The Kid Stays in the Picture (2002)

Too many fans seem to be blown away

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

"The Kid Stays in the Picture" tells the first-hand account of the life of Robert Evans, with narration from the audio version of his memoir. The title is in reference to the big break Evans received in the mid-1950s by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck when everyone else was against the inexperienced actor playing the lead in a film. From his short-lived on-screen career he quickly moved up the ranks to become a major Hollywood producer. What follows is ninety minutes of deep-voiced narration, a steady flurry of pictures upon pictures, and a consistent stream of namedropping. The first person narration has a vibe that doesn't let up that screams "I love me, so you should too". As wonderful as "Chinatown" and other such films he was quote-responsible for are the flick feels a lot like a love note to him self for all to see. It's got wonderful pacing, but it feels so empty. Sure, it briefly abandons rule numero uno of the usual biopic, which is to leave out the bad parts and the real character flaws, but even those glimpses of humility are under-involving. There's just so little going on besides an old man looking back on those years he clawed his way up into the comfort of his own legacy. It's not as interesting as it should have been, even if it's as truthful as it can get.

I was half way through with the new Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair when I came across the excerpt from Robert Evans new memoir "Kid Nortorius." I had not heard of Robert Evans, but was fascinated enough to get a copy of "The Kid Stays in the Picture" to learn more.I was glued to the tube watching the story of a man who had the incredible luck to get noticed. You all know the story of how some actress was discovered selling malteds in some drugstore. Evan was put into The Sun Also Rises. Both cast and crew, Ernest Hemingway, Tyrone Power, and Ava Gardner included, attempted to have Robert Evans fired during production. Producer Darryl F. Zanuck refused, saying, "The kid stays in the picture," thus leading to both Evans' long career as a producer and the title of his book, and this film.He knew he had no future as an actor, but he also knew that the power was in producing. he managed to get named a Vice President of Paramount in another stroke of luck. Then his talent took over and he is the man behind such memorable films as Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, Marathon Man, and his first as an independent producer, Chinatown. It is the story behind these films that is fascinating, especially the fact that he and Paramount were in on Love Story and The Godfather from the beginning - before they were even written! His story with directors Roman Polanski and Francis Coppola are equally fascinating.His own Love story with Ali McGraw is equally fascinating, though it ended in tragedy. But luck does a strange turn and tragedy really struck in the form of a Hollywood murder case where his name was mentioned. Not a suspect, just on the periphery, but it was enough to send him to the depths of hell - within a hair's breadth of suicide.It was his friends that brought him back to where he is today. Now, he is telling the rest of the story in a new Memoir, "Kid Nortorious".If you love films as I do, then you really need to see this one to provide a back story to some of your favorites. hey, you probably should be buying his books as well.

Robert Evans's book version of this documentary, The Kid Stays in the Picture, is still un-read by me. But I have read much about him from other movie books from the 70's, and so this film does illuminate certain aspects of him that I already knew- his huge ego, his drug addiction, his proclivity to lots and lots of women, and having some part in the more outstanding films of the 1970's. Sometimes with Evans himself narrating throughout two things become apparent as peculiarities that keep it from being great- 1) the filmmaker's style is rather repetitive and, aside from some flourishes of talent, isn't anything too grand for the material, and 2) the three sides to the story that Evans is quoted with at the beginning become rather blurred as one full-on nostalgia (for bad and good) comes out. What makes it captivating, however, is that Evans is the kind of guy who will be honest about being full of crap and will even call on himself for his past troubles. Rarely has one man's achievements gone neck and neck with his flaws, and let out in a filmic, grandiose style such as this.Evans is shown to have, basically, a lot of luck as someone getting into Hollywood (as many of these stories go). He starts out as a so-so actor and tries desperately to establish himself as a producer. He becomes more apart of the development side of the pictures, and ushers through Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, and even the Godfather to an extent. As his story includes the personal side (his rise and fall in the relationship to Ali McGraw, the cocaine, the other tabloid stuff), the other side of his professional accomplishments still gears in for room. By the end, one can see that the man has gone through enough to have his rightful reputation as Paramount's longest remaining producer, and will likely hold onto his ego of being the head-cheese kind of 'creative producer' so many directors like or dread till the grave. If anything, the film is actually too short, as at 93 minutes (a brilliant Dustin Hoffman imitation over the credits included) we only get glimpses that are further expounded in the book. Therefore its already subjective viewpoint becomes even more crunched into one all-too-simple story on such an interesting case study.The Kid Stays in the Picture, despite not being as terrific as the filmmakers might think it is by their sleek camera angles and typical interludes of montage, is as close to being as honest as it could be. Honest, in the sense that Evans doesn't hide much in his story and how his own way of speaking about it, in its deep-sounding and straight-forward Hollywood way, is what film buffs look for. He may have been and done a lot of things, but as he says at the end, "I enjoy what I do, which most people can't say that they do."

When Robert Evans climbed out of a pool while on a business trip he got offered an acting role alongside James Cagney. After this he had a few more appearances as an actor until the well ran dry. An experience with a powerful producer convinced him that that was what he wanted to be – the man behind the man. Buying the rights to the book The Detective was the first step on a career that would see him produce some of the most famous films of the 1970's.I haven't read the book from which this film came but like the majority of people I have seen plenty of the films that Robert Evans was responsible for bringing to the screen. His story is interesting and although it was a risk to have Evans himself tell it, it worked here. Essentially we have Evans talking through his story over stock footage, old photographs and new images. This is the only real weaknesses that I felt the film had – it needs the story telling to be totally engaging because, when it isn't, there isn't anything particularly on the screen to cover for it. The photos are animated well and the images flow nicely (rather than being static shots) and the clips are used rather than just shown. However the main engine here is Evans' story and his telling.For a wider audience I could see why his story may not be of interest but personally it held my attention for the whole time. It had been nicely edited together so that it was never too brief but never stayed too long on any one thing or time. This kept the ego at bay and allowed the story to be told rather than wallowed in or celebrated (most of the time anyway). By the end of the film I felt like I had heard a good story and it had been interesting due to his integral involvement with some of the biggest films of the 1970's; I did have to wonder though why the end credits bothered to list his more recent successes as Sliver, Jade, The Saint and The Phantom – boasting that some of them broke $100 million was probably meant to make us think Evans was "back", however it just left me with the impression that his best days are about 20 years behind him now.Overall though this is an effective piece of story telling. The visual delivery helps by being neither dull nor distracting but doing enough to make this more than a radio show. Evans drives the film forward with the value of his story and the personal delivery of his narration. A strong film that fans of films of the period (which must be a large section of the users on this site) should check out.