The real Ari Gold
THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE
By Robert Evans
Harper Collins, 410 pages
People rave about Jeremy Piven’s portrayal of a jacked-up Hollywood agent in the HBO show Entourage. But anyone in Hollywood will tell you the real wheeling and dealing happens on the opposite end of the speakerphone — among the studio executives, who have so many juicy stories to tell it would take billions to stave off the lawsuits if they started spilling.
Truth told, Entourage has started to suck precisely to the degree that its characters have grown successful and aspirational. The posse surrounding fictional movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) used to be hungry, one move away from failure or disaster (well, Kevin Dillon, as Johnny Drama, is still always one bonehead move away from disaster; not surprisingly, he — and the Krazy Kat relationship between Ari Gold and his Asian assistant Lloyd — are the highlights of the show). There’s just something not quite as interesting about success: it leads to half-hour showcases of rich young guys buying new cars, new houses, new designer clothes. It’s Hollywood bling porn for starved recessionistas.
You don’t get much of that goodie-bag titillation in Robert Evans’ 1995 memoir, The Kid Stays in the Picture. The fact that Evans even wrote the tell-all memoir indicates his status was low on the totem pole by that point. Evans, a fledgling actor back in the ‘40s (he was supposed to become big after playing a bullfighter in The Sun Also Rises, but never made it), somehow got a job heading up Paramount Studios back in the late 1960s. This was a dismal time to be a studio head, especially at Paramount. Flop musicals and bad comedies were the general fare. But a new wave of directors, actors and hustlers — people like Warren Beatty, Robert Altman, Coppola, Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson — were creating a New Hollywood, formed by hippie consensus and box office receipts. Evans, whose sole talent is probably telling a good story, relates how the New Hollywood came to be and — with typical hubris — implies it all came marching directly through his office.
Here he is explaining how he made Mia Farrow choose between her new marriage to Frank Sinatra and filming Rosemary’s Baby back in 1968:
Sinatra didn’t bark; he bit. He let Mia know in no uncertain terms that if she didn’t walk off the set of Rosemary’s Baby, he’d divorce her. Hysterically, she came into my office to tell me of her dilemma.
“I love him, Bob. I’m going to have to quit.”
“Mia,” I said, “If you walk off in the middle of my film, you’ll never work again.”
“I don’t care, I just love Frank.”
Years of knowing what makes the head of an actress tick finally found its purpose. Into the executive screening room we went. I showed her an hour of Rosemary’s Baby cut together. We watched it in silence. The lights went up.
“I never thought you had it in you. It’s as good, no, even better than Audrey Hepburn’s performance in Wait Until Dark. You’re a shoo-in for an Academy Award.”
Her tears gone, her face lit up.
“Do you really think so?”
Suddenly, a smile. Suddenly, she didn’t want to take a hike. Just as suddenly, Frank served her divorce papers, right on the set.
It’s strange how quickly women recover. It took her a full week. Suddenly, her only interest was seeing Rosemary’s Baby outgross (Sinatra’s then current film) The Detective.
It’s common industry lore that studio boss Evans and newbie director Francis Ford Coppola didn’t see eye to eye while filming The Godfather for Paramount in 1972. But only someone like Evans could claim he “discovered” the book’s author, Mario Puzo, and steered him to write about an Italian mob family in America. Only Evans could claim he “strong-armed” Coppola into recutting his Corleone epic to make the epic longer!
(On the other hand, Evans couldn’t see casting Al Pacino as the male lead, Michael Corleone, even though the equally formidable Coppola insisted on hiring “the midget,” as Pacino came to be known in studio circles.)
Like super-agent Ari Gold, Evans always seemed to be in the right place — or in the line of fire — for some of the biggest deals in ‘70s Hollywood. But unlike Piven, you can’t imagine Evans taking sick time off after eating too much sushi. Instead, Evans had a rocky marriage to up-and-coming actress Ali MacGraw, who sought consolation in the willing arms of rugged star Steve McQueen. Evans claims he was so oblivious to anything but his own success that he even cast the two lovers together for Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway.
Similar to Entourage, Evans’ memoir is most entertaining when his back is up against the wall. Fortunately for readers, this happens a lot. Evans’ name pops up in the most unfortunate of places. He was questioned by police after the Manson murders, in which Roman Polanski’s wife Sharon Tate was murdered in a Hollywood hills mansion (Evans himself was supposed to attend that fateful party, but had work to do). He was caught in a botched cocaine deal and questioned in a murder surrounding the 1980 Coppola flop The Cotton Club, but never did time; was pals with Nicholson and Polanski around the time the Polish director got arrested for raping a minor; and claims to have had his phone personally tapped by FBI head J. Edgar Hoover for a quarter century. In short, Evans was neck-deep in all the dark, scary places that shows like Entourage can only gloss over. He’s got more skeletons in his closet than a fictional agent like Ari Gold has A-list clients. Just goes to show you where all the real power in Hollywood resides.
It’s impossible to tell how much of The Kid Stays in the Picture is reliable. Memoirs are notorious that way. When even someone like Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas calls you “the devil” and says “all lies ever told anywhere about Bob Evans are true,” then you know you’ve reached mythic levels of unreliability. Evans was a roustabout Jewish character whose primary vice was gambling: he bet with Coppola, who was skeptical that the longer version of The Godfather would earn $50 million (then an astronomic figure); when it did, Evans had to gift Coppola with a Mercedes 600.
He made similar bets with director Polanski and Chinatown star Faye Dunaway, promising both they would either get “an Oscar nod or a Rolls Corniche” for their work on the 1974 classic. He won that bet: both got nominations, though neither won, so Evans got to keep his money.
Still, it couldn’t have been easy on the Chinatown set: no one could fathom the Robert Towne script, and Dunaway flew into a frenzy one time when Polanski attempted to straighten out a strand of hair on her face during filming. “Touch me again and I call in my troops!” the actress hissed at the director.
Getting Dunaway for the film was a story in itself. Check out Evans’ snake-like charm in getting Dunaway’s agent to sign the actress — whose career, by 1975, was in a coma — to do Chinatown at a markdown price:
Jane Fonda was everybody’s choice to star opposite Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. There was one problem — Jane was hedging, not sure she wanted to play the part. Sue Mengers, Faye Dunaway’s agent, was pushing her client to the point of blackmail.
“Bobbeee, I need an offer by the end of Friday, otherwise I’m closing a deal with Arthur Penn for Faye to star in Night Moves.”
“It won’t work. The studio wants Fonda too. Hey, I’ve got an idea. It’s a long shot: dinero… Not Bobby De Niro… dinero dinero.”
With the instinct of a jungle cat, Sue got the message quickly.
“Okay, what’s the deal?”
“Fifty thou—”
The phone slammed in my ear before I could finish. I waited for her to call back.
“Sue, tell Dunaway I’m doing this for you, not for her. You know it, I know it. And she knows it… She’s colder than Baskin-Robbins. Listen carefully, Sue. I love ya. The only shot we have is bargain basement time. Got it?”
“Got it, pr**k,” hanging the phone up in my ear.
At eight the next morning, I called Sue. “I’ve had a tough night with Polanksi, Sue. He’s scared sh*tless that Dunaway will be difficult to work with. Thank God, Nicholson was there to help me convince him. Tell Faye she’s got the part.” But at a rock-bottom price.
Like a Sotheby’s auctioneer: “Closed?” said Mengers.
“Closed,” I said. “Do I at least get a thank you?” I got a giggle.
“Bobbeee…”
“Yeah?”
“I fibbed.” Another giggle. “There was no part in Night Moves for Faye.” Her giggling was nonstop.
“Sue?”
Hardly able to catch her breath, “What?”
“Fonda passed.”
I lost the hearing in my left ear from the slam of the phone.
