IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE
Directed by Nanette Burstein and Bret Morgen
R, 93 minutes
It's as cheesy and addictive as a Philly steak, as lurid and as believable as a glossy fan magazine you'd pick up at the hairdresser's. It's Bob Evans on Bob Evans, and whatever else the old kid does, he certainly stays in the picture.
"There are three sides to every story," he advises. "Your side, my side, and the truth. And no one's lying." That would seem to cover all the bases, although the tag line may be a bit overreaching.
Perhaps Robert Evans, in this new millennium, needs some introduction. What people remember about him, if they remember anything, is that he was a Hollywood studio exec with a string of hits, a failed marriage to Ali MacGraw, and a cocaine bust; and then there was something dark and unresolved about a murder. All of this and more is visited in "The Kid Stays in the Picture".
It needs to be pointed out, almost as an afterthought, that somebody else actually made this movie. That would be the team of Nanette Burstein and Bret Morgen, who made the Oscar-nominated boxing documentary "On the Ropes" a few years back. And it probably should not go without saying that it was co-produced by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. But it's wall-to-wall Bob Evans, on the screen, on the soundtrack, cajoling, confessing, boasting, regretting, and selectively remembering.
The first thing he remembers is his discovery. He was, as he says, "in women's pants", a New York rag trade executive of 27 lounging poolside in Beverly Hills on a business trip, when....He's approached by the great Norma Shearer. She asks him if he's an actor. He says no (he's forgotten his debut as a soldier in the 1952 "Lydia Bailey".) She takes him back to the mansion she shared with her late husband, the legendary producer Irving Thalberg, and arranges for him to test for the Thalberg role in the biopic "Man of a Thousand Faces". He gets the part, and later gets the mansion, which plays a big part in this picture.
He's immediately cast in the plum role of the bullfighter Pedro Romero in Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", prompting a palace revolt led by Papa and stars Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, and Eddie Albert. Producer Darryl Zanuck flies to the set, watches a scene, picks up a bullhorn and bellows "The kid stays in the picture."
Evans was never much of an actor, but this display of absolute power thrilled him down to the roots of his tan. The kid moved to the executive side of the picture under the aegis of Gulf & Western mogul Charley Bludhorn, and as head of Paramount turns out a remarkable string of hits. If one is tempted to dismiss him as a pretty face, the litany of movies made on his watch tells an impressive story: "The Godfather", "Serpico", "Rosemary's Baby", "The Odd Couple", and "Marathon Man" are some of the titles that brought Paramount from last to first among the major studios, and "Chinatown" was his first venture as an independent producer.
One of his biggest hits, "Love Story", was brought to him by Ali MacGraw, who owned the rights. Soon she owned the rights to Evans as well. Their high-profile marriage is one of the two love stories of this reminiscence, and Evans blames his workaholism for its demise. But the deeper passion is for his home, the old Shearer-Thalberg mansion, which hovers like Tara behind it all. The mansion seems to be what won him Ali in the first place, and when his world falls apart in bad movies, drugs, murder, and madness in the late 80s, and he loses the place, like Scarlett he starts hearing voices urging him back to the source of his strength.
Morgen and Burstein have fun with the look and pace of the movie, reeling in old film clips (including a classic Evans pitch to the Paramount board, directed by Mike Nichols) that chronicle their subject's career, and doing lively digital tricks with old photographs to give them the look of stereoscopes. They illustrate his bout with madness with a lunatic montage of clips from his acting career, including the infamous "The Fiend Who Walked the West". And their camera's loving, overripe caress of the mansion in good times and bad (shattered glass, dead leaves blowing across the floor) provides the throbbing bass note of this lively, unreliable, irresistible symphonette.
The kid does have staying power. He's been up, down, over, and out, but he's still in the picture, and making a bid to rise again.
========== X-RAMR-ID: 32841 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 783649 X-RT-TitleID: 1115296 X-RT-SourceID: 896 X-RT-AuthorID: 2779
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews