Steven Paul has been to Mar-a-Lago several times over the years. Last weekend, Jon Voight's producer and long-time manager and producer Scott Karol were there again to push President Trump's plan to save Hollywood.
Paul told type On Friday. “It’s fun to see the energy the president has and how much he does at the same time.”
Voight is an 86-year-old Oscar winner and one of Trump’s three “special ambassadors” in Hollywood. Paul is Voight's "special consultant" and Karol is the president and chief operating officer of Paul. They are both experienced and can shoot movies overseas, including a series of films in Bulgaria.
Paul said they had a "pleasant time" at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday and Sunday. What Trump has learned from these meetings is that Hollywood is "dying" and with a brushstroke - he can do something about it. On Sunday night, Trump released the truth social networking, where he authorized 100% tariffs on films made by "foreign land."
The week before the Cannes Film Festival began, the announcement attracted freaks around the world. On Monday, the White House returned it. Trump then had a multi-day quarrel with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who called it "incompetent" for allowing Hollywood Jobs to disappear and then submitted his Emmys fire to "60 Minutes", a award nominated for "60 Minutes" for interviewing Kamala Harris.
Meanwhile, Paul and Karol visit the President’s Weekend home for the first time – Tornado Week. Their five-page policy overview (including many ideas, some more thoroughly developed than others) has been leaked to the deadline, prompting them to clarify that it is used as a discussion paper rather than a formal suggestion. Legislators, unions and industry figures are all caught in debate.
By Friday, except for Trump’s belief that there is a problem and that all the choices are on the table, it’s unclear. Paul and Carroll agree to type - Perhaps in the impressed part of the Hollywood Reporter - trying to make all this meaningful.
For clarity, this interview has been easily edited.
Steven Paul: First of all, I like the Hollywood Reporter.
SP: OK, you're going. You guys have been taking care of us and have made great stories for us. So we're type.
All I know is that the president loves the entertainment business and wants to see that business healthy and doesn’t want to hurt the business. He wants to see Americans work here. As he said, he wanted to see a bigger and better Hollywood.
I don't want to speak for the president, saying he's thinking rather than thinking. But I think if it's just a tariff on movies in general, it could end up hurting the industry rather than helping the industry. So, I hope this won't be the last one.
Our ideas and what we put on the table are things with federal tax incentives and other taxes that can help people put money into movies and make production companies produce in the United States.
What he gains is that he is happy to see the business thriving and doing everything here. So, what it will look like in the end - you know, he was asked to work with his people and we are working on doing that. Now, we are trying to draw everyone in our industry together so that we can see at this particular time whether something important can be accomplished.
SP: I don't think we have any specific content at all. But the idea is, if you are going to shoot in the United States - make movies in the United States and hire Americans to do it. Other details obviously have to be addressed.
Scott Karol: I just want to say that the vast majority of the "cultural tests" in Britain are not real cultural tests. You look at it like “shots in English and crew in the UK”, but the concept is a focused system, just like many foreign jurisdictions use incentives. This is a point system. It does not really focus on culture, but on elements of the country of origin.
SK: This is not the purpose of our attempt to control content. We hope to bring film production back to the United States.
SK: I am a lawyer. I have a degree in finance. I have been engaged in entertainment, business and legal affairs, production and finance and distribution for more than 30 years. I've been involved in productions in Kentucky, New York, California, Alaska...I've done international joint productions all over the world. So I have expertise in soft money and tax benefits, which can be traced back to over 30 years. I talk to people who try to make movies and raise money for movies and TV shows every day. So, I think I'm speaking on this issue.
SP: I'm not a lawyer, nor political, nor political - except that I've worked in the industry all my life, making movies and funding them all over the world. So yes, we're involved in all these things, I don't want to say every country - but in many, many countries, all over the world.
SP: Unfortunately, we are also one of the people who have to make movies overseas. It just happened. Whether you can make a movie or not, it's brand or broken.
As producers, we have to look at all these things and say, “Okay, where is the best place to make a movie?” We go, “Okay, if we can do that here, that would be great.” But then we have to look at, OK, how do we raise money for it? Even if we would love to shoot there, can we shoot there?
Then we went, “Oh wow, we don’t know how to shoot it there.” We had to figure out where we could really finish it. Then, sometimes we have to figure out how we can change the movie to make it work in that area that has to be shot - just to get it funded. Unfortunately, I think many particularly independent producers have to watch the movie this way.
SK: This is also a studio issue. We came mainly as independent producers, but the studio had the same problem. If you made a $100 million movie and the production cost has a $15 or $20 million swing, that could be the difference between the movie being profitable or the movie losing money. That is the reality that all of us face.
SK: The idea behind the suggestions we made is - because we hear from every producer we talk to, the head of every studio and every streaming director, everything is even close to relatively equal, they always choose to shoot movies in the United States
We don't want to have some kind of competition at the bottom, where we have this arms race for tax credits. So if we can lower the net cost of filmmakers and make it possible to be shot in the United States is a reality, this is a movie that should be made in the United States - this is our theme, it happens in the United States, mainly American crew and actors - but they still chose this movie because you will suffer from better attacks, because you will suffer, and that is such damage.
SK: Exactly.
SP: I want to say something else about this. The documents we propose are not actually a suggestion. It's put forward as a key point of conversation, where you put a paper and say, "This is all the ideas that need to be talked about." Because some people may be in conflict with each other, right? It represents many of the ideas in this document. As you can see, not all of this can be practical.
SP: I don't want him to be mad at me because I'm looking for some of these California tax credits right now. But I heard a lot of people are not satisfied with the program there. So I don't know if this is the right plan to replicate the potential federal tax credit.
I don't know that's the correct number.
We didn't have any conversations with him, but I've heard of it. We had lunch with the mayor.
Yes. We had lunch with her. She is very supportive of the industry and wants to do her best, and I believe that. I told her that she should have a meeting with the governor and us and she said she would try to do it because we didn’t have any luck to see him.
Well, as you can see, he's been levied on tariffs.
I think this might be from the idea that if we do incentives here and create incentives, there might be a way to punish incentives over there. It may have originated from something like this.
Again, I can't say what he will do, what he won't do. But I do know that he wants to help the industry and do the right thing.