October

“There are three sides to every story: yours … mine … and the truth. No one is lying."

 Robert Evans

I've spent the last few weeks immersed in the world of the late Robert Evans, who was the last of a dying breed: a major studio mogul.  Hollywood is a minor subsidiary run by vast faceless corporations now, which explains the relentless tsunami of comic book franchise movies that dominate the big screen these days. It wasn't always like this, kiddos,  

Having been plucked from the relative obscurity of the fashion industry by Norma Shearer, who -- on the basis of seeing him poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel -- insisted that he play the role of Irving Thalberg in her upcoming movie Man of a Thousand Faces, Evans did as he was told and become friends with the film's co-star Jimmy Cagney. Not bad for a young man who'd already given up his dream of becoming an actor, and since one thing often leads to another in Hollywood, Darryl Zanuck soon wanted him for the part of Ava Gardner's Latin lover in a film adaptation of Ernest Hemmingway's novel The Sun Also Rises. There were objections from much of the film's cast -- Gardner, Tyrone Power, and Mel Ferrer -- but Errol Flynn liked the young Evans and told him not to worry about it. Ignoring all this sturm und drang from the cast, Zanuck declared: "The kid stays in the picture," so Evans went on to play the role of the young bullfighter Pedro Romero and get the title for his eventual memoir. 

Through a series of unlikely circumstances, Evans eventually was named head of Paramount Pictures, which was then owned by Gulf Western and losing money to the point where the corporate board of directors wanted to sell the studio -- possibly to the Hollywood Forever cemetery right next door.  As this passage from the book's foreword says: 

"Robert Even's appointment as production chief of Paramount Pictures in 1967 was regarded by most of Hollywood's power players as utterly hallucinatory. Here was an actor who had never produced a picture, much less run a studio, being awarded sweeping responsibility over one of Hollywood's most fabled movie factories. It was bizarre!"

He managed to save the studio and his job by producing the monster hit Love Story, then went on to produce The Godfather and Chinatown, a trilogy that would put the grinning head of Robert Evans high up on Hollywood's Mount Rushmore if such a thing existed.  None of these movies came easy, though, and perhaps the best reason to read his memoir is to gain an understanding of what a real producer in Hollywood actually does. It's not a job for the meek or faint of heart.

As this passage from an article in The Guardian puts it: 

"Of course, there is only one Robert Evans.  When I call him at his home in Los Angeles, he is in good spirits. His words sometimes come haltingly -- he suffered a series of strokes in the late 1990s -- but the charm is intact and impressive. As is that deep, rich voice, both gravelly and sweet.  I ask what makes a good producer and he gives a wheezing laugh. 'That's a good question. Every success I've had has been for a different reason and every failure for the same one -- I said 'yes' when I meant 'no.' With very few exceptions, that's been the story of my life. Darryl Zanuck told me, 'If you can introduce your movie in a paragraph you'll make a hit. If you can do it in a sentence, you've got a blockbuster."

"I wonder what he sees when he looks around Hollywood today.  'Young people' he shoots back without missing a beat. 'However, I'm not into machines. I'm not into Mars.  I like feelings. How does it feel?  That, to me, is the turn-on. And story. If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the screen, or anywhere else.'"

There's much more in this book, which tips the scales at a hefty four hundred and ninety-nine pages.  I could have done without Evan's relentless bragging about all the gorgeous women he went to bed with over the years, and the overweening pride he took in his tennis game -- but those are my only points of agreement with this nasty little slash-and-burn review from the NY Times, which manages to miss the entire point of the book.  Some reviewers just can't get over themselves enough to see the forest for the trees.  

For me, the story of Evan's roller coaster ride in Hollywood was worth the effort of wading through his memoir book, but if you don't have that much time on your hands, there's an excellent documentary by the same title: The Kid Stays in the Picture.  I saw the film when it was first released in 1994 and loved it, so in preparation for this post, watched it again ... and it holds up very well.  Narrated by Evans himself -- and he really does have a great voice -- the documentary avoids the long-winded pitfalls of the book in delivering a great story.  Definitely worth your time.

If you're interested in semi-real-life drama based on Evans, there's The Offer, a "limited series" that purports to tell the story of how Evans, producer Tom Luddy, and Francis Ford Coppola got The Godfather made at a time when the world was stacked against it. The show is a blend of fact and dramatic fiction, of course, and although this article claims to reveal which is which, only Luddy and Coppola know for sure, and they're not talking. I liked the show well enough, but I'm not wild about it ... something about it just felt a little off, although I can't explain to you or myself exactly why.  Still, it's well done and paints a vivid portrait of the movie biz in the Hollywood and New York of that era.  Who knows -- you might love it. I watched it on Amazon Prime Video, but it's probably viewable elsewhere.

Robert Evans remains a fascinating figure in Hollywood, as demonstrated by the money quote from his obituary in The Guardian:  

"The most famous anecdote -- or at any rate the most revealing -- concerns his reaction to seeing the first cut of Coppola's The Godfather. He considered it too short. "You shot a saga, but you turned in a trailer. Go back and make a picture," he barked at Coppola, who duly went away and came back with the epic that made his name." 

Imagine a producer telling his director to make a movie longer -- has that ever happened before or since? -- but Evans was right: he followed his gut instincts and produced a classic film, one of the best of all time.  The last of the big studio moguls may be gone, but he's not been forgotten.

PS:  A late addition a week after this post went up:  a potential crackdown on the absurd practice of everybody and his/her brother getting producer credits. As anybody knows who's walked on a set to see a dozen or more tall director's chairs labeled "Producer," this fiction has gotten way out of hand.

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In the late summer of 1978, I was among a small crew gathered in the parking lot of an outdoor mall in Valencia, north of LA, to shoot a day of pickups for a low-budget movie called Van Nuys Boulevard.  It was my first feature as a member of the technical crew, which meant I'd never again have to work as a PA.  

"Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last..."*

Principal photography had been completed six weeks before, and the editor now had a list of shots he needed to complete the film. There we were, half a dozen of us in the early morning chill, sipping bad coffee from styrofoam cups as we prepared to go to our first location when, from out of nowhere, came a deep, mellifluous baritone we'd all heard before on the big screen.  

"Are you making a movie?"

We turned as one to see Darth Vader himself, but there was no menacing black mask, no flowing black robe, and no cohort of Imperial Storm Troopers.  The unmistakable voice came from James Earl Jones, a large bespectacled man with an imposing frame and a big warm smile, who was apparently doing some early shopping to beat the crowds. He chatted for a few minutes, then wished us luck with a big smile and went on his way.

Some things you don't forget.

                                               RIP

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Bob Newhart passed away in July at the ripe old age of 95.  After trying his hand at working as an accountant, he moved to an ad agency where he and a co-worker came up with comic bits just for fun. Fate and circumstance led him to comedy, and he eventually produced a record album called "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" -- a monster hit that launched a career and eventually took him to the top of the television sitcom world. 

Yes, kiddos: there was a time in America when comedy LPs were a very big deal, and Bob Newhart was a star.

I was just getting a toehold in Hollywood when "The Bob Newhart Show" ended a six-year run, then was heavily immersed in the world of commercials during the eight-year run of his next big hit, so I pretty much missed all of his most famous work. Fate took a hand in the late '90s when all my commercial accounts followed the gold rush north chasing fat Canadian government subsidies coupled with a favorable exchange rate, and my only opportunities to keep paying the rent turned out to be ... sitcoms.  My fourth sitcom landed at the CBS Radford Studio, where both of Newhart's big hits were made, and one of our recurring guest stars was the wonderful Suzanne Pleschette, who'd been among the core cast of "The Bob Newhart Show."  Bob would walk on our stage every now and then -- which stopped everything -- to chat with Suzanne and regale the cast and crew with his dry wit. I never shook his hand or sat down to have a drink with him, but from what I saw, Bob Newhart was a good and decent man.  I never heard a bad word about him, which can't be said of every star in the sitcom world.  He brought light into the living rooms of America with smiles and laughter, which is always a good thing.

Back in 2019, Bob sat down for a conversation with Conan O'Brien in his podcast Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, which is very funny.  At 90 years old, Newhart could still bring it: you've really got to hear that podcast to fully appreciate his lethally dry wit. This one is definitely worth your time.

Thanks for the laughs, Bob.

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Finally -- just so this post doesn't turn into a full-on obit page where all I see is dead people -- here's a great interview with Gary Oldman, star of Apple TV's "Slow Horses."   Truth be told, I never much cared for the younger Oldman on screen.  Sure, he's always been a terrific actor, but he invariably seemed to play smart, evil villains who never won in the end ... but now he's playing a guy I can relate to. Not in skill set, mind you, but in age and general dyspeptic disposition.  

Getting old will do that to you.

And on that cheerful note, have a lovely October, kiddos. Remember: don't eat all the Halloween candy in one sitting.

* With apologies to Martin Luther King...