Why Is Talent Agency WME So Obsessed With Rival CAA?
William Morris Endeavor—run by Ari Emanuel, the real-life inspiration for Jeremy Piven's twitchy Ari Gold on Entourage—empirically speaking, is a very good agency. So good, in fact, that their work speaks for itself: WME is a fairly well-known acronym, even outside the industry. So why is WME spending all their time bashing CAA, instead of just doing their damn jobs?
In two Halloween-themed videos released last night, the hard-working agents and assistants at WME attempt to be funny while bragging about their successes. In "Alternative Methods," WME's unscripted department opens by mentioning their 130 sales in the last 3 months, before segueing into how they do what they do: black magic, apparently. The video goes on to show a a WME agent only being able to secure a deal by stabbing a voodoo doll labelled "CAA" while muttering "Fuckers, fuckers, fuckers" repeatedly to himself.
In "The Pitching Hour", the film department takes their shot at patting themselves on the back by enlisting one of their apparently non-working clients, Friday Night Lights Derek Phillips, to drug a reporter until she figures out the secret to WME's success, the so-called "pitching hour." (Spoiler alert: it involves turning a digital clock on its side.) No actual pitches take place.
The only thing spooky about both videos is how bad they are. While these videos prove that WME agents and assistants they should remain firmly on the business side of Hollywood—ironically, the unscripted team video was penned by unscripted agent Adam Gelvan—it doesn't explain why WME has made a business out of going after CAA. Just this summer, WME was plastering ads that read "CAAN'T" all over Los Angeles in CAA's familiar red and white logo. The ads were masterminded by Emanuel himself, and contracted out to an ad agency, so WME clients should really ruminate upon the fact that the agency they pay 10% of their paychecks to would rather spend its time and resources making crappy videos and even crappier mall ads, rather than getting them jobs.
WME is known for putting out marginally funny videos for their quarterly staff meetings, but the CAA-shaming has reached a fever pitch of late, that quite frankly, makes WME look pathetic and desperate, especially given CAA's lack of response—unless you count outselling WME as a response, which actually is a far better retort than any similar video could be.