by Robert Evans
Only three weeks earlier, on a blistering Sunday night in the middle of August 1981, I was interrupted by a pale Brandon Tartikoff. The heat was not bothering me, since I was into my forty-eight hour in an air-conditioned studio at Compact Video. I was desperately trying to structure an hour-long special that was scheduled to follow Bob Hope’s upcoming one. This was not an easy task—I had no writers, no story, no script, only spirit. Brandon, whose boss was Grant Tinker, asked me to hold everything up. He sure looked worried as we both walked into a private room.
“NBC’s Head of News Bill Small called Grant Tinker tonight, Grant called me. Take a deep breath, Evans. From an unimpeachable source, Small has found out that you are going to be set up.”
My face paled too. “What do you mean ‘set up’?”
“Small doesn’t know, but someone out there is trying to discredit the show—what we’re trying to get across. Could be one of the other two networks. We’re getting more covers on your Sunday special than we’ve had in years. Both Newsweek and Time are covering it too. They’d love to see us fall on our assess. Could also be the big guys in the drug business. Could also be the DEA.”
“What?”
“NBC is gonna accomplish more in a year than all their agencies together have done in twenty. There’s more featherbedding in the DEA than in the Pentagon. Wake your butler up, have him come over now. I’ll wait till he gets here.”
At three that morning, David Gilruth, my butler, Brandon Tartikoff and I planned damage control to its extreme. NBC wanted to protect their own ass; in doing so, they also had to protect mine. If the tip was accurate, they’d be the laughingstock of the media, and I’d be the next Benedict Arnold.
Tartikoff explained that setting me up for a fall would be easy to do. “A kilo of cocaine over your fence, then a raid.”
For the next three weeks, three guards and three dogs surrounded my home. The guards were patrolling twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
No one—not even the boy delivering groceries or the mail—got close to my fences. Woodland was sealed tight. Two bodyguards flanked me wherever I went. A trip out for a hot dog at Pinks was a big deal. I couldn’t put the mustard on—they did, and only then did I eat it.
With guards protecting us, we moved from Compact to Pacific Video to finish the show. There I stayed, an inpatient for the ten days until “Get High on Yourself” aired. Why is it easier doing something bad than something good? The morning after “Get High on Yourself” aired, the dogs, guards, everything disappeared—all except for an NBC invoice, billing me for $47,000—the network’s damage control expenditures.
From around the country, NBC’s phone lines were on overload, congratulating them on their breakthrough programming. At lunch the next day, I showed a glowing Brandon Tartikoff the bill NBC had sent me. Studying it carefully, he looked up, smiled, and burned it.
Once branded, always branded. Good is soon forgotten, and you become fair game to a new breed of journalism, its guise—investigative reporting. In truth, it’s a cover for celebrity journalism, building innuendos and half-truths into fact.
I’m thinking of the Saturday morning when I was about to leave for Palm Springs when my butler buzzed.
“Mr. Ross on the phone.”
Without asking which Mr. Ross, as I know many, I picked up the phone.
“Steve?”
“No, Brian.”
“Who?”
“Brian Ross.”
“Do I know you?”
“No, but I know you. Tonight at six P.M. on NBC national, my story is the headline of the news: ‘Bob Evans, the link putting DeLorean in the clink.’ A government informant . . . a plea bargain for his own coke deal.”
John DeLorean, the churchgoing friend of my ex-wife Phyllis, had been arrested in a coke sting bust.
“Is this a joke? DeLorean . . . I’ve only met him once . . . four years ago. What’s your number, pal? I want to call you back.”
Quickly he rattled off his number at the NBC offices. For all I know, this guy could be a nut case. I didn’t dial his number, rather the main switchboard. Wrong, he was no nut case, but the real thing—NBC’s chief investigative reporter.
“What do you want from me?” I said.
“A statement.”
“You’ve got the wrong Evans, Mr. Ross. I know nothing about DeLorean except that he goes to church on Sunday.”
“Mr. Evans, I’m not asking you to deny the charge. We have proof. You met in Newport. Don’t deny it . . . it’s a fact.”
“I’ve never been to Newport. Wouldn’t know how to get there if I tried.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“No. Your facts are wrong. You can’t air this, it will ruin my life—”
He cut me off. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”
“No, I beg you to wait till Monday. Give me a chance to prove—”
Cutting me off again, “Listen in at six.” Down went the phone.
The news department stands alone in a television network’s hierarchy. From the President of the United States to the president of the network, by dictate, no one fucks with the news. That’s the power of the fourth estate. It took me but a half hour to discover that Ross was NBC’s golden boy of investigative reporting. Despite the fact that his “scoop” had not one iota of truth, once it was aired, I’d be ashamed to walk into any room anywhere.
In my eyes, a rat fink is no less repugnant than a murderer or child molester.
Whom can I call for help? In less than five hours the guillotine drops. A flash. I dialed Ed Hookstratten, my ex-wife Phyllis’s manager, at home.
“Hookstratten residence,” said a voice.
“May I speak to Mr. Hookstratten please . . . it’s urgent.”
“Mr. Hookstratten doesn’t live here anymore.”
“This is his home, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but the Hookstrattens are separated.”
“But it’s Saturday. Where can I find him? It’s really life or death.”
Down went the other end.
When I dialed his office, his service picked up. I told the operator, five hundred bucks if she could track him down: he was “America’s most wanted” to me.
Money talks. “It’s a deal. If he’s around, I’ll get him.”
Within ten, Hookstratten was on the phone. Without catching a breath, I told him my plight. The Hook, as he’s known by all, was the television industry’s biggest news and sports manager, representing everyone from Tom Brokaw to Jessica Savitch. He knew I was a sacrificial lamb, since the one time I met John DeLorean was with the Hook, and Ed knew we had never seen each other since.
“Stay by the phone—I’ll get back to you.”
A half hour later, Hook: “Just got off with Brokaw. He’s got no involvement or control over weekend news. I asked him who is in control, that I am witness to Evans’s innocence. If untruth goes out on the air, with the knowledge of the truth, Evans will sue the network and win.”
“Hook, what can I say, let me keep trying.”
“Brokaw just off the horn, tells me I should get to Jessica Savitch quick. She’s my client too. Weekend news is her bailiwick, it’s her lead story.” Savitch was calling on the other phone—he hung up in my ear.
Twenty minutes later, not one fingernail was left, I picked it up on one ring.
“Don’t know yet, we’re far from home, Ross’s story is already on the wire service to their five O-and-Os,” Hook said, referring to the five “owned-and-operated” stations that NBC itself controls. “It’s the headline scoop. I’m calling each of them and threatening them the same way I’ve just threatened Brokaw and Savitch. Go to church . . . Hope for the best.”
No president, whether it be corporate or state, no king, queen, or pope could have pulled off what the Hook did for me.
A postscript: in his hunger for sensationalism, NBC’s so-called ace investigative reporter, Brian Ross, made a slight miscalculation. Three weeks later, the g
overnment informant in the DeLorean case was uncovered. His name: Richard Evans. Strange, a doctor can be sued for malpractice, and a lawyer disbarred. The esteemed profession of journalism should also have a code of ethics.
To you, dear Hook—you are one ballsy guy! Very few would have gone those extra nine yards, sacrifice his own position to help another. I owe you a big one!
Chapter Thirty-Four
Pete Sampras, Steffi Graf, Michael Chang, Boris Becker, tennis legends all, yet none belong in The Guinness Book of Records, I do! No player in tennis history has played forty-one sets of tennis with Jimmy Connors as his doubles partner . . . and lost all of them.
“Let’s just stay pals, Evans.” Connors half smiled. “No more partners, huh?”
In May 1981, the cover of Cosmopolitan carried the line “Star power on Hollywood’s exclusive tennis courts. How the rich and famous play the game.” Inside a story by William Murray read:
The action court these days, according to Forrest Stewart and others in the know, is at Bob Evans’s place in Coldwater Canyon. Nobody would think of playing a set there just for the fun of it. It’s not uncommon for the host and his guests—among whom, as regulars, are Jack Nicholson, screenwriter Robert Towne, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert Duvall—to bet up to a thousand dollars a set.
The match I have come to think of as quintessentially Hollywood took place on the private court of Bob Evans, the Paramount producer. It pitted Evans and his brother, Charles, against Ted Kennedy and his good friend John Tunney. With a number of celebrities, including Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, looking on, heckling, and making small side bets as to the outcome, the Evans boys won the first two sets handily. At this point a TV producer named Wendell Niles, Jr., himself an A player, offered to bet a thousand dollars that the Evanses would not win the third set. The bet was taken and other sizable wagers were made, after which Kennedy, grinning broadly, removed the back brace he’d been wearing under his shirt and really began to pounce. The play wasn’t even close, as he and Tunney massacred the Evanses, 6–2. “It was the sweetest money I ever won,” the hustling Niles crowed later.
Called the hustle center, my court became Bobby Riggs’s home away from home. Preparing for his 1973 match against Billie Jean King at the Houston Astrodome, he practiced against every top player in Southern California. Bobby, who was then fifty-five, called it practice; in reality it was pocket money. The offer was the same to all from eighteen to forty: $500 a set, giving the challenger two games and service. The old hustler hopped around the court for three months and didn’t lose a match, except one—to Gary Chazan. Better players than Gary lost to Riggs, but none had Gary’s heart to win. Riggs was so pissed that he refused to play Gary a double-or-nothing set and said he had to be at an early dinner.
His match with Billie Jean King was so heralded that it was aired on CBS at 9:00 P.M. It stands alone as the only occasion when professional tennis has been aired during prime time on network television (and that includes the finals at Wimbledon). The Astrodome was completely sold out for the match, which had little to do with tennis and much to do with the battle of the sexes.
After Bobby picked up his last $500 before leaving for Houston, I walked him out to his car, wishing him luck.
“Your hospitality been real sportin’, Evans.” His finger went to his lips. “Between you and me . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Beg, borrow, steal, put every C note you got on the ole man.” Putting his arm behind him, his hand flat to his back, he came closer and whispered. “Could put a nail through it . . . still beat her with one hand.” Laughing, he got into his car. “Don’t tell no one, the odds are getting out of hand. No surprise, it’s the sucker bet of the year.”
Two weeks later, Riggs lost in straight sets, 6–2, 6–3. I lost the biggest bet of my life—he probably won the biggest of his going the other way. A hustler is a hustler is a hustler is a hustler.
Boring as technique may be to learn, without it, no matter what your talent, you’ll never make the pros. In the early eighties, one of football’s all-time greats, O. J. Simpson, dropped by my home for a game of tennis. Naturally, I was a bit intimidated. There I stood, a half-assed Beverly Hills social player, squaring off against the most admired athlete in the country. An hour and two sets later it was Evans, 6–2, 6–1 against Simpson.
About half a year had passed when Simpson again dropped by for a game of tennis. This time I wasn’t intimidated, I was cocky. An hour and two sets later, it was Simpson, 6–love, 6–love against Evans. How could our two matches, separated by just six months, be that lopsided? It’s called technique. In the months between our two matches, Simpson picked up the art of the backhand, putting away an overhead, and, oh yes, the serve—acing me more than a dozen times a match. He’d easily mastered the technique, and combined with his tremendous physical ability, it was multiplication all the way: one plus one didn’t equal two, rather eleven.
Be it actor, writer, singer, dancer, or athlete, talent alone ain’t enough. It’s the tedium of technique that separates the men from the boys. To prove my theory, I begged a rematch the following weekend. Unfortunately for Evans, it was a carbon copy of the weekend before—6–0, 6–0 Simpson. I rest my case.
* * *
Late-night talk-show hosts have one thing in common—sore losers. One day on the courts, Merv Griffin thought he was a shoo-in against me.
“A hundred-dollar check to the winner,” he chuckled.
An hour later he signed his autograph to a hundred-dollar check.
Two years later, I was a guest on his show. As I waited in the green room, one of his assistants came over.
“Merv would like you not to mention the tennis match.”
Standing backstage, I heard his glowing introduction and walked to the chair beside him. I sat, casually mentioning . . .
“Remember the hundred-dollar check you signed, Merv? The time I beat you at tennis? Framed it.”
Quickly his head turned, pointing for a commercial.
In L.A., “Let’s play tennis” is tantamount to New York’s “Let’s have lunch.”
For years Johnny Carson and I threatened a match. Finally we had to face the day. I won the flip, so my court was the turf. Saturday morning, 9:00 A.M., my intercom buzzed. “Mr. Carson’s arrived.”
I had forgotten all about it, having just called it a night three hours earlier. If it wasn’t Johnny Carson, I would give the guy a G just to leave. My head throbbed so, my butler had to put my socks and sneakers on. A quick jug of orange juice, a quick number three Tylenol, and off I went, “double visioning” it to the court.
Johnny was in the midst of his stretching exercises, limbering his limbs with the focus of Boris Becker. A large cup of black coffee and onto the court we went, starting to rally. Every ball he hit looked like three. I didn’t hit one ball back. Poor Johnny, he’d driven all the way from Malibu to play with a guy who couldn’t hold his racket up. Ready now to start the set, I excused myself, took a quick piss and two more Tylenol. The first 16 points of the set, I didn’t hit one ball over the net. Within two minutes it was 3–love for Carson. An hour and a half later, a tortured Carson was on the wrong side of a two-set match: 4–6, 3–6. His disgust was difficult to hide.
“Shouldn’t have played . . . back’s killing me.”
Monday morning, his wife Joanna called me.
“What happened Saturday, Bob?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“The strangest thing: Johnny came home, I asked him how the tennis was, he slammed the door, hasn’t spoken to me since.”
Dustin Hoffman had the form, strokes, and agility of a minor-league McEnroe. Jack Nicholson and I were gutter players. Fifty sets later, Dustin was on the short end of winning two out of fifty, blaming it on bad calls, bad light, bad back, bad racket, you name it, bad everything.
For my next birthday, four guys carried a ten-foot-high made-to-order Wimbledon referee chair onto my tennis court. A present from Hoffman, y
es—but a hint as well. When Dustin next came over, a ref made the calls. Twenty sets later, he hadn’t done too bad—he won once. No wonder he doesn’t play here anymore.
Take it from an old tennis bum, my court has hosted many a player, many a watcher. Many switched partners, both on and off the court. Tennis anyone?
Chapter Thirty-Five
A high school dropout knows what an actor, a writer, or a director is, yet a Rhodes scholar has no idea what a producer is.
Generalizing a producer as a fat, bald guy who sits in a back room, smokes a cigar, hustles, extorts—name it, he’ll do it, anything, to get his flick made.
Really? Then why is it that David O. Selznick, Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck—producers all—are chronicled in greater depth than any actor, director, or writer?
I’ll tell you why. It’s the producer whose vision (which he then shares with others) eventually ends up on the screen. He’s the one who hires the writer and director. When a director hires a producer, you’re in deep shit. A director needs a boss, not a yes man.
As Paramount’s production chief, my biggest financial loss was creating the Directors Company. The industry’s top three helmsmen—Coppola, William Friedkin, and Peter Bogdanovich—shared ownership with Paramount, with total autonomy. The result? Total disaster!
Contrary to popular belief, legit producers never have to raise a dime. The major studios are hungry to write a check for exciting new material. None want financial partners. If they roll the dice, they want to cover the bet themselves.
