BEFORE: It seems like my documentary subjects have been a bit all over the place, but they really haven't - Jerry Lewis saw himself as a filmmaker, Jacques Cousteau saw himself as a filmmaker, and that's a great lead-in for a week of films set in hot hot Hollywood. I assume it's very hot there right now, it's hot as hell in NYC so they're probably about to change the first "O" in the Hollywood sign to an "E". Maybe not, the high in San Diego will be 72 today, I almost forgot how nice the weather used to be at Comic-Con, back when I used to go there. Anyway, I've got five films about actors and producers next, so I'm going to try to spread those out over the next seven days as a theme week.
Carol Burnett carries over from "Becoming Cousteau".
THE PLOT: Documentary about legendary Paramount producer Robert Evans.
AFTER: Well, it feels a bit odd using Carol Burnett as a link to get here, when there were SO many other choices - It turns out that nearly everybody in Hollyweird either worked with or dated super-producer Robert Evans. Some people, I'm guessing, did both. But here's the thing, this documentary is ALL archive footage, and NO interviews. So no matter who I used as a link here, it was going to happen through footage only, that's just the deal. In my defense, go back to yesterday's cast list and take a look at just how difficult that was - let's fact it, I got extremely lucky that there was footage in two films on my list of Louis Malle interacting with both Jerry Lewis and Mr. Cousteau - and so yeah, I took advantage of that. Who else was I going to use as a link, Vincent Cassel? And it's also a bit of good fortune that when Dick Cavett interviewed Jacques Cousteau, Carol Burnett was another guest on that same show. Now, when I program my links, I often don't know how and when each person listed on the IMDB will appear - and in Ms. Burnett's case, she was part of an anti-drug music video that Robert Evans was forced to make in after his big coke bust, this essentially counted as "community service" for him, to make a program that would air in 1981 as a network special , starring all of the major stars of the day, like Scott Baio, Dana Plato, Cheryl Tiegs, Leif Garrett and Andy Gibb. Perhaps for some of those stars, appearing in the video also counted as THEIR community service, we'll never know. Seriously, the program was called "Get High on Yourself", I'm guessing it was just a whole hour of awful songs and PSAs, but you can research that on your own.
Anyway, this is a film with a cast of hundreds, thanks to the wonders of archive footage from the Paramount vaults, so now that I'm HERE, there's no way back, and from here, I can also go just about anywhere. Fourteen more documentaries are going to wrap up this chain - but another weird thing about how this chain is linked together, tomorrow's film has a cast that's JUST as large. I think the two docs with the biggest casts ended up back-to-back, you'd think that the linking would make it necessary for each one of them to get me out of a linking jam, but that's what's weird, some docs with just 10 people in them (again, according to the IMDB) gave me no linking trouble, on either end. I can't really explain the magic of linking, except to say that no film is unlinkable, the links are there, I just have to go and find them. I think at least five of the people listed below will be carrying over to the next film, which makes sense because it's another film about a Hollywood producer.
Robert Evans wasn't always a producer, or a studio executive - before that he was an actor, just not a very well-known one. And before that he ran a fashion company that made pants for women, which at the time was groundbreaking, believe it or not. There was a time, not too long ago, where pants were for men only - a woman not wearing a skirt or a dress or at least three petticoats was scandalous or obscene, and this was IN the 20th century. Like, the 1950's was the turning point when it suddenly became OK for women to wear PANTS, and Robert Evans was right there, working in women's pants. And I know how that sounds, a little racy, but it fits his style, he makes the same stupid joke himself in this doc. It makes more sense to say he spent five years working to get women INTO pants, and then 20 years in Hollywood trying to get women OUT of their pants. There, I fixed the joke, you're welcome.
Before that, he was an actor, a child actor. His life changed in 1956 when on a pants-based business trip, he was approached in a hotel pool in Beverly Hills by actress Norma Shearer, who asked if he was an actor, and if he'd be available to play a young version of her late husband, producer Irving Thalberg (last seen in "Mank") in a biopic about actor Lon Chaney. This led mega-producer Darryl Zanuck to cast him as a bullfighter in the film adaptation of Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", which meant training for three months to learn the techniques. Both Hemingway and Ava Gardner thought Evans was all wrong for the role, and threatened to quit the production if his part wasn't re-cast. But then Zanuck saw him in costume, and after the first take, announced, "The kid stays in the picture!" giving Evans the title for his future autobiography.
After several non-illustrious roles, feeling that his acting career was going nowhere, Evans realized his dream was really to be the next Darryl Zanuck, the producer calling the shots. Actors come and go, they're mostly a dime a dozen, I think we can all see that, but producers held the real power in Hollywood. So Evans purchased the rights to a novel titled "The Detective" and got it made into a movie with Sinatra, Jack Klugman, Robert Duvall and Jacqueline Bisset, and this brought him to the attention of Charles Bluhdorn at Paramount, which at the time was the 9th largest Hollywood studio in a town that could really only support 8.
But in just 10 years, Evans, acting as VP of production, turned the studio's fate around with movies like "Barefoot in the Park", "The Odd Couple", "Rosemary's Baby", "The Italian Job", "True Grit", "Love Story", "Harold and Maude", "Serpico", "The Conversation", "The Great Gatsby", and oh, yeah, a little film called "The Godfather", maybe you've heard of it. Were there problems along the way? Hiccups, disagreements, disappointments? Yeah, sure, that's just filmmaking - but come on, that's an unmatchable string of hits to have on a studio's slate. But Evans was just getting started, he struck a deal in 1972 with Bluhdorn to stay on as executive V.P. of worldwide production, while also producing films directly under his own banner, which Paramount would then distribute - and the first was the Nicholson film "Chinatown", another critical and financial success.
Then, another turning point, after "Chinatown" was a hit, Bob Evans left Paramount to be an independent producer for a few years, with both hits like "Marathon Man" and stinkers like "Popeye" getting released between 1976 and 1980. Then over the following 12 years, he only produced two films, "The Cotton Club" and "The Two Jakes", which was the sequel to "Chinatown". Then between 1993 and 2003, well, the less said about those films, the better. **cough** "The Phantom" **cough**
To be fair, there were extenuating circumstances - a man who Evans entered into a deal with to produce "The Cotton Club" turned up dead. Each partner in the production company owned 45% of the film, so it seems like Evans would profit the most from this man's death, and therefore he was kind of like a suspect - but the killing was arranged by the female cocaine dealer who introduced the man to Evans, Evans gave her $50,000 as a finder's fee but apparently she didn't think that was enough. Ah, Hollywood - this is one reason why I never moved there to work. Evans was advised by his lawyer to not testify, which didn't look good, and the cocaine dealer said that she and Evans were lovers, and that didn't look good either. It took Evans a decade or so to bounce back from all the bad publicity - but he was down, not out.
If this film feels sort of cobbled together, with pieces of footage from all over, that's probably just because it is - the narration comes from Robert Evans himself, but it's possible that most or all of that came from excerpts of the audiobook version of his autobiography of the same name, then somebody just licensed all the images and footage they needed to illustrate the events he talked about. Sure, it's a departure from the typical "talking heads" format so commonly used, but that doesn't necessarily make the approach better, especially when the only quoted authority on the life and times of Robert Evans has something of a vested interest in his portrayal. And then all of his reminiscences of his marriage to Ali MacGraw just all feel way too intimate, and therefore creepy. Somehow him describing their conversations and make-out sessions is worse than the rapid-fire montage of all the actresses he slept with over the years. And then of course Ali left Robert Evans for Steve McQueen, after an affair began on the set of "The Getaway". I mean, sure, if given the choice between Bob Evans and Steve McQueen, I get it - but she divorced McQueen five years later, anyway. Everything's got an expiration date, remember...
Robert Evans was married SEVEN times, though, he was a bit like the male Elizabeth Taylor in that regard - one marriage lasted just nine days, and none of them lasted more than three years. I hate to generalize, but I'm thinking that in most cases, the cause for divorce was listed as "being Robert Evans". He had a stroke in 1998 and while he was recovering at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Frank Sinatra (his nemesis during the production of "Rosemary's Baby") died in one of the adjoining rooms, and this encouraged Evans to recover. This documentary was made in 2002, and Evans lived another 17 years, and died in October 2019 at the age of 89.
Being the classic, stereotypical Hollywood studio producer, Evans inspired characters in Orson Welles' final film "The Other Side of the Wind", the Blake Edwards film "S.O.B.", Dustin Hoffman's character in "Wag the Dog", Michael Douglas' character in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" and a recurring character on "Entourage", among others. There's also a miniseries (screening on Paramount+, naturally) about the making of "The Godfather", in which Evans is played by Matthew Goode - I have no doubt he can do the character justice. This documentary did not make me feel happy, though, it's kind of depressing to me, and not just because it's another doc about a recently deceased person. Bob Evans was the head of Paramount at the age of 37, and meanwhile I'm 53 and I've never been the head of Paramount. Sure, I've got producing credits on a few animated shorts and a couple of features, but this guy produced "Chinatown" and "The Godfather", I'm a piker by comparison. And seven divorces? I've only been divorced once, so on every level I'm feeling quite inadequate, if that makes any sense. Evans maybe had his ups and downs, but he was a huge player, he got out there and lived, made deals, worked with nearly everybody in Hollywood and dated everybody else. I manage a tiny animation studio and a tiny movie theater, and right now I'm only doing one of those, so there's a lot of time at home, during which I question my role in the universe.
Also starring the voice of Robert Evans, with archive footage of Eddie Albert, Steve Allen (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Woody Allen (last seen in "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"), Pedro Almodovar, Ursula Andress, Scott Baio, Peter Bart, Warren Beatty (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Paul Newman (ditto), Charlie Bluhdorn, James Caan (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Clint Eastwood (ditto), Robin Williams (ditto), James Cagney (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), John Cassavetes, William Castle, Carol Channing, James Coburn, Francis Ford Coppola (last seen in "Spielberg"), Peter Falk (ditto), John Davidson (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), John Travolta (ditto), Catherine Deneuve, Bruce Dern (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind"), Barbra Streisand (ditto), Angie Dickinson (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr.: I've Gotta Be Me"), Richard Nixon (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Frank Sinatra (ditto), Kirk Douglas, Mike Douglas (last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Faye Dunaway (last seen in "The Rules of Attraction"), Mia Farrow (last seen in "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road"), Ava Gardner (ditto), Bob Hope (ditto), Errol Flynn, Jane Fonda (last seen in "WBCN and the American Revolution"), Henry Kissinger (ditto), Richard Gere (last seen in "Three Christs"), Ruth Gordon (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), Gene Hackman, Gregory Harrison, Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Hiller, Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Walter Matthau (ditto), Mike Nichols (ditto), Robert Redford (ditto), Olivia Hussey (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), John Wayne (ditto), Kate Jackson, Shirley Knight (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Cheryl Ladd, Jack Lemmon (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Ali MacGraw, Steve McQueen, Edward R. Murrow, Jack Nicholson (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Ryan O'Neal (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Tatum O'Neal (last seen in "The Runaways"), Laurence Olivier (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Al Pacino (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Roman Polanski, Dana Plato, Tyrone Power, Mario Puzo, Robert Shapiro, Norma Shearer, Tommy Steele, David Susskind, Irving Thalberg, Cheryl Tiegs, Robert Towne, Kathleen Turner (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), Hervé Villechaize, Chris Wallace (last seen in "Irresistible"), Raquel Welch (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Richard Widmark, Debra Winger (last seen in "Shadowlands"), Henry Winkler (last seen in "Down to You"), Darryl F. Zanuck,
RATING: 6 out of 10 fights with Coppola
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