Poll Results: Hollywood's Most Evil Agency is CAA, Duh: 3.07

I know most of you assistants are thinking "yeah, that's a surprise" right now, but you have your proof: The Assistant/Atlas Agency Evil Factor Poll. In this highly-unscientific poll, the experienced niche of my readership voted overwhelmingly [if sparingly-- jeez, lurkers] for the Creative Artists Agency.

Congratulations, CAA. You're the sharks, baby. Way to swim.

But let's take this opportunity to take an look at the Big Agencies. After all, if you're an assistant, you probably want to be an agent. Which at some point means you're going to job-hop with an A-lister on your arm for a ton of cash at some point in your career.

William Morris [WMA] nudged into second place over Endeavor, with ICM and UTA trailing far behind, and the Paradigm/Gersh fringe effect negligible.
Endeavor, Ari Emanuel's Swirling Circle of Hell.
So what does this picture of "Defamer's Official Agent Dance Mascot" mean? It means that Endeavor's got the buzz-- and their assistants have the swagger. And with Entourage getting a third season, they'll likely maintain that cool cachet for awhile longer.

But what does this mean, really? Well, it could give under-appreciated agents, especially the younger pups who grew up dreaming of Ari's gravy train of happy yayo fun times, more incentive to abandon their current acronym agency small desk and jump aboard. That means more agent dancing and starf*cking, but really, would you want anything less from Ho'wood?

So if CAA is [are?] the sharks and Endeavor is Ari-land [and WMA is nestled in between], then what does that mean for lesser agencies, the increasingly-poached ICM, the buzz-lacking UTA [joblist notwithstanding], the highly-suited Paradigm and the "you're totally not getting in" Gersh.

But, Atlas, you say, what does this mean? Why does it matter?

I'll tell you why. CAA is on top of their sh*t. They're a highly-oiled machine and they can make things happen. They call back as soon as they smell money or power. WMA is the same way-- they flog the assistants until they're like super-fast phone zombies.

ICM, on the other fin, takes forever to call back, in fact, they take forever to move on anything. Like lazy walruses, they mull and debate when they should be hot-stepping it for the phones. Stupid walruses.
ICM Sux!
Wading back into the ocean of extended metaphor, we might say that UTA is like the gentle manatee and Gersh the awkward platypus of the Hollywood biosphere. We could then conclude that Paradigm is the penguin, waddling toward payday, attempting to look slick and relaxed. But despite the image-burnishing success of "March of the Penguins", penguins are not the ocean-related creature you want to be.

You want to be the sharks. You want to kill and eat the other agencies. There are no prisoners in Ari's dungeon.