health of studios and production houses and exploit their weaknesses. In
1990, he and a colleague quit Goldman to set up a boutique investment
bank called Talbott, Bannon & Co (John Talbott soon left).
Bannon’s intense personality impressed Hollywood. His passion was
intimidating but compelling. “Most of the people who I talked to who
knew Bannon back then did seem to like him,” says Joshua Green, author
of the bestselling book Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, And
The Storming Of The Presidency. “When you talk to him and understand
the way he moves through the world, [his success] is really not that
surprising at all. He’s a very charismatic guy, very smart, knows his subject
matter well. And he isn’t a transparent bullshitter in the way that, I would
imagine, a lot of people in Hollywood are.” (Several people who worked
with Bannon declined interview requests from Empire.)
Although Bannon’s core beliefs were already fi rmly in place, he didn’t
trumpet them to his colleagues, most of whom thought he was just another
industrious wannabe. “I think as he moved through all these elite,
cosmopolitan institutions his politics tended to be more socially liberal,”
says Green. “He had to sublimate some of his hard-right politics, especially
some of his religious views, in order to get ahead.”
People certainly noticed his fascination with military history and
the ancient world, though. “He was constantly telling stories about great
warriors of the past, like Attila The Hun, people who had slain empires,”
Thom Mount, a former president of Universal Pictures who worked with
Bannon in the early ’90s, told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s one thing to be
interested in the triumphs of military history — it’s another thing to obsess
over them. Victory at all costs is a dangerous way to look at the world.”
According to Julia Jones, his computer password was “Sparta”.
Bannon became rich by advising clients including MGM and PolyGram.
While working on the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment to Ted Turner in
1993, he agreed to swap Bannon & Co’s cash fee for a share in fi ve Castle Rock
shows. One of them was Seinfeld, a year before it went supernova. According
to Green’s sources, Bannon has made around $100,000 from Seinfeld
royalties every year since. (“It makes me sick,” Castle Rock co-founder Rob
Reiner told The Daily Beast of any profi t Bannon may have made from the
show.) That was not to be sneezed at, but it was selling Bannon & Co to
French bank Société Générale in 1998 that set him up for life.
In 2002, Bannon joined The Firm, a production and management
company founded by Jeff Kwatinetz. According to Kwatinetz, as well as
buying AMG from Ovitz, Bannon negotiated the $2.6 billion sale of the
Warner Music catalogue and almost succeeded in licensing the movie rights
for The Da Vinci Code from Dan Brown. It’s not hard to see why the novel’s
heady brew of Catholism and conspiracy theories appealed to him.
After leaving The Firm, in 2004 Bannon became vice chairman of the
fi lm distributor American Vantage, acquiring Doug Liman’s Hypnotic
(home of The O.C.) and indie distributor Wellspring, and securing funding
for a company which sold virtual currency to players of World Of Warcraft.
But like many Hollywood money men, Bannon had a creative itch. The
1990s had been a washout on that front — his fi nancing partnership with
Thom Mount notched up just one credit, Sean Penn’s fl op 1991 directorial
debut, The Indian Runner. Bannon’s obsession with Titus Andronicus led to
an executive-producer credit on Julie Taymor’s 1999 movie Titus, starring
Anthony Hopkins, but that tanked, too. “If they’d done it my way,” he told
Julia Jones, “it would have been a hit.” But his screenplays didn’t sell.
By 2004, he had a new ambition. To hell with trying to please the
Hollywood mainstream and soft-pedalling his beliefs. He was going to war.IN 2002, BANNON read a book by the conservative scholar Peter
Schweizer called Reagan’s War: The Epic Story Of His Forty-Year Struggle
And Final Triumph Over Communism. Fired up by 9/11, Bannon teamed up
with Schweizer to write and direct his fi rst documentary: In The Face Of
Evil: Reagan’s War In Word And Deed. “It was really a metaphor,” Bannon
said. “It was just after 9/11 and I wanted to tell a story about how a
democracy takes on a radical ideology.” Perhaps he also liked how Reagan
had channelled the lessons of a mediocre Hollywood career into a
blockbuster political one. (His production partner Timothy J. Watkins
declined an interview request but said of Bannon: “Tough guy, but wants ❯Above: Bannon in
a budget meeting at
the White House on
22 February 2017.
Right: Two of his
recent fi lms.
Below: At the Sundance
premiere of Sweetwater
with co-producers
Trevor Drinkwater
and Jason Netter.