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]

Ari "has emerged in the last six weeks as the pre-eminent power player in a Hollywood that has often bemoaned the sunset of colorful moguls from an older generation...." What has he done in those six weeks, exactly? He merged his agency with William Morris and then fired everyone at William Morris.

But we all know that Ari is relentlessly ambitious and cutthroat—in fact we know this is true of the entire Emanuel family, even the doctor one. So what is really different? Why does it matter that Ari is threatening the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment "with personal ruin"? Surely he's done that a million times before?

"Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of Ari Emanuel, especially now that his brother is running the White House," said one television executive, who asked for anonymity to preserve harmony with him.

Oh, hah. Of course! Rahm is the most second-most powerful man in the country now, so all of show business belongs to his brother.

[Photo: Getty]

Unlike so many other Hollywood stars, parents approve of these upstanding young men, who wear their good intentions right on their heads in the form of Purity Yarmulkes. Catch them next in The Emanuel Brothers: The 3-D Experience, the poster of which features the boys clutching Fendi bags on the steps of Air Force One as they jet off to play a command performance at President Elect Barack Obama's Inauguration. [Thanks to NOTFAIL blog for a Photoshop we really wish we'd thought of ourselves.]

• Previously: Rahm Emanuel Fun-Fact Addendum: Probably Loathes Andy Samberg [Defamer]

Or maybe by the network, fearing the overindulgence of cursing, bleeped or not. Or maybe even by Samberg himself, fearing some Emanuelian turnabout for casting the Illinois representative as the boorish lout who would "strip [Joe Lieberman] naked and make yhttp://publish.gawker.com/ged/newou walk your McCain-loving-ass back to Connecticut, you fucking turncoat." We'll likely never really know why the sketch was killed, but we favor the latter scenario, just for the potential for Emanuel to threaten to "crack that big fucking nose of his" while teasing an SNL guest appearance in the weeks ahead.

• 'Saturday Night Live' [NBC]

1. Their father is an Israel-born pediatrician, their mother a former X-ray technician, a onetime rock club owner, and a civil rights activist. She would take her sons along on the demonstrations if they were peaceful.
2. They grew up poor, leaving one apartment because it was rat-infested, and another because neighbors complained that the three Emanuel boys were too rambunctious.
3. He lost half of his right middle finger after a meat-slicer accident while working at Arby's as a teenager. It happened on prom night, and led to a bone and blood infection that nearly took his life. His fever went as high as 106.

4. Rahm is the inspiration for Bradley Whitford's character Josh Lyman on The West Wing.
5. He was encouraged to take ballet lessons as a boy, and he excelled at it so much, he eventually won a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet. He turned it down to attend Sarah Lawrence College.
6. He worked on Paul Simon's 1984 Senate bid.
7. He volunteered in Israel during the Gulf War, and was assigned to rust-proof breaks at an army base.
8. The same year, he convinced Bill Clinton to put off campaigning in New Hampshire to raise funds instead. It was a strategy credited with winning Clinton the election.
9. He acted as a senior advisor in the Clinton regime from 1993 to 1998, but was demoted one year after Clinton took office. After the '96 election, he planned on quitting, but Clinton gave him George Stephanopoulos's post as senior advisor for policy and strategy.
10. During his 1992 run for Congress, Edward Moskal, president of the Polish American Congress, called him a "millionaire carpetbagger who knows nothing [about] our heritage." He also falsely claimed that Rahm was a dual Israeli citizen and fought in their army.
11. He was named DCCC chairman in 2005, and butted heads with DNC chair Howard Dean over Dean's "50-state" strategy—in one heated exchange, Rahm even lobbed an F-bomb and stormed out of the room.
12. Torn over who to support in a Presidential bid between longtime friend Hillary and home-state senator Barack, Rahm said, "I'm hiding under the desk. I'm very far under the desk, and I'm bringing my paper and my phone."
13. He practices Orthodox Judaism with his wife, Amy Rule, and their three children, Zacharias, Ilana, and Leah.
14. He's a triathlete.
15. His name means "high" in Hebrew.
16. He doesn't recommend that colleagues appear on The Colbert Report, though he himself has appeared numerous times on The Daily Show.
17. His date of birth is November 29th, 1959.
18. He has photos of sunsets in his office and David Gray on his iPod.
19. He's quick with a zinger. Example: On the Clinton Days: “Back then, stimulus and package had a whole different meaning.” ”I’ve spent more alone time with Bill than Hillary.” On Fred Thompson: “He had an interesting take on No Child Left Behind. He married one.”
20. His nickname is Rahmbo. Even his mother uses it.