“With Bob Evans I think we found an amazing storyteller with an extraordinary life,” says Brett Morgen, who, with Nanette Burstein, co-directed and co-produced the feature-length documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture. Based on Robert Evans’ autobiography of the same name, the movie draws even more heavily on the book-on-tape version of the autobiography, which is narrated in Evans’ distinctive leathery voice, full of swagger, mythologizing self-love, and disarming self-deprecation. In Evans, the filmmakers have identified not only a unique biographical subject but also one of the last of a dying Hollywood breed.
In style, content, and technique, this movie about the actor-turned-producer who revived Paramount’s flagging fortunes in the late Sixties and early Seventies with a string of hits — among them Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story, Chinatown, and The Godfather — stays faithful to the larger-than-life Evans legend. Even the truth sounds like a fairy tale: Evans really was discovered while swimming in the Beverly Hills Hotel pool by Norma Shearer, and he really did become the head of production at Paramount having no prior experience apart from his limited acting career, and he really did tear Henry Kissinger away from Vietnam strategy sessions so he could attend the premiere of The Godfather.
“I think Bob has a lot of bravado, and he has a lot of charm, and he has a lot of balls,” says Burstein. “And that all comes out through his storytelling, which is why people are so drawn to the audiotape. People would literally pull off the side of the road and be an hour late to a meeting because they couldn’t rip themselves away from Bob’s story. That voice is what people are attracted to.”
The movie capitalizes on “that voice.” Evans narrates the picture in a voiceover that preserves the hard-boiled and seductive tones that made the book-on-tape such a cult favorite. As the movie starts, Evans warns, “There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying.” At the outset, Evans promises to be an unreliable narrator. This is where the craft of the filmmakers comes into play. Morgen and Burstein (whose last documentary feature, On the Ropes, was nominated for an Academy Award) were not interested so much in getting at the absolute truth of the Evans mythology, but in telling an interesting story and counterbalancing the one-sidedness of Evans’ perspective. It’s something Burstein has likened to “third-person autobiography.”
“The movie is an adaptation of Bob’s autobiography,” she says. “It’s from his point of view, but as filmmakers you’re putting your own interpretation on Bob’s life. It’s recognizing that, hey, Bob’s got a great story, we want to entertain you and tell this story, and that we have some subtext to it as well. That’s where we put our own mark on it as filmmakers.”
Narcissist that he is, almost every moment of Evans’ life has been photographed, which provided the filmmakers with an incredible wealth of visual material from which to choose. For Morgen and Burstein, these photos were anything but static images. Their manipulation was done with a technology called After Effects, explains Morgen. “You could choose various focal lengths and lenses. You could decide if you wanted to crane into the shot. … Each movement has a different psychological impact on the audience. It was really like being a director, walking onto a set, and blocking out a scene. It was a really liberating experience. … The biggest issue, the biggest problem of working in this technology, is learning how to restrain yourself so that it’s not all style with no substance. You have to never lose sight of the fact that you’re telling a story and never allow the imagery to get in the way of that.”
Thorny dilemmas arose over the things about which Evans wanted to keep mum. “Bob didn’t want to include any of his transgressions — the coke bust, the rumored involvement in a murder — because he felt that it would be legitimizing something that he was never indicted for in any way, shape, or form. We said, ‘Bob, it ain’t gonna happen.’ Whether he wanted to do voiceover on it or not, we were going to figure out a way to do it in the film. It was our reputations on the line. We had to fight Bob tooth and nail over a lot of stuff.
“I’ll give a good example of it,” Morgen continues. “Bob, for all his bravado, generally won’t kiss and tell. … [But] part of Bob’s legend is that he was a legendary cocksman. Women have played a huge role in his life. That’s part of his character. He didn’t want to boast about it. We said we’re going to figure out a way to do this. So we found all these interviews with Bob where he’s on these talk shows and the interviewers say, ‘You’re always seen with beautiful women,’ and Bob will say, ‘I don’t go out with women all that much. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Meanwhile, we’re showing you a montage of hundreds of women. I raise this to show you an example where Bob just flat-out refused to do voiceover and we found another way of telling it.
“The experience you get watching this film is no different really from the experience we had spending two and a half years with him,” Morgen concludes. “This really is the man that we know, that we’re showing you, for better or for worse. You may love him, you may hate him, but it’s hard to take your eyes off him.” 
The Kid Stays in the Picture opens in Austin this Friday. See Film Listings on p.78 for review.
This article appears in August 16 • 2002.
