Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel has described being hit by a black pickup truck in an extract from his forthcoming memoir, recalling how the accident prompted him to reconsider the way he had spent his life.
Emanuel writes that the incident happened in early summer 1994, after he had spent several hours at work speaking to dozens of people about their problems. He walked to Kate Mantilini’s restaurant at the corner of Doheny and Wilshire in Los Angeles, where he ate an omelette while reading a script.
On his way to the restaurant, he noticed cars travelling unusually fast and thought: “Someone could really get hurt right here.” Returning to his office about half an hour later, he stopped at the same crossing and stepped into the road when the pedestrian signal changed.
He says he turned his head just in time to see the grille of the truck. The impact sent him over the vehicle’s bonnet and on to the pavement, leaving him briefly unsure whether he had lost consciousness.
“I’ve never felt anything like this truck hitting my knees,” Emanuel writes, contrasting the collision with injuries and fights he experienced as a wrestler, a child and a young man.
As he lay in the road, he says his thoughts turned to his work and the possibility that he might be unable to return to it. He also reflected on the time he believed he had wasted, writing that he had allowed anxiety and other people to lead him away from his purpose.
“Life is not a dress rehearsal,” he writes, arguing that the familiar saying has little value unless people act on it.
Roll the Calls, Emanuel’s memoir, is due to be published by Knopf on Tuesday, September 22, in hardcover, large-print trade paperback, e-book and audio formats.
