Hollywood Giant

With his stylishly untucked shirt, faded jeans, windblown silver hair and three-day-old beard stubble, Steve Tisch looked Sunday as if he could have been headed for courtside seats at a Laker game. Instead, he was pacing the visitors’ sideline at Qualcomm Stadium, slapping palms with the New York Giants as they passed.

The NFL isn’t in Los Angeles, but one of its newest owners is.

Tisch, the Hollywood impresario who produced “Risky Business” and “Forrest Gump,” has spent the last year traveling back and forth from L.A. to New York spearheading an effort to construct a new stadium for his Giants. In many ways, he is the NFL in L.A.

In the most exclusive fraternity in sports, he stands alone as the only full-time L.A. resident.

“It’s totally unique,” said Tisch, 56, who formally became involved with the Giants after his father, Robert, was diagnosed with a brain tumor 13 months ago. “At this point in my life and my career, I really enjoy being one of a kind. I definitely appreciate how lucky I am, and I accept the responsibility in front of me.”

The results, of course, aren’t always the ones he wants. The previously undefeated Giants were blown out by the Chargers, 45-23, before a packed house that booed quarterback Eli Manning throughout.

After the opening drive, Tisch hustled up to the visiting owner’s suite, which is perched above a corner of the east end zone. The place was filled with about 20 friends and family members cheering the Giants between handfuls of red, white and blue M&M;’s.

Whether the Giants win or lose, things are seldom boring in the Tisch suite. It isn’t uncommon for celebrities to stop by. Nicole Kidman caught a home game in New York in 2004; Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones watched last season’s Super Bowl from a suite reserved for the Giants; and last Monday, when the New Orleans Saints played their “home” opener at Giants Stadium, former President George H.W. Bush watched from the suite, as did Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, whose division captured Saddam Hussein.

Part of a next generation of NFL owners, Tisch stepped in after his father, who 14 years ago bought a 50% stake in the team, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Since, Steve has devoted his time to two careers: making movies and helping run the Giants, who are co-owned by the Mara family. Steve’s brother, Jonathan, doubles as the team’s treasurer and chief executive of Loews Hotels.

Because the Giants are the NFL’s only franchise with a 50/50 ownership structure, the Tisches and Maras are on equal footing when it comes to decision-making. Steve works closely with John Mara, 51, the team’s chief operating officer. Mara oversees the day-to-day running of the team, and Tisch focuses on the stadium push.

“Once the stadium is under construction, it will free up my time more to actually learn what it means to be the owner of a football team on a daily basis,” Tisch said.

After learning of his father’s illness, Tisch uprooted from L.A. and moved to New York for a year with his wife, Jamie, and their three young children. (He has two older children by a previous marriage.) During his first few months in Manhattan, Tisch plunged headlong into researching the disease, finding the best doctors, interviewing patients and trying to make life as comfortable as possible for his father, who still attends Giant home games.

“There are good days and bad days,” said Sammy Arthur, who started off as Robert Tisch’s driver 19 years ago and became his right-hand man. “It’s a tough battle. He’s fighting it.”

Born in Brooklyn, Robert Tisch and his late brother, Laurence, built a real-estate empire essentially from scratch and became billionaires. Laurence became president and chief executive of CBS. Robert, who is No. 56 on Forbes magazine’s list of richest Americans and has an estimated net worth of $3.9 billion, later was U.S. Postmaster General in the Reagan administration.

Although Robert Tisch has attended two games at Giants Stadium this season and plans to make it to all the home games and some of the road games, he has handed most of his team-related responsibilities to Steve. The top priority now is developing a new stadium at the Meadowlands, one that could be co-developed by the New York Jets. Those negotiations, much more than what’s happening on the field with the Giants, have commanded Steve’s attention during the last year.

“Steve’s an innovative person with great people skills,” NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said. “His talent for negotiating complex business deals and his deep experience in the entertainment industry have already had an impact.”

In 1971, after finishing college, Tisch turned down a chance to stay in the family business and instead left New York for Hollywood. Determined to make his mark in the film industry, he took a job as a production assistant with Columbia Pictures. Six years later he produced his first movie, “Outlaw Blues,” and since has produced dozens more, including the multiple-Oscar-winning “Forrest Gump,” among the highest-grossing films ever. He said he sees clear parallels between the film industry and pro football, among them the constant hope that your next project will be your best.

“A filmmaker, a producer is a dreamer and a storyteller,” said Tisch, who recently completed “The Weather Man,” starring Nicolas Cage. “Being involved in a football team is a lot of that same wonderfully innocent optimism. Give the audience what they want. Make them stand up and cheer.”

The NFL would love a Hollywood beginning. Specifically, the league wants another crack at the Los Angeles market. The league has identified a return to L.A. as a top priority, and Tisch says he believes there could be a breakthrough on that front in the coming months.

“As an insider, I’m seeing that there is genuine momentum,” he said. He didn’t indicate a preference for any of the discussed sites -- the Coliseum, Rose Bowl or Anaheim -- but said “there’s traction, there’s focus, there’s a commitment.... The networks want it, the league wants it, and most important the fans want it.”

Asked about the possibility the Saints might permanently relocate, he said: “I think the Benson family is committed to the city of New Orleans.... I hope there’s a way for those fans to keep a football team at a very critical time, when the residents of Louisiana need that kind of distraction. They need so many things to root for, and their football team is a great symbol of commitment, pride, passion.”

By all accounts, Tisch is a regular guy. He’ll often stop for breakfast near his Westside home at Nate ‘n Al’s, where the waitresses call him by his first name. He doesn’t flinch when a waitress who needs to ask him a question stops him mid-sentence with a timeout signal in his face. A steady stream of friends stop by his table to ask about his father, the Giants, maybe his latest movie. He prefers sweats and a T-shirt to a business suit, and he only shaves when necessary. He said he got his everyman attitude from his parents, “who were so unimpressed by all the bling-bling around them.”

“If there’s a gene for normalcy, for not falling into all the traps and superficialities of wealth and visibility, thank god I inherited that gene,” he said.

Tisch and the rest of the people in his suite cleared out and headed home Sunday early in the fourth quarter, once the Giants had fallen too far behind.

Typical L.A. move.