He went to Cheltenham High School in Elkins Park, Pa. At Princeton, he majored in art and archaeology and was a member of the Woodrow Wilson Society.

For a few years after graduation, Paul worked in theater in New York, but he spent his remaining working life in the film industry in California. Within a few years of arriving, he wrote and directed a successful feature film, The Cheerleaders, a comedy about high school cheerleaders engaging in sexual antics. Paul described the film as “suburban absurd.” Made on a shoestring, it earned millions at the box office. Over the years that followed, he worked in many capacities on other feature films and documentaries.

Paul did not keep in touch with Princeton after graduation. He married Cabell Smith in 1967. They were divorced some years later. For the last several decades of his life, he lived in the Santa Monica Mountains above Los Angeles. He also continued to pursue his interest in the fine arts, painting colorful abstractions of the landscape of Topanga.

To his sister, Louise Plaschkes, the class offers its sincere condolences.