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A young man is discovered at a poolside and offered a part
in a film. He goes on to star in another picture, but dreams
of entering into production work. Finally achieving this,
he works for Paramount, lifting it from number nine to number
one company, and in doing so saving it from the brink of collapse.
Now an independent producer, the future looks rosy. However,
the police set him up in buying pharmaceutical drugs, and
suddenly no one will do business with the man. When attempting
to secure independent financing at the Cannes festival for
his next film, he is named as a suspect in the killing of
another producer with whom he had done business. Although
never tried, and later proved innocent, he finds himself at
rock bottom. He is ejected from the Paramount office, and
sells his beloved home retreat. Contemplating suicide now,
the man books himself into a sanitarium, but soon realises
he is the only one who can get his life back on track. After
a desperate breakout from the secure unit, the man strives
to get back his house and recover his life...
With
a rollercoaster plot like this, it could only be contrived
fiction, right? Wrong. The Kid Stays in the Picture
is the true life story of Robert Evans, at 35 years plus the
longest running producer at Paramount Pictures. You couldn't
invent such a turbulent history as this, or one with as much
lucky happenstance and sheer excitement. At first I thought
I was watching the making-of, rather than the main feature.
The entire biopic is narrated by the man himself; there is
next to no acted dialogue, and only a handful of old film
scenes, the majority of the project being constructed of stills
only. This may sound extremely tedious, but you soon find
yourself sucked into a lifestory of glitz, glamour, wheeling,
dealing, scheming, bullying, back-stabbing, and of course
sex.
Most people will not have heard of Robert Evans, so here's
a few high- and low-points of his career, some of which you
might be able to connect with. He produced Rosemary's Baby,
employing Roman Polanski as director. Frank Sinatra demanded
that his wife, Mia Farrow, be released for his film, The
Detective. She agonised over the decision, but when Evans
showed her the dailies she decided to stay. Sinatra arrived
on the set to serve her his divorce papers; Farrow had the
last laugh when Rosemary's Baby was the smash hit of
the summer, easily outgrossing The Detective. Love
Story practically saved Paramount from self-destruction.
Evans married the female lead, Ali McGraw, but later lost
her to an illicit love affair with Steve McQueen. When Evans
was at his lowest ebb, the new head of Paramount - a man to
whom Evans had given his first break back in the sixties -
offered the producer back his old job. And, stranger still,
Jack Nicholson persuaded the owner of Evans' old house to
sell it back to him. You couldn't make it up! At a book-signing
he was attracted to a woman and asked her out for dinner.
She laughed in his face and said, "You're 72, my last two
boyfriends didn't add up to that!" Six months later they were
married.
This
will appeal to fans of Robert Evans' work and general followers
of the film industry. There's some great extras for anyone
interested in this sort of thing: a couple of award ceremonies,
including the Lifetime Achievement Award; film of a personal
pitch for Love Story; interviews with various film
business people on their experiences of Evans; A gag reel
featuring mainly Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (another
of his productions); and a theatrical trailer. If you're only
looking for whizzes and bangs, look elsewhere. This won't
appeal to a mass mainstream audience, but it is refreshingly
different and worth seeing at least once.
Ty
Power
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