In 1956, Robert Evans, on lunchbreak from his job selling women's trousers, takes a dip in a pool, where he is discovered by Norma Shearer, who offers him a role in a film. After a brief stint as a 'half-assed' actor, Evans become a producer, and is soon Senior Vice-President at Paramount. His talent for spotting innovative scripts and developing them into box-office hits (e.g. 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Love Story', 'The Godfather', 'Chinatown', 'Midnight Cowboy') makes him the toast of the town, but then problems with cocaine and the association of his name with the 'Cotton Club murder' lead to a spectacular fall from grace. It is only through the help of his friends that he has been able to reclaim his palatial home and his sanity, and to start clawing his way back to the top of Hollywood.
This is the plot of 'The Kid Stays in the Picture', based on Robert Evans' autobiography of the same name, and narrated by Robert Evans himself. It also conforms exactly, as anyone familiar with Hollywood cinema knows, to a type of narrative arc beloved by film executives: young man from nowhere rises to the very top through luck and determination, is toppled by some setback, but then overcomes adversity and climbs right back up again. It is the American dream writ large in three film-friendly movements, making the audience laugh and cry, but leaving them with that essential feel-good factor.
This is precisely what makes 'The Kid Stays in the Picture' so interesting: Evans' life is made (by Evans) to look just like one of the crowd-pleasing blockbusters he is so good at selling, so that one loses all sense of the distinction between life and movies. As we watch Evans' great success at finessing, flattering and manipulating his way into the heart of Hollywood, we cannot help but wonder whether this film is just another of his self-promoting pitches. And while Evans remains at the centre of everything in this film, one is left having to work very hard to get any kind of fixed impression of him. In his narration he hides behind Hollywood cliche ('Tough? You betcha life it is') and inspirational psycho-babble ('luck is when opportunity meets preparation'), following a script so hackneyed it cannot possibly reveal any insights into his individuality or inner life. The documentary footage is composed almost entirely of images from the very press which he is at such pains to condemn for distorting and exaggerating his life - or else of scenes from the films he produced, all of which are fictions. In short, while the kid may stay in the picture, amidst all the Hollywood razzledazzle and media hype he remains little more than a blur.
The film has an innovative visual style, placing stills of Evans and his colleagues in backgrounds which move. It is also full of anecdotes about film production, like the fact that nobody involved in 'Chinatown' actually understood its script. But really this is a film about the way in which Hollywood packages and sells dreams, with Evans - always the ham actor, always the salesman - as much its subject as its witness.
Do not leave the cinema when the film ends. As the credits roll, there is footage from 1997 of Dustin Hoffman improvising an impression of 'Evans, 20 years later'. What we see for the first time here is a picture of Evans through the eyes of someone else who has worked with him and knows him well, and although the portrayal is affectionate, it is more revealing than anything Evans says about himself. Hoffman shows Evans as stumbling, incoherent, eternally talking up a deal, and pathetic in his self-belief. This scene is the key to the whole film - a ray of morning sunshine after a long, strange dream.
This is the plot of 'The Kid Stays in the Picture', based on Robert Evans' autobiography of the same name, and narrated by Robert Evans himself. It also conforms exactly, as anyone familiar with Hollywood cinema knows, to a type of narrative arc beloved by film executives: young man from nowhere rises to the very top through luck and determination, is toppled by some setback, but then overcomes adversity and climbs right back up again. It is the American dream writ large in three film-friendly movements, making the audience laugh and cry, but leaving them with that essential feel-good factor.
This is precisely what makes 'The Kid Stays in the Picture' so interesting: Evans' life is made (by Evans) to look just like one of the crowd-pleasing blockbusters he is so good at selling, so that one loses all sense of the distinction between life and movies. As we watch Evans' great success at finessing, flattering and manipulating his way into the heart of Hollywood, we cannot help but wonder whether this film is just another of his self-promoting pitches. And while Evans remains at the centre of everything in this film, one is left having to work very hard to get any kind of fixed impression of him. In his narration he hides behind Hollywood cliche ('Tough? You betcha life it is') and inspirational psycho-babble ('luck is when opportunity meets preparation'), following a script so hackneyed it cannot possibly reveal any insights into his individuality or inner life. The documentary footage is composed almost entirely of images from the very press which he is at such pains to condemn for distorting and exaggerating his life - or else of scenes from the films he produced, all of which are fictions. In short, while the kid may stay in the picture, amidst all the Hollywood razzledazzle and media hype he remains little more than a blur.
The film has an innovative visual style, placing stills of Evans and his colleagues in backgrounds which move. It is also full of anecdotes about film production, like the fact that nobody involved in 'Chinatown' actually understood its script. But really this is a film about the way in which Hollywood packages and sells dreams, with Evans - always the ham actor, always the salesman - as much its subject as its witness.
Do not leave the cinema when the film ends. As the credits roll, there is footage from 1997 of Dustin Hoffman improvising an impression of 'Evans, 20 years later'. What we see for the first time here is a picture of Evans through the eyes of someone else who has worked with him and knows him well, and although the portrayal is affectionate, it is more revealing than anything Evans says about himself. Hoffman shows Evans as stumbling, incoherent, eternally talking up a deal, and pathetic in his self-belief. This scene is the key to the whole film - a ray of morning sunshine after a long, strange dream.