The Kid Stays In The Picture Review

• 18th Jun 2013

Robert Evans was a Hollywood producer for a new generation, just as Irving Thalberg was the wunderkind of the 1930s so Evans was in the 1960s and 1970s. His life was a colourful one, you might even say an unbelievable one; one of luck, opportunity and maverick like chances. To give a brief outline of his life that is covered in the documentary is as follows: he was spotted in a swimming pool by a Hollywood legend Norma Shearer who ensured that she put him front of the camera to play opposite James Cagney in his biopic portrayal of Lon Chaney Senior in The Man with a Thousand Faces in 1958. After a couple of further pictures he saw on the set 20^th Century Fox producer Darryl F. Zanuck and said to himself: “I want his job.”

After a few years kicking around he soon headed to the top of Paramount turning the company’s fortunes around from being the 9^th largest studio to the premier studio at around about the time that the studio was bought out by Gulf+Western. He then hired Roman Polanski as director on Rosemary’s Baby before entering into the seventies when all the other studios were heading for bust. He used his talents as a publicist and made Love Story (1970) a huge hit. Evans was riding on a wave what with a love affair of his own with the latter film’s star, Ali McGraw (this would later turn sour when she left him for Steve McQueen). His career would then reach a hiatus when he went on to produce The Godfather. This was not short of problems as he would endure a very public spat with Francis Ford Coppola over artistic differences. As the 1970s turned in the 80s Evans would fall from grace after being busted for cocaine possession before then being implicated in a bizarre murder. A colourful life indeed.

The Kid Stays in the Picture was made in 2002 and is a very flashy made documentary using colourful and animated stills and with narration that has something of the Sin City about it. It had already been a best selling autobiography so it made sense that Evans would narrate his own story. He delivers the dialogue as though he were Sam Spade or a character in some nourish detective thriller: “Fuck him and the horse he rode in on” he would chime on an executive or McGraw telling him before their courtship: “Phone me. I’m just seven digits away.” It all has the air of the fantastic about it. The opening shots of the film are a filmed tour of Evans home played to Irving Berlin’s ‘What’ll I Do’ with the sense that we’re about to stumble across a dead body.

Of course this is Evans’ story and it is open to fancy and interpretation (after all Evans is quoted as saying that there are three versions of the truth: “mine, yours and the truth.” Therefore, much of Evans story should be taken with a pinch of salt such as Evan’s wranglings with Coppola and his opinions on that. This, like Peter Biskind’s recent books on the ‘new’ Hollywood is fanciful story and in equal measure is enjoyable, exciting and irritating.

Extras on the disc include interviews and Evans showreel on explaining to Gulf+Western big knobs about the forthcoming epic that is The Godfather.

Chris Hick