During his six-year career in Hollywood, John Voight played the ambitious Gigolo (Midnight Cowboy), won the Oscar for Best Actor (Going Home), and was awarded the Golden Globe at the age of 76.
Now 86 years old, Voight has taken on another role that produced a lot of drama “Special Ambassador for Hollywood” for the Trump administration.
If the role was intended to be ritual, the longtime conservative Voight did not get a note. Last weekend he visited his President Marlago Trump with his Marlago compound and pitched his plan to “make Hollywood great again.”
Hours after their meeting, Trump answered his phone and posted that he would intervene to save Hollywood from “very fast death” by setting 100% tariffs on films coming to the US produced on “foreign lands.”
Shares in Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount plummeted the following morning, causing market value to flow at $2 billion.
John Voight, Stephen Paul and Scott Carol meet Donald Trump in Marlago © Stephen Paul
Hollywood executives are baffled by the obvious sympathy from the US president who previously expressed his disdain as “elite.” Trump has denounced actors like Meryl Streep as “liberal movie people” and at the Academy Awards, “Boy, Wake Up Crab!”
“This is just crazy,” said a senior Hollywood executive who said there is a trade surplus in the American film industry. “What are you trying to achieve?”
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel laughed at the announcement and told viewers:
But Teamster, a union representing the drivers and other staff in the film industry, thanked Trump and called his move a “strong step towards ultimately restraining the studio’s non-American addiction to outsource the work of studio members.”
There are plenty of questions about how Trump’s film tariffs actually work, and whether or not they happen at all. A White House spokesman on Monday said there was “no final decision,” and the administration was “exploring all options.”
Margaret Quarry will be appearing at the 97th Annual Academy Awards. Donald Trump called the event “Boy, I’ve woken up!” ©Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
If the plan goes ahead, it will mark the first example of tariffs imposed on services in lieu of physical benefits, said Marney Cheek, a partner at the Covington law firm.
“Most films are sent digitally rather than physically, so there are basic questions about how to implement tariffs,” she said. “The US government has been opposed to past digital services taxes, so we need to come up with a plan to raise money.”
Executives from Netflix and other major groups are preparing to meet up with Trump to influence the plan, people familiar with the matter said. Message to Trump: Movie tariffs will undermine our business.
During this week’s revenue call, the three biggest studios avoided addressing the topic completely.
Disney and Netflix did not respond to requests for comment. Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount declined to comment.
Like other parts of our media and cultural circles, Trump has rebutted Hollywood, but also showed his desire to be included in it. As a former reality television personality and producer of NBC’s The Apprentice, he was awarded a star in Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in 2007. His recent acquisition of the Kennedy Center in Washington means he has an ongoing interest in impacting American culture.
Trump was the star of the NBC reality show The Apprentice ©Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images
“Trump cares about movie stars, he cares about Tom Cruise. He loves being King of Trump and wants beautiful people. My question is, where is his advantage?” Media analyst Alice Enders said.
Ender believed it was “highly unlikely” that the Trump administration would give Hollywood any significant federal tax incentives. “It’s not working with his base. Christian base, they’re not in Hollywood. They’re going to say: Why are we giving them more money?
“Doge cuts left and center to the right,” she said. “And are you going to give Hollywood a huge amount of money?”
When he announced his trade deal with the UK on Thursday, Trump nodded to his Hollywood ties. “Amazing guy,” Trump said. However, he reiterated his intention to implement film tariffs, which were not part of the trade agreement.
A few days before his appointment, Trump announced that Voight would become a “special ambassador” as his job to help “a very troublesome place, Hollywood, California,” which had lost to “foreign” and along with fellow conservative actors Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson, would become “special ambassadors.”
Whatever the other qualifications are, Stallone and Gibson have experience looking outside of America to make their films. Stallone shot Rambo: Bulgaria’s last blood. Gibson is shooting a sequel to the passion of Christ in Italy.
Sylvester Stallone from “Rambo: Last Blood”, 2019 © Yana Blajeva/Lionsgate/Kobal/Shutterstock
Despite the mutual hostility between Trump and much of Hollywood, the president’s claim that it is a “troubled place” sums up the way many people in the city’s entertainment industry feel at this point.
Production has been coming out of Hollywood for years thanks to generous incentives provided by Vancouver, Atlanta, New York and London. The trend of filming outside of LA accelerated after the 2023 workforce strike, shutting down production for six months. The expected rebound hasn’t been realized, and some worry that Los Angeles is doomed to the same fate as Detroit and the automotive industry.
Senior executives say they still have a strong desire to film in Hollywood, but they lament the costs, especially after the strike, and the troublesome permit requirements for filming in LA.
Newsom has doubled its existing credit and introduced a $750 million annual tax plan. There is also discussion about cutting deficits.
Trump made plans Monday, saying, “I’m not trying to hurt the (film) industry, I want to help the industry.” However, he has not provided any further details and is afraid that leaving Hollywood at Limbo and making a statement will cause Trump.
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This week’s executives wondered whether this was a plan to damage Canada or a political tactic to gain a favor with the union and undermine support for Democrats with potential presidential ambitions.
“There’s only one social media post. (It’s virtually impossible to size the impact on the industry,” wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne this week. He warned that tariffs would “reduce all films in the film, more expensive films, and all revenues in the business.”
“At this point, there are more questions than the answer,” Swinburne concluded.
