Albany attorney Patrick Millsaps brings Southern charm to Hollywood

ALBANY — The last couple of years of Albany attorney Patrick Millsaps’ life have been the kind of Hollywood story that could, given its predilection for searching out successful sequels, lead to more handwritten notes.

After all, a handwritten note was the catalyst for turning a politically active, conservative Southern lawyer into a Tinseltown entertainment representative and producer, while opening a second career for an actress as a political commentator on a national news network.

Millsaps, who still spends about half of each month in his hometown and the other half in Los Angeles and New York, has a couple of years under his belt after becoming the representative of actress Stacey Dash, who’s best known for her role as Dionne in the 1995 film “Clueless,” but who’s gaining recognition for her commentary and observations on Fox News shows.

“The way the whole thing happened, I don’t think anyone would believe it,” Dash said Friday in a phone interview from Los Angeles, “but the truth is he sent me a handwritten letter after the tweet that changed my life, saying if I really wanted to get into politics, call him and let him know.”

The tweet Dash referred to was her endorsement of Mitt Romney in the GOP nominee’s unsuccessful 2012 challenge to unseat President Barack Obama, one that subjected her to a great deal of criticism from liberals and other African Americans while also getting her the attention of political conservatives like Millsaps, the chief of Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign. After receiving the letter, she asked Millsaps to come out to meet her. He introduced her to Roger Ailes, founder and head of Fox News Network. From there, she said, doors started opening for her. She had a manager she was unhappy with.

“I just said, ‘Patty, would you fire this agent for me?’ And he said, ‘Sure. I’ll fire him.’ After he fired him, I said, ‘You’re my manager.’ He actually had to google it to see what manager meant,” Dash said. “Now we’re in a partnership and it’s great, it’s working out very well. … That’s how I know it’s divine. It just happened so seamlessly.

“What I love about Patty is he is loyal and he has the highest integrity. He’s a God-fearing man and I’m a God-fearing woman, which is important to both of us. He has stood by my side and he has fought for me, and vice versa. He is so good at negotiations. I mean, the man could sell dirt out of a paper bag. And he’s charming. That country charm works, it works in Hollywood.”

Millsaps’ first client is thriving. In addition to her acting and Fox News appearances, Dash has a book coming out in July titled “There Goes My Social Life.”

“It’s my favorite line from ‘Clueless,’ and it’s perfect for the book and for what’s happened to my life since I did my notorious tweet that’s changed my life completely,” Dash said. “I had some people that didn’t understand. And I had some people who judged me and persecuted me, and that’s OK. That’s when you find out who your real friends are. But I don’t care. I’m going to stand up for what I believe in.”

While she’s still best remembered for “Clueless,” Dash has an upcoming role that she’s excited about, one that’s a departure for her.

“I’m about to do a movie called ‘Wretched’ where I’m going to play a witch,” she said. “I’m excited because I’ve never played anything dark. It’s an independent film — horror, of course. … I’m excited to be something other than a 16-year-old girl (though she was 27 when she played the teen in ‘Clueless’).”

Since forming HBS Management — which has offices in Atlanta, Century City, Calif., and Nashville, Tenn. — in 2013, Millsaps’ client base has expanded to 25, including Brandi Burkhardt (Crickett on “Hart of Dixie”), Melvin K. Kearney II (Bo on “Nashville”) and actor/singer J.W. Cortes, who portrays Detective Alvarez on one of TV’s top new comic-book based dramas, “Gotham.”

“Jon Voight tells me I remind him of old-fashioned managers,” Millsaps said in a recent phone interview while working in Texas. “I’m trying to build solid careers.

“Now, when I sign a new client, I have to watch all of their old stuff. Some of them are movies I wouldn’t have watched. I’m always trying to find my clients’ best stuff. That’s ultimately how you sell them.”

He is working, for instance, to get Cortes, a Marine veteran, more exposure in the show about Police Commissioner Jim Gordon, Gotham City villains and a young Bruce Wayne, who eventually will become Batman. “He (Cortes) always seems to be in the (police) station,” Millsaps noted. “He was in eight or 10 episodes this year, and we’re trying to move that up some in the next season. When he’s not acting, he’s a real cop.”

Voight is one of the Hollywood insiders Millsaps has befriended and credits with showing him how the entertainment industry works. Millsaps mentions Voight, along with Randy Runkle, senior vice president of programming at Showtime, which produces “Ray Donovan” that Voight currently stars in, and Steve Bersch, president of Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions.

Runkle, Millsaps said, is “a guy people would die to meet and we’re having lunch. We’ve been best buds. He taught me how to pitch things.”

Oscar-nominated director Morgan Spurlock is another influence Millsaps describes as his “most unlikely of mentors.”

Spurlock “loves the fact that he is a hillbilly from West Virginia and I’m a redneck from Georgia and we are both in show business,” Millsaps said. “The great thing about Morgan and me is that his politics are left of center and mine are right of center, but when it comes to business and creative planning, we have similar visions.”

Millsaps’ vision includes expanding into film and TV production. He was in Dallas to help a client he had gotten to help back a movie set up her own production company. Another bite by the Hollywood bug.

The catalyst for this meeting is the film “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” which stars Sam Elliott, Blythe Danner and Rhea Perlman. Five days before shooting was to start, a backer pulled out, taking 20 percent of the budget. First-time film producer Millsaps convinced a contact in Dallas to get involved, and now the film has gotten a distributor after generating positive buzz at Sundance, where it received a standing ovation.

“It’s an all-star cast,” he said. “People already are saying Blythe Danner might get an Oscar.”

Hollywood, with its reputation for hard bodies and hard-left politics, might seem like a fish-out-of-water setting for a husky Red State lawyer, but Millsaps says his experience in both politics, where he served as chief for staff of New Gingrich’s presidential campaign, and in law offices in Camilla and Albany prepared him more than one might think, such as getting the needed money for “Dreams.”

“As a country lawyer in Camilla, you’re really a problem solver,” Millsaps said. “Hollywood’s really a small town. Living in Southwest Georgia and knowing how things work — when to keep your mouth shut — really prepared me for this.

“When I first started out learning about production and things, I had come out of the political world. A lot of what you have to do in politics is fundraising. … I’ve always said D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people.

“I’ve taken the systematic and regimented schedule of a lawyer and I’ve put it in an industry that’s never been regimented. I have a clock that only has one hand. And the numbers say ‘oneish,’ ‘twoish.’ … That’s what I call my L.A. clock.”

And regardless of political leanings, the entertainment industry is money-driven.

“As liberal as Hollywood is, I’ve had heads of studios and heads of networks pull me aside and ask me, ‘How does ‘Duck Dynasty’ and Wal-Mart make money?’” he said. “They’re really chasing the same kind of money in California.”

When it comes to representing his clients and their interests, Millsaps said he is “apolitical, just like I was when I was a lawyer. I was meeting with one potential client and he said, ‘You know, I’m a radical liberal.’ I told him I’d make him the best radical liberal there was. My politics don’t come into my work.”

Film and TV entertainment, he said, may be the last media in which meetings of the minds with differing points of view can take place in a society that is increasingly polarized.

“We like to marginalize Hollywood and the entertainment business, but we really are a country that doesn’t listen to each other anymore,” he said. A film or TV show “is the last medium where you can have an open mind. You sit through it until the credits and you talk about it.

“If you don’t like the product coming out of Hollywood, invest in it,” he said. “Hollywood is money-driven.”

Selling the new investor on “Dreams,” Millsaps was helped by the cast of familiar names attached.

“I told her it was the kind of film that might be a Hollywood favorite,” he said. “And now, she wants to do more.”

Millsaps is getting busier on the production front. He’s an executive producer on a documentary that’s plugging into the current spate of biblical productions — “Finding Noah.”

“It follows an expedition to find the actual Noah’s ark,” he said.

Having a film that gets a good reception at Sundance, meanwhile, has opened another door. Millsaps met actor Steve Guttenberg there, and now he’s working with Guttenberg on a project called “The Pride of San Quentin.”

“It’s about a pro baseball player who went to San Quentin in the ’40s and started playing on the prison baseball team,” Millsaps said. “I’m working on it now. We’re trying to get a couple of big names signed.”

Guttenberg, who’s had a long film and TV career, but is still best known for the series of “Police Academy” movies, described Millsaps as “dynamic and determined.”

“His work ethic is one that combines strategy, enthusiasm and humor,” Guttenberg said. “But the most defining aspect of him is his perspective on the film and television community and business as a whole. He finds the game a challenge and approaches it with a positive attitude.”

Dash, who says her life has gone much more smoothly since her surrender to God, continues to be Millsaps’ biggest fan.

“We can trust each other,” she said. “In this business and in their world … it’s hard to find people you can trust. Its hard to find people with values and integrity and honor. And I found one and I feel blessed. … I have some shows I want to try to develop, with Patty, of course. We’re not waiting on Hollywood. We’re not waiting on anyone. We’re developing ourselves. That’s what I like about Patrick. He doesn’t sleep. He finds a way. We’re made from the same cloth.”

His life in Hollywood is a life Millsaps says he enjoys, one that allows him to be a “part-time, stay-at-home dad” who can do much of his work from Albany, where he is a partner in the Hall Booth Smith law firm. He still attends church at Sherwood Baptist, where he often “talks shop” with two more Albanians who know some of the same entertainment people — Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who are producing their first film independent of the Sherwood Pictures ministry.

“We have some great conversations when we see each other,” Millsaps said.

“Everything that I’ve done has taken me to this point,” he added. “I’ve never had more fun than doing what I’m doing now.”

And it’s fun Millsaps says he wouldn’t give up to get back involved in politics.

“It (the Gingrich campaign) was one of the most amazing experiences in my life,” he said. “Now, I’ll vote, but that’s about it. I’m enjoying what I do now much more than politics. You can stick a fork in me, I’m done with politics.

“Hollywood is the most honest business I’ve ever been a part of. By definition, we are selling fiction. The problem is, D.C. is selling a lot of it, too. They just don’t know it.”