Trump’s Man With a Plan in Hollywood Opens Up

The Westwood offices of filmmaker and manager Steven Paul are crowded with mementos of an idiosyncratic journey in the business. On one wall, there is a framed 1971 New Yorker “Talk of the Town” piece that profiles Paul as a 12-year-old actor in a Kurt Vonnegut play and an adolescent playwright himself. On another is a Hollywood Reporter story published nine years later about Paul debuting his first major film, Falling in Love Again, starring a young Michelle Pfeiffer. On a coffee table shelf sit stacks of vintage Atlas Comics, the predecessor label to Marvel that Paul bought a majority stake in a few years ago, to the delight of nostalgic comic book bloggers.

Paul’s latest chapter may soon be worthy of its own keepsake. Ever since President Trump named Paul’s client Jon Voight one of three “special ambassadors” to Hollywood in January, alongside fellow 20th century A-listers Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson, Paul’s mindset has broadened from Santa Monica Boulevard to Pennsylvania Avenue. As Voight’s longtime manager and business partner, Paul, perhaps best known as one of the minds behind the 1999 comedy Baby Geniuses, has become an unlikely go-between for Hollywood and the White House.

While Stallone and Gibson have been relatively quiet about their presidential appointments, Voight and Paul have jumped into action, energetically embracing the president’s all-caps mandate to bring Hollywood back “BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!”

The pair, along with the president of Paul’s SP Media Group, Scott Karol, have zeroed in on the flight of production from the U.S. to locales with more attractive tax incentives. “It’s gotten worse and worse and worse,” says Paul at his office, located in a building he owns. Downstairs is a cozy coffee shop, Hank’s Cafe, pouring brews from L.A.-area staple Urth Caffé and featuring pictures of Paul’s father (the titular Hank) and other Paul associates, like a clothing designer for Baby Geniuses. “You see people leaving [and] have friends that are leaving town. They just can’t afford it, they’ve taken other jobs.”