Paul T. Goldman

6 episodes. 2023, d. Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm...) - CityTV/Peacock

Paul T. Goldman is a true crime documentary about a man who uncovers that his wife might be part of an international sex trafficking ring.

Paul T. Goldman is a biography of Paul T. Goldman, the man who believes that his wife is part of an international sex trafficking ring and then wrote a book about it. And then a screenplay.

Paul T. Goldman is that screenplay about a man who discovers that his wife is part of an international sex trafficking ring and then becomes a secret agent trying to bring it down.

Paul T. Goldman is the making-of of the film of the screenplay based on the book about the man who believes that his wife is part of an international sex trafficking organization.

Paul T. Goldman is a very intimate examination of one "Paul T. Goldman", the pen name of Paul Finkleman who married a woman who manipulated him, tried to steal his money and property, and in the proceedings of getting divorced, uncovered secrets about her. In his investigation of those secrets he started coming to the conclusion that his soon-to-be ex-wife was a local madam and also involved in a larger, international sex trafficking ring. His deep dive into his wife, her lover, her ex-husband and the people she was involved with led to meetings with the FBI, all of which sparked in Paul Finkleman the idea to dramatize his life story into a semi-autobiographical (but mostly fictional) espionage thriller Duplicity, under a new, cooler pseudonym. 

In promoting his book, Paul started expanding on the adventures of Mr. Goldman into new novels, and ultimately a screenplay.  Once the screenplay was written, active twitter user Paul Finkleman, under his Goldman pseudonym, started @ing anyone and everyone he could with any Hollywood association.  This included Human Giant, Thunderheart and Parks and Recreation director, Jason Woliner, who, unlike most, was intrigued by this man.  Woliner did his research, filing through the "Goldman" twitter account and youtube pages.  He read Duplicity,  and reached out in 2012, clearly intrigued by Paul Finkleman/Goldman.  This six-episode series from Peacock is the result of a decade-long partnership between Paul and Woliner attempting to get something made, after a few false starts.  What results is a baffling and fascinating character study that recalls stories of complicated oddballs like American Movie or American Splendor (the latter especially with its masterful blurring the lines between fiction and reality).

Finkleman/Goldman is best described as a cross between Pee Wee Herman and Buster Bluth (from Arrested Development). He's an adult, brimming with relentless positivity, mostly because it seems he doesn't understand the way the world works enough for it to bring him down. He smiles so hard and so often that, in portraying the cinematic "Paul T. Goldman", director Woliner needs to cut and constantly tell him to stop smiling.  

But Paul's biggest trait is he's naive, and he approaches the world honestly (even in attempting deceit, he's shockingly honest) and expects the world to be honest back with him, so he's remarkably susceptible to lies and manipulation. And as we learn over the course of Paul T. Goldman's six episode, he is lied to and manipulated often. 

His naivete is also painfully embarrassing to witness in action, as he talks up being a crusader against sex trafficking, but his only experience with sex trafficking is this situation he's found himself in, and the validity of the situation is constantly called into question. I mean, it's fishy, for sure....  Paul puts himself out there for anti-sex-trafficking speaking gigs where he recounts his story which always starts with him looking for love with mail-order Russian brides. One audience member (in a speaking engagement set-up for by the show, and paid for an audience to attend) questions Paul "Isn't mail-order brides a form of sex trafficking?"

The show uses editing to pointedly highlight Paul's love for telling his story. He basically tells it to everyone he meets. An early sequence shows Paul jumping through his recounting, practically verbatim, between multiple people. When he's acting, shooting his own script, he puts himself up against other professional actors with no hesitation, and delights in every moment. But as soon as the cameras stop rolling, he launches into the "behind-the-music" details of the scene they were working on, as it comes from true life.  The patience that the actors, including veteran character actors like Melinda McGraw, Dennis Haysbert, James Remar, Dee Wallace, Frank Grillo, and Rosanna Arquette.

Paul is an awkward, friendly, honest, cheerful and outgoing guy. He should be likeable, but he's not exactly. You kind of want to smack him for being so honest, so trusting, and yet these are not qualities we should damn. You also kind of want to dislike him for his incessant self promotion and even some of the ridiculous extremes he's gone to in his life, but it's also very hard to dislike him. At the root of the entire story, the heart of it all, is a lonely man looking for love. The final episode Woliner loops back in with Paul's father, and the statements Paul makes about the love he feels his father has withheld from him. It's the point Woliner puts on it (but not too fine a point, he's not hammering us over the head with it), and paralleling it with the heaps of (perhaps too much) love Paul has doled out to his own son.

The journey of Paul T. Goldman includes interview footage from 10 years ago, the casting process for the filming of the screenplay, the recording of the Duplicity audiobook, talking heads with members of the cast and people in Paul's life, and a lot of candid moments with Paul himself (Woliner tries to hide from the camera as much as possible, but cannot escape it at times). It's a surprising wild adventure.