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The Kid Stays in the Picture
(Reviewed July 3, 2002)
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Excellent, incredibly entertaining documentary about movie producer and former Paramount studio head Robert Evans--who, to hear him tell it in his suavely oily narration, was the greatest thing to hit Hollywood since talkies. Funny thing is, despite off-the-chart levels of glorious self-aggrandizement here, he makes a pretty good case for himself!
The film follows Evans' move from senior exec at the Evan-Picone women's-wear label to bit-part actor to the top peak at Paramount to fringe figure in the "Cotton Club" murder case. (The documentary's title derives from what the head of 20th Century Fox said when several actors--and Ernest Hemingway himself--tried to get Evans fired from a matador role early in his acting career.) Adapted from Evans' book of the same name and narrated with grinning tough-guy swagger by the man himself, the movie ranges from the 1950s through 1980s. A too-quick wrapup of events that have taken place in the past 10-or-so years was the only disappointment--and when a movie's only notable flaw is that it leaves you wanting more, that's not much of a complaint!
Enhancing the fascinatingly full-of-himself anecdotes and tales of triumph-'n'-tragedy, the documentary is shot very creatively for a movie made up largely of still photographs. Elements of photos have been separated and moved around to provide 3-D effects, backgrounds move past through open windows, smoke rises from cigarettes--it looks a whole lot jazzier than a boring Ken Burns documentary, let's put it that way. The movie is not all photo-album stuff, though; there are lots of clips and behind-the-scenes moments from movies with which Evan was involved ("Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown," "The Godfather," "Love Story" and, as they say, MORE), plus plenty of period footage of L.A., New York and Palm Springs. (And we get some really nice tracking shots of the Evans house interspersed throughout the proceedings. Some spread!)
Note: Don't dare get up and leave the theatre when the credits start, or you will miss the most hilarious part of the entire movie: Dustin Hoffman doing an extended, ad-libbed, very risque impression of Evans that must be seen to be believed! The Hoffman character in "Wag the Dog" was said to have been patterned after Evans, but that performance didn't come close to this portrayal for jaw-dropping verisimilitude!
Back Row Grade: A
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