts by Sunday night - and thank you for sharing.

The Intelligence Group

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Awesome, indeed. We received this email late Friday night; I contacted The Intelligence Group for comment, they have yet to get back to me.

On that note, we've got three questions for The Intelligence Group:

1. Aren't the results of this research ultimately going to be swayed and too varied due to the intense newsdump that's taken place over the weekend to be of any substantial use?

2. Market research one day after Jackson died, with the body still warm, and someone's looking for answers that will eventually lead them to build a "creative solution" somewhere?

3. Won't the gigantic celebrities CAA represents - among them, friends and cohorts of Jackson's, surely - find this a little, uh, callous?

You can reach us here with whatever answers you've got for us. It would be awesome if you could send us your thoughts by the time your CAA overlords read this. And thanks for sharing.

- Gawker Weekend

· A tipster writes: "CAA is no longer validating parking. So if you are there for a meeting before 5pm, you have to pay $35 for parking." Is this true? Let us know.
· Meanwhile, blowing some dude in the bathrooms is still free of charge. (Same as on the Disney lot, too, Green Sweater Guy.)
· Finally—the first 3-D porn is shooting. Good thing you're wearing plastic glasses.
· We love nothing more than some gefilte celebrity: Here's the perfect British movie star, comprising Hugh Grant's hair, Daniel Craig's eyes, Orlando Bloom's nose, and Ewan McGregor's jaw. Result? Um—positively gorgeous!
· NBC finds a captive audience in American Airlines flights.

Sort of. After all, can DreamWorks or CAA ever really find consolation in a Tropic Thunder campaign pushing Downey as Best Supporting Actor? They'd better — neither Downey nor Foxx had a shot at Best Actor anyway with Sean Penn (Milk), Josh Brolin (W.), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) and Brad Pitt widely foreseen to hold down four of the five slots, and the latter star's Curious Case of Benjamin Button (not to mention, to a lesser degree, Downey's Iron Man performance) already drawing from Paramount's awards war chest.

DreamWorks insiders are still griping over some perceived revenge from Paramount, but even they'd acknowledge that The Soloist is better off with spring prestige all to itself. And that a nominated blackface performance is no doubt one of the least controversial ways to revive public interest in the Oscars. We're pulling for you, RDJ.

• 'Soloist' won't play holiday [Variety]

• 2008 Oscar race turned 'upside-down' [THR]

"He told me later that I had turned him gay . . . by taking codeine again. And I said, 'You know, I never read that warning on the label.' I thought it said 'heavy machinery,' not homosexuality - turns out I could have been driving those tractors all along!' "

Sadly, our first reaction to the allegation — "That's so gay" — has been deemed verboten by Hillary Duff. Instead, then, we wonder whether Lourd's "gay pill" theory could explain all those Tylenol PM sponsorships at gay events: it's all a master plan by the pharmaceutical industry to keep us queer! Diabolical — and fabulous.

• PRINCESS CARRIE SETTLES SCORES [Page Six]

I work near the Hyatt and I just got this email from the bulding manager:

"Please be advised that you may experience a traffic delay today on Avenue of the Stars due to a Republican Party Fundraiser at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza. The fundraiser, featuring Republican Vice-Presidential Nominee, Sarah Palin, is expected to begin at 5:30 p.m. A protest rally sponsored by California Democrats is expected to begin at 4:30 p.m. Please use caution when exiting or entering from Avenue of the Stars."

This is happening across the street from CAA.

Hey, look at that! It is happening across the street from CAA. But we thought this was just John McCain's party tonight, and that Palin was coming to town this weekend. Not that she's not welcome, of course, and she can raise $3,000 fast with a short trip to the Valley. Still, though, shouldn't she be preparing for tomorrow's debate? And in any case, what do you think is the over/under on this neighborhood black hole's temperature below freezing? Whatever your guess, feel free to calculate it later — you've got a detour to plan!

Rancic, who hosts E! News with Ryan Seacrest, is suing her former agency for "breach of contract and fiduciary duty," according to her lawyer, Lavely & Singer bulldog Paul Sorrell. "They put the interests of other clients they had ahead of hers," Sorrell said. "It was a major conflict of interest, so she fired them."

Now that the Dam of Obviousness has been breached, we expect lawsuits against WMA any minute on the grounds that "they exist," "they take ten percent commission," and "they're mean." We've contacted William Morris for comment, though we've been assured "they'll get back to you soon, they're just at lunch — I mean, 'really swamped right now.'"

• SUE THE AGENT [New York Post]

In April 2002, an agent named Sandra Epstein sued Endeavor, alleging, among other things, sexual harassment and pointing out that at one point she had been the lone woman among a dozen male agents. ...

Mr. Emanuel, the filings said, allowed a friend to operate a pornographic Web site out of the agency’s quarters. Also, according to Ms. Epstein’s filings, Mr. Emanuel made antigay and racist remarks — accusations he disputed at the time.

Ms. Epstein said Mr. Emanuel blocked her from sending a script about the Navy Seals to the actor Wesley Snipes. “That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” the agent was reported in the papers to have said. “Everyone knows that blacks don’t swim.”

It's all good now, reports the Times's Michael Cieply, and thank God: We'd hate to see CAA get too far ahead when it comes to classiness.

• Agents Replaying a Hollywood Drama [NYT]

Let me preface by saying as an assistant here, there isn't as much baby eating as the defamer HQ might think. It's actually quite corporate and business-friendly, and it's honestly a really good company to work for (especially when there are so few jobs out there overall).

BUT, this parking thing is really annoying.

Not only do we get packed in like sardines on p4, but many of us have emailed the hr department just asking why the change, but no explanation has been given. It easily adds 20 minutes of frustration to my day (I get enough the other 10 hours I'm here, I don't want to be frustrated when I shouldn't have to be), not to mention the time I spend stuck on the escalator behind people who refuse to treat it as anything other than a leisurely ride (STOP STANDING ON THE FUCKING ESCALATOR, IF YOU WERE THAT LAZY JUST WAIT AN EXTRA MINUTE AND TAKE THE DAMN ELEVATOR).

Ironically, if it is a cost-cutting measure, as I'm sure it is, much of the savings has to be spent on the 20 or so employees they have down there just directing us where to turn, where to park, moving the cars around, getting us our keys, and generally just standing around pretending to be busy. Not to mention all the little pieces of cardboard paper they're wasting.

Blech.

Blech indeed. We'd recommend downloading a PDF of the complete Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Metro Bus & Metro Rail System Map, but we understand how some agents prefer that their assistants not use public transportation, in case they get a mid-afternoon hankering for some green tea Pinkbaby ("Fool! I said Cocoa Krispies—not Cap'n Crunch!") and need to dispatch their employees for a quick run.

• Previously: CAA Assistants Banished To The Darkest Reaches Of Death Star's Reactor Parking Core [Defamer]

I'm told that CAA is making all their assistants park in the bottom level of their garage in horrid stack parking.

Plus, there's only one elevator that goes down there at 2000 Avenue Of The Stars. And there's some sort of tracking system to make sure the peons park in their pen. Also, some of the assistants have been stuck in the garage for 30 minutes because the valets lost their keys with the stack parking.

We're concerned. The Death Star's P-4 level is a dangerous place for someone to wander alone. Forget rapists—those guys are all upstairs—this concrete dungeon, a full level beneath the infant-blood-filled oak-barrels on P-3, is teeming with Parking Structure Trolls and the highly magnetized, tinfoil-wrapped remains of an other-worldly visitor the attendants call "the Ovitz." Just be careful down there, guys, OK?

• CAA's New Way of Humiliating Assistants [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

A Fox spokesman sent over the studio's official response late Tuesday:

The Defamer.com story about the Studio banning CAA from the Fox lot, is categorically untrue. The exchange, which took place well over a year ago, between a Fox executive and a CAA agent — that supposedly triggered the "ban" — never at any point escalated to the level and language as reported on Defamer.com.

Oh, that clears everything up. A few hours later the exact same non-denial denial showed up on Deadline Hollywood Daily. There, infallible attack creep Nikki Finke scarfed down a plate of face-value spin while attributing bad agency reporting to everyone from Anne Thompson to Patrick Goldstein to Kim Masters and finally yours truly, to whom she attributed a Gossip Apocalypse that pierced the fragile, fledgling Death Star to its very soul. She had already sent us a bullying note about the veracity of our Aloni item, much like previous harassments that accused us of misleading our readers and "fudging the truth for just a few more dollars" — this from someone we've caught whitewashing any of her own gossip that bothered to stand still for her. "Whatever," we thought. "You can't fix crazy."

This morning we had a look at Tuesday evening's Variety headlines, one of which read, "CAA Agent on Defamer's Radar." The accompanying excerpt was... interesting:

"Business News: Dan Aloni in rumored Fox beef with Atomic CEO — In the cutthroat world of agenting, power reps make plenty of enemies. CAA agent Dan Aloni is no exception, but he appears to be the target of an exceptional Internet smear campaign."

So on one side we've got Nikki Finke cursing a gossip blog for, you know, gossiping; on another we've got Fox, vaguely acknowledging an "exchange" almost despite itself; and on yet another we've got the industry's biggest trade publication quietly pulling back accusations of our "exceptional Internet smear campaign." Ever curious, we hopped on the phone with the only people we thought might know something about all this.

"I'll let Fox's statement stand for itself," said the CAA spokesman we contacted this morning, who declined to specify if the agent cited was in fact Aloni. Did anyone at CAA call Variety? "I didn't call Variety, and I'm not aware of any smear campaign," he said. "I can't speak for everybody at the company, but I didn't call them."

OK! Well, it's back to you, readers. If we're so wrong, why does it seem like we're the only ones not on the defensive?

Because we're told that the paragons of feminism at CAA, less than a month removed from throwing a birthday party for ex-con Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, attempted to sweep the contretemps under the rug after their $15 million man Aloni apparently lied about and then offered a "token apology" for his outburst. Meanwhile, other female execs at Fox (including Fox 2000 president Liz Gabler) corroborated the agent's abusive tradition, driving Chernin to act.

It was only last fall that Chernin's thinly veiled CAA wariness showed up in a Fortune profile of the agency ("They have put themselves in a place where they just have so much control over the business. ... Of course, that's not always to the good of companies like mine, but certainly as an outside admirer you have to admire their strategic thinking"), and everyone in town knows there's more where that came from. The scope and length of this Cold War has yet to be determined, meanwhile, but don't hesitate to send us your educated guesses.

Caa steals ideas and claims them as their own. I would avoid them if you are smart. As they did to Matthew Mark@ and MY Model song. David Zedeck is responsible at NY for the copyright infringement of the song and Geffen Records as well as Joseph Simpson and Ashlee his daughter.

The same accuser, who threatened the Simpsons, Zedeck and Geffen with a $40 million lawsuit in a barely literate press release in January, also hacked Joe Simpson's article for good measure: "Joseph Simpson is a crook and steals ideas as he did with the My Model song his daughter Ashlee sings and claims as her own. ... Avoid him and practices at any cost." Ashlee avoided direct attack herself, and the elder Simpson's own record has since been scrubbed clean as well, freeing him and CAA to polish their scorching cease-and-desist letter in relative peace and quiet.

• Creative Artists Agency [Wikipedia]

And why the sudden case of itchy feet? Posits Variety:

Writers and their agents say that the post-writers strike and pre-actors strike funk has ramped up agency raiding of rival clients...Add in stress-inducing factors — expected post-strike writing assignments that never materialized; studios squeezing quotes on the few jobs that do exist; studios having filled out slates through 2009; and the lack of greenlights until a SAG deal is in place — and the combination is a perfect storm of anxiety that has made talent, writers included, particularly susceptible to sweet talk from other agents.

Or maybe they're just promiscuous rep-sluts, in dire of a Dr. Drew® Intervention™.

• Top Hollywood scribes making moves [Variety]

Primarily through new ventures that not only go around the studios, but around traditional distribution entirely. While the networks and studios all have subsidiaries producing content strictly for online distribution, the talent contracts are still typical pay-as-you-go deals (and meager at that). Agencies have been most enthusiastic about new busines models — probably because they're already realizing efficiencies in terms of talent discovery using the Internet, which allows them to get around scouts and managers and reach new faces easily and cheaply.

A number of agencies have begun embracing new models. 60frames, an online video startup, took $3.5 million in venture funding and was incubated by the United Talent Agency. Creative Artists Agency is assembling a $200 million venture fund with partner Draper Fisher Jurvetson. International Creative Management is reportedly talking to Qualcomm about raising their own cash. And William Morris has helped back a $500 million SPAC to fund M&A deals, with Ashton Kutcher serving on the board. The draw for the agencies is the ability to own a piece of the company that distributes work from their own talent stables.

The only problem is, that gives them a conflict of interest when negotiating with the studios. Why pitch deals to the studio for the standard 10 percent cut when in-house deals would result in agency fees and back-end profits? And no one knows how this will shake out for talent. As LivePlanet producer Sean Bailey pointed out to reporter Laura M. Holson, "People in Silicon Valley too want their pound of flesh."

(Photo by Getty/Sharon Dominick)