The Kid Stays in the Picture Read online

  Dedication

  To Joshua.

  By far the greatest production of my life.

  Second Dedication

  To the man who believed in me . . . as the curtain was the falling.

  His name, Sumner Redstone. Years ago, a small-time theater owner. Then bought up a theater chain. Did pretty well at it. No . . . very well. Then, with a steel will, bought Viacom. Did pretty well at that. No . . . very, very well. Bright? Very bright. Let’s just say that during World War II he was called upon to help break the Japanese code. Not bad for a nineteen-year-old kid.

  Is he rich? Suppose so . . . if you call multibillions rich.

  Fact be, though, that ain’t his real wealth. Far from it. His persona embodies an all-but-extinct trait: a commitment to personal honor.

  Is he a longtime friend? About forty years’ worth. Loyal? Yeah, big time. Would I consider him “friendship treasured”? Yeah, big time too. However, neither has zero to do with why he’s on the first page of my life’s trek. But all to do with the fact that, without him, my life’s trip would have ended.

  In May 1998, I stroked out—three times! Flatlined.

  Alone in the ICU, with no visitors allowed, one man defied the rules. Demanding entrance, he insisted on being by my side. It was Sumner.

  “You’re gonna make it, Evans! You’re gonna make it! I won’t let you die.”

  During the first week he held my hand tight, watching me go through one stroke, then another. Each day, as he left the hospital, the doctors would take him aside.

  “Mr. Redstone, please call before you come again. He probably won’t make it through the night.” But he never listened. For weeks to come, geography took a back seat. Whether it was from Boston, Chicago, or New York, he never called—he came.

  He would sit by my side, all but pleading: “Don’t die on me, Evans! If I can make it, being burned to a crisp, you can too! Everyone thought I’d die. I didn’t. And neither will you.”

  That depth of caring goes beyond friendship or loyalty. It has everything to do with CHARACTER. On that level, in my life, no one stands taller.

  When you’re lying immobile, there is a thin line between life and death. In that abyss, how easy it is to surrender. It was Sumner who wouldn’t let me.

  Foreword

  My fifth-grade teacher used to admonish his students that by the time we all reached adulthood we would have forfeited three-fourths of ourselves in order “to be like other people.”

  From the moment I met Robert Evans, I realized that he was one person who hadn’t played the forfeiture game. He played by his own rules and lived according to his own scenarios. His unwillingness to bend or forfeit a piece of himself cost him dearly at various times in his life, but it also lent him uniqueness.

  For better or worse, Evans was and still is an original. It made him famous, it made him infamous. Many say they know him, few do. I am one of them.

  Robert Evans’s appointment as production chief of Paramount Pictures in 1967 was regarded by most of Hollywood’s power players as utterly hallucinatory. Here was an actor who had never produced a picture, much less run a studio, being awarded sweeping responsibility over one of Hollywood’s most fabled movie factories. It was bizarre!

  But it was also fascinating. These were the 1960s, remember, and hallucinations were in vogue. The studio Evans was taking over was hardly a studio, rather a sleeping giant. One that had been in Hollywood’s cellar for a decade. His appointment was accompanied by the promise that Gulf + Western, which had recently acquired Paramount, would pump hundreds of millions of dollars into an expanded production program. This meant jobs for actors, writers, and technicians—good news for Hollywood, even if it was Bob Evans doing the hiring.

  When Evans brought me in as his right-hand man, the prognosis only worsened. How could a writer for The New York Times possibly help this wannabe Thalberg thread his way through the minefields of Hollywood? No sooner had Evans and I moved into our offices than items started appearing in the trade papers and gossip columns predicting our imminent demise. The silver-haired studio apparatchik who was in charge of office furniture declined to refurbish mine or Evans’s. “You won’t be here long enough to bother,” he said reassuringly.

  The fact that eight years later, he was long gone, and Evans and I were still ensconced at Paramount, had as much to do with the times, perhaps, as with the talents and tenacity of the principals.

  If our “act” seemed unlikely, it nonetheless reenergized a fading studio with a new voice. Bob and I were strangers to the Hollywood establishment, but there were many others as well, brilliant ones, demanding to be heard. And heard they were. Soon a new spirit of filmmaking emanated through the once decrepit Windsor gates of Paramount. The Odd Couple, Rosemary’s Baby, Harold and Maude, Goodbye, Columbus, Paper Moon, True Grit, Love Story, The Godfather, Chinatown, were but a few.

  Paramount had come back from the dead and Evans had been transmogrified from goat to folk hero. For that brief moment in time, it was wondrous to behold.

  Soon the ridicule that had greeted Bob Evans halted. I recall watching him arrive at the Bistro, the top place for power lunches at that time, a couple of days after Love Story had opened to record numbers. Upon recognizing him, the diners broke into applause. Evans looked behind him to see if some superstar had shown up, then realized with astonishment that the applause was for him!

  For nearly ten years we were to work side by side, driving to and from the studio in one car—mine. He couldn’t drive, or wouldn’t. We were, indeed, a study in contrasts. I plowed through scripts and deal memos, trying to figure out how things got done. Evans really didn’t care. He was a true maverick who was driven to take the big risks, to do things his way.

  The road was by no means easy. Evans was constantly being second-guessed by the domineering Charles Bluhdorn, the Austrian-born financier who owned Paramount and an instant expert on everything, from what stars should be paid to what films should cost. There was another instant expert in the wings as well. Martin Davis had been a press agent at Paramount when he came up with the idea of luring Bluhdorn into buying the studio. Taut and conspiratorial by nature, Davis had become an important force in the company but by the late 1960s was using his power to try to sell the back lot and move the studio operation to New York, where it would function under his direct control. Bluhdorn wanted to use the studio as part of a massive real estate deal involving a shady cluster of Italians—a key figure was the infamous Michele Sindona, who ultimately was to die in jail. Bob Evans was the only person at the studio who fought Martin Davis to keep the studio open. Threats and insults bothered Evans little.

  I vividly recall the day Evans asked me to try to persuade Mike Nichols to do a special directing gig for us. His assignment: to direct Evans in preparing his filmed presentation to the board of directors. “What’s the purpose?” Nichols demanded. “To save the studio from becoming a cemetery.” It was vintage Evans—the unexpected—and it worked.

  From that moment, the New York hierarchy left the making of films to their creators. Evans himself began to change. He became fascinated with the minutiae of post-production—the editing, the mix of music and effects, etc. The Godfather was a seminal experience in that Evans was dissatisfied with Francis Ford Coppola’s cut and spent months working round the clock with him on the film, even postponing its release date. Now the gossip in town was that Evans was intruding on the prerogatives of young filmmakers. The reality was quite the opposite: I watched as a superbly shot but ineptly put together film was transformed into a masterpiece.

  After Godfather, Bob Evans became increasingly obsessed with his work. His Gatsby-like image began to fade. In the office all da
y, in the cutting room all night, he became somber and reclusive, increasingly dependent on painkillers for an acute back condition and on so-called vitamin shots dispensed by a friendly studio physician. By the mid-seventies, the dream had begun to fall apart.

  Needless to say, I found all this saddening. Working with Evans had been a roller-coaster ride. He was a man devoid of pettiness; he could never criticize a colleague’s mistakes, however grotesque. He was willing to take artistic risks, however outrageous. But now, with his marriage to Ali MacGraw shattered and his substance-abuse problem worsening, I decided to move on to another job in the industry. Evans ultimately surrendered his power position at the studio and turned to producing and then, as this book chronicles, fell upon difficult times.

  Memories of the good years at Paramount under Evans soon became frayed. The town forgot that through the Evans years a studio was reborn, extraordinary talents were nurtured, superb films were created. The American film emerged as number one in every country in the world. Suddenly the financial barons paid attention, legitimatizing a new industry for Wall Street to embrace. When I started with Bob in 1967, Paramount accounted for less than 5 percent of Gulf + Western’s revenue. In less than a decade, it was closing in on 50 percent. Five years ago, Gulf + Western changed its name to Paramount Communications.

  His autobiography recounts his bizarre life in often embarrassing detail.

  The biography’s voice is very much that of Evans—robust, audacious, original, though sometimes he minimizes his own hard work and achievements. Perhaps he never truly understood how much he gave of himself or comprehended the positive influence he had on others. The book relates many conflicts and clashes; it leaves out the countless kindnesses he dispensed.

  But perhaps this was to be expected, I never felt Bob really understood his own innate ability. There were times, many times, when he was his own worst enemy. Given his propensity for doing good, it was amazing how much evil he allowed to penetrate his life.

  Looking back, I too sometimes wonder if it all really happened. But happen it did. The films are there to prove it. Miraculously, so is Bob Evans.

  —Peter Bart

  Editor-in-chief, Variety Magazine

  Introduction to the new edition

  The so-called style of my writing bears little resemblance to the way I speak. In fact, no resemblance. Wish I could afford the luxury!

  Writing, like music or dancing, hungers for that certain rhythm, that beat, that sound. Without it, no matter how talented the artist, his or her efforts get heaped on top of a pile, and then that gets heaped atop another pile. And no matter how high the pile rises, invariably it slides into the world of the unremembered.

  What joy there must be in writing a novel. Facing that empty page each day, putting pen to paper, with a never-ceasing array of options and characters to invent. The allure of the boundless narrative. Eenie . . . meenie . . . minie . . . moe. Pick a character by the toe. If he hollers? Stick a narrative up his you-know. . . . Then, with pleasure, let ’im go. . . .

  You want to have fun writing? That’s the way to do it.

  Nonfiction? Well, that’s a different animal. Each day, sure, you face that same empty page. But this time there’s little joy, mucho trauma. Days turn to weeks, weeks to months. That empty page is still there, but you’ve got to fill it . . . with the truth.

  Damn it! you think. Can’t I do something to pick up the pace in this chapter? Get some action goin’ here? Slip in a laugh or two? Try for a tear or two? Can’t I get one of these characters to do something a little different? Make things work out better?

  WRONG! Doesn’t work that way.

  Sure, I could try it. Plenty of people have. But they’d burn me at the stake! Hey, I’m a class act. A writer of documented nonfiction. I write the real shit!

  The hard part is, making sure it doesn’t read like shit.

  To tell the truth . . . and nothin’ but the truth . . . yet stick a bit of lightnin’ up the reader’s ass—that’s one mean hat trick. Don’t care how talented you are, or think you are. If you want to make truth jump from the page, you need a hook!

  So how did I do it? How did I get this goddamn life onto the page?

  It didn’t come easy. For more than a month I was alone, talking to myself on an all-but-deserted island. What a high! Suckin’ up them sounds of crickets, birds, and weird tropical winds. Thoughts began bulgin’ from my head—BIG! By purpose, I let ’em float, not search their way to paper. I was waitin’ to hear them bells, a beat, a chord, anything to protect my brain’s graphic thoughts from the enemy of false humility and puff. A sound that would keep ’em ingenuous, not self-serving.

  Then, one day, I was on that empty beach. I had just finished grilling a succulent lobster, when a huge white pelican with arrowlike speed zoomed out of the sky straight at my fuckin’ head. Thought he was gonna take it off.

  WHAM!

  Instead, he copped my lobster.

  As I squinted into the sun, lookin’ for the bird, it hit me. The survival of the fittest . . . the law of the jungle . . .

  Shrieking like a cheerleader, I ran down the beach.

  “I got it! I got it! I got my motherfuckin’ hook!”

  One I would never have found in the maze of what’s thought of as civilization.

  Forget grammatical perfection. Leave that to the pens of the more talented. Who the fuck wants to go toe-to-toe with George Bernard Shaw, anyway? Shock ’em with the unexpected! Put pen to paper to the gruffness of the caveman’s growl, the purr of the cat . . . the hiss of the rattlesnake . . . the sound of that bird winging down out of the sky. Lash out at them down-and-dirties with a sting of a crocodile’s tail. Staccato them painful mistakes with the swiftness of a jaguar on the hunt. Let them pleasures bellow out big with the roar of the lion! Taste them tiny successes with the litheness of a deer at play . . .

  Be a baboon. That’s right, a baboon! Fuck ’em! Let ’em laugh at you. But be you. Be an original!

  It is in that spirit I ask you to accept my writing—

  to the beat of a different drummer—

  as you turn the pages of The Kid Stays in the Picture.

  Robert Evans

  Beverly Hills, California

  January 2013

  Preface

  There are three sides to every story: yours . . . mine . . . and the truth. No one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently. Be it day or decade, recall still remains the one ace I’ve been dealt from life’s deck.

  In the spirit that the least spared in these pages be myself, I make no apology to those chronicled. At least you’ve been remembered—made a dent in another’s bumpy road.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Second Dedication

  Foreword

  Introduction to the new edition

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Photographic Insert 1

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Photographic Insert 2

  Chapter Thirty-F
our

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Photographic Insert 3

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Acknowledgments for the New Edition

  An Excerpt from The Fat Lady Sang

  “The Kid and J.F.K.”

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  MARCH 14, 1972.

  “Sidney, guess who’s coming to dinner.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Henry.”

  “Kissinger?”

  “Yeah!”

  “You sure it’s right?”

  “It’s great! Why?”

  “It ain’t no ordinary film. That’s why. It’s about the boys—the organization. It’s a hot ticket.”

  Was I hearing right? These words were coming from Sidney Korshak. The man whom The New York Times called one of the five most powerful people in the United States. For close to twenty years Sidney was not only my consigliere, but my godfather and closest friend.

  In the past year alone, two phone calls of his saved my ass. Literally. The first, to stop the heavy muscle from threatening not only my life, but my newborn kid’s as well.

  “Get the fuck outta our town, will ya? We don’t want nothin’ to happen to you or your kid. Go to Kansas City or St. Louis if ya wanna, but New York ain’t opening up for ya,” was the threat from New York’s families five.

  One call from Korshak, suddenly, threats turned to smiles and doors, once closed, opened with an embrace.