Matt H said “Robert Evans is such an egotistical boor that I couldn't stomach KID NOTORIOUS either.”
We watched the DVD, “The Kid Stays in the Picture” last night—a documentary based on the autobiography of ex-Paramount Studio head Robert Evans. Visually, the film is a remarkable amalgam of dream-like editing and film-noir-type narration. Together, the combination is so infectious you can’t help but be sucked into his story.
The way Evans narrates the film is entertaining though, at times, I wanted to grab him by his celluloid collar and make him enunciate his words more clearly. The handling of still pictures (remember it’s a documentary) was masterful, because the foreground parts of the pictures were made to seem to float in a three-dimensional way above the backgrounds, making them far more alive and interesting than they could have been.
One evening last year, while traveling, we saw Robert Evans signing copies of his autobiography. I didn’t know who he was so I picked up the book. “Soon to be a major motion picture” was highlighted on the dust jacket. It seemed interesting enough so we added the upcoming film to our NetFlix queue when we got home.
In his heyday, I never knew who Evans was—but I certainly paid to see “his” films: Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, and Chinatown, to name a few. And to hear him tell it, they were HIS films. Somehow he manages to weave enough self-deprecating words into the narration to make you like him AND believe him.
Well as Evans says in the opening sequence: “"Every story has three sides: Your side, my side and the truth." He may be an “egotistical boor” as Matt says but “The Kid Stays in the Picture” provides some insights into “his side” of the story.