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The Robert Evans documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture is a whole lot of fun, although I'm not sure how much of Evans' amazing story we're supposed to believe. The film opens with a quote from his 1994 autobiography of the same name - "There are three sides to every story: My side, your side and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently." If that isn't enough to make The Kid seem more than a little one-sided, the fact that it's based solely on that biography, it's narrated by Evans and it includes exactly zero interviews with any of his friends, family, co-workers or acquaintances should set off bullshit detectors around the world.
On paper, all of that makes The Kid sound like a Level 5 disaster, but its story is so interesting, you'll barely care that it might be a snow job. For those of you completely unfamiliar with Evans, he was a big-shot movie producer back in the early '70s, a time when that title meant a whole lot more to a film than the director did. The Kid starts much earlier than the '70s, though. It bypasses Evans' childhood acting career and begins at the time the young man, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Adam Sandler, ran (with his brother) the successful New York- based Evan-Piccone clothier. While on a business trip to Los Angeles, Evans was literally plucked from a hotel swimming pool by Norma Shearer, who had him test for the part of her husband, Irving Thalberg, opposite Jimmy Cagney in the Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces.
From that point on, everything Evans touched turned to gold. Despite meeting resistance from all directions just about every step of the way, he found himself running Paramount. When he took over in 1966, Paramount was at the bottom of the heap among Hollywood studios. When he left in 1974, they were number one with a bullet, thanks to Evans greenlighting and nurturing films like Love Story, Rosemary's Baby and The Godfather.
The Kid follows the usual VH-1 Behind the Music formula of star trajectory - up, up and away, until the inevitable crash that usually happens as a result of drugs, drink, sex or murder (it's two of these for Evans). Directors Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen, who also made the award-winning boxing documentary On the Ropes, accentuate Evans' great stories with tons of archival footage and still photographs, which are manipulated to make it seem like they're moving. And don't leave early - the closing credits feature Dustin Hoffman doing a very funny impression of Evans that a keen ear will recognize as the basis of that actor's characters in Dick Tracy and Wag the Dog.
1:31 - R for language and some brief violent and sexual images
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