The famously gruff Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel on Monday offered health tips, shared a controversial longing for a certain Chicago pizza and pondered how a debate over movies would lead to him and his brother Zeke beating up their other brother Rahm, the former mayor of Chicago.
Emanuel, head of Endeavor Group Holdings, dropped no more than three F-bombs during a sit down with Mary Dillon of The Economic Club of Chicago that covered a wide range of topics.
Will Elon Musk, who’s on the board of Emanuel’s company, buy Twitter?
“I have no idea. I haven’t talked to him about it. He is a force of nature. ... I wouldn’t bet against him.”
On the difference between Emanuel and the way he was portrayed on the HBO hit “Entourage” by actor Jeremy Piven, he said: “I didn’t make calls or get calls in my therapy sessions with my ex-wife.”
“Hopefully all of you are watching it and continue to watch it so it goes into syndication for me and there’s more money involved,” joked Emanuel, who reportedly received a 2021 compensation package valued at $308.2 million.
While discussing his favorite movies, Emanuel said, “If my brothers were here we’d right now get into a fistfight over this conversation. ... Zeke and I would be beating up Rahm over ‘The Deer Hunter’ ... that would be our favorite, and he wouldn’t agree with that.”
On his brother Rahm’s most recent gig as U.S. Ambassador to Japan: “I think he’s loving Japan. I think he’s enjoying this end of politics.”
Emanuel, who briefly played professional racquetball before getting into entertainment, also shared a few health tips.
“I do an ice bath every day,” he said, prompting the crowd to recoil a bit. ”It’s up to you guys. I don’t care. You guys are wrong,” he said. “It does give you mental fortitude, which I think as we get older we all lose. ... I look forward to seeing you in the ice bath.”
Dillon responded: “Probably not going to happen, but I’ve done some things that were physically challenging, like giving birth four times.”
Emanuel responded: “Mazel tov!”
Emanuel said he’s also an ardent believer in regular fasting up to 18 hours a day, going without food for 24 hours once a week and 48 hours once a quarter.
But he also pondered going to Weiner’s Circle in Lincoln Park for a late-night bite Monday.
“I miss Wiener’s Circle Polish hot dogs. And I know this is going to be controversial: I miss Uno’s pizza. Don’t tell me any other pizza joint, just don’t do it. And I miss apple pancakes at Walker Brothers and I miss the Cubs, of course. I watch every game.”
Emanuel, who’s dyslexic and graduated from New Trier after much encouragement from his mother to stick with tutoring and academics, said he also plans on opening a school in Los Angeles to help kids with dyslexia get the kind of help that wasn’t available to him as a kid.
“I hated her at the time and love her now for it,” Emanuel said of his mother.
Emanuel credited investment firm chief Michael Sacks — also known as the “Rahm Whisperer” due to the informal advice he provided to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel — with getting him to participate in the event Monday.
“Michael Sacks was the one that called, he’s like the fourth brother, so I would do anything for him,” he said.
