by Robert Evans
Why, then, if for no other reason than caution, shouldn’t striving for excellence prevail over making a release date? It doesn’t! Maybe that’s why makin’ fuckin’ flicks is one dangerous business.
Chapter Forty-Six
HELLO 1996!
Half a century? It can’t be! Well, it’s close. But I feel like a kid. Yeah, but you’re not. Okay, okay. I know it.
It was back in 1950 when I first walked through them gates at Paramount, a young “wannabe” actor—razorless, picking up my first check, 125 buckaroos a week, as one of Paramount’s many contract pretty faces. I guess my face wasn’t that pretty: six months and out the back door I flew. It didn’t matter. It was enough time to see a new world open before me. To brush shoulders with Alfred Hitchcock, Bing Crosby, Spencer Tracy. Watch Ronnie Reagan shoot a Paramount cheapie, Hong Kong. Screen test for the great director George Stevens, for a costarring role in A Place in the Sun. Damn it! I didn’t get it, but I did break bread with Cecil B. De Mille, Alan Ladd, Fred Astaire. When the guards weren’t watching, I snuck onto Stage 15. Wow, right before me, Billy Wilder was directing Gloria Swanson and Bill Holden in Sunset Boulevard. By the time I got the boot, it was too late—rejection had led to obsession. Flicks were now my future. Watch out fifties, here I come, traveling north one way, straight to the top. Got there, too. Well, sort of.
As the fifties aged, so did I. Made it to the big screen! Beaten up by Errol Flynn, kissed by Ava Gardner, slapped by Joan Crawford, toe-to-toe in close-ups with Jimmy Cagney. Not bad, huh? Not good either. By decade’s end, I was sure of one thing: I was a half-assed actor.
The sixties? That’s a different story. No back door this time—front door all the way. “Run the joint,” was the order of the decade. Run it I did, for more than a decade. First and only actor ever to make the jump. Don’t understand it. This world of fickle flicks? It’s been well over thirty years now and I’m still here, still standing behind them same gates. Bet your house, it ain’t been dull. I’ve either done it, or gotten it. You name ’em, I’ve met ’em—well, almost. Either worked with ’em, fought with ’em, hired ’em, laughed with ’em, cried with ’em, been figuratively fucked by ’em, or literally fucked ’em. It’s been one helluva ride!
Where is everyone? Dead? Most. Wealthy? Some. Destitute? Many. Retired? Suppose so, I ain’t seen ’em.
One thing I do know, I ain’t dead, I ain’t wealthy, I ain’t destitute, and I ain’t retired. Can’t afford any of ’em, gotta keep standin’, stay in the picture.
Toward the latter part of the eighties, the thought of even touching the nineties seemed all but impossible. But I did. It was then I decided, I’ve made it this far . . . fuck it. Watch out nineties, here I come! Evans is back, travelin’ north, one way! Was I Don Quixote looking for the impossible dream? Yeah, but so what. Dreams can come true. And they did. Blue skies began to shine again. If them gates at Paramount opened for me before, they’ll open for me again. And they did.
My only kid is beaming with pride. His old man is back in action. On October 24, 1994, Ali and I threw a black-tie silver anniversary bash. Though divorced twenty-two of the twenty-five years—so what! No couple I know who’s reached that quarter-century mark are better friends, have more laughs together than the two of us. Wasn’t that worth celebrating?
Get this: in 1991 the Library of Congress selected seventy-five films produced during the twentieth century to be congressionally vaulted, in perpetuity. “Hangin’ high” behind my desk at the studio are two certificates—one for creating The Godfather, the other for producing Chinatown. The only guy alive holdin’ two aces in their vault is me. If nothin’ else, it makes up for the lack of green in my own vault.
Met a sensational lady. Romance? Uh-uh, finance! Best damn partner I’ve had since making flicks. Christine Peters is her name. But romance did come back into my life, big time. The nineties rekindled the only lasting romance I’ve ever had. A second shot at the brass ring, turning hate into spring fever. It’s miracle time. Shhhh! Keep it quiet. The love of my life? It’s a guy. That’s right, a guy—my brother, the only one I have. Don’t know if “love’s more wonderful the second time around,” but it’s sure more appreciated.
Now halfway through the nineties, I’m not only back behind them Paramount gates, but I’ve got more projects on go than I had when I resigned as king of “the mountain.” Come October 25, 1995, Jade opens in theaters around the world. Written by Joe Eszterhas, directed by Billy Friedkin, starring David Caruso, Linda Fiorentino, and Chazz Palmenteri. It’s casting quintessential “sense of discovery.” The title character of Jade was all but impossible to find—a thirty-five-year-old, well-bred, intelligent femme fatale.
Actresses from daytime soap to Shakespearean theater were sought by every casting agent throughout the world. After six months of searching, we were no closer to uncovering our jewel than we had been on day one. Discovering a new talent in her midtwenties is far easier than one in her midthirties. With rare exception, by the time an actress reaches her midthirties, she is either overexposed, under-talented, or has “femme fataled” it one too many times.
During a somber meeting with Friedkin, we seriously thought of canceling the film. Meanwhile, Rod Lurie was waiting to interview me for a lengthy piece in Los Angeles magazine on the huge success of The Kid Stays in the Picture. Reluctantly, I obliged. During a lunch break, he queried if we had found our Jade yet. I told him the truth.
“Not only have we not found her, but we may cancel the picture because of it.”
“There’s only one girl to play it,” he said. “Last week I saw a film whose femme fatale all but set the screen on fire. I’ll bet you a lunch at Le Dôme that you don’t even know who she is.”
“I know ’em all,” I laughed. “In the last six months I’ve either interviewed ’em, seen ’em on film, taped ’em, you name it. Every actress who can open her mouth, from Ireland to Australia, I’ve checked.”
A sarcastic spurt from Lurie: “Really. Ever hear of Linda Fiorentino?”
I wracked my brain. This is a bet I don’t want to lose. But I did—I had never heard of her.
“I owe you a lunch.”
I ended up owing him far more than a lunch. I owed him the movie. Without Lurie’s left-field casting idea, Jade would have ended up just a stone on a ring, not on screen. Immediately I called Friedkin and told him of Lurie’s revelation. To Billy’s credit, he got hold of a print of the film, posthaste. Seventy-two hours later Sherry Lansing, John Goldwyn, Billy Friedkin, Craig Baumgarten and myself sat in the executive screening room of Paramount watching a yet-to-be released, obscure film. Its title: The Last Seduction. As the end credits rolled, the four of us shared the same emotion—wow! We’d found our Jade.
Why I tell the story is that out of nearly a thousand names suggested by every casting director imaginable, Linda Fiorentino’s was nowhere to be found. It took a writer from Los Angeles magazine to find our Jade.
Three weeks later, The Last Seduction opened in London and New York. Overnight, Linda Fiorentino became the screen’s new femme fatale. Her reviews? Not good, great. Within two months, from total obscurity, Linda Fiorentino became the New York Film Critics’ choice as the year’s best actress, and was so crowned. She was odds-on favorite to win the Academy Award as well. But there was a problem. The bylaws of the Academy prevented her nomination because The Last Seduction was made primarily for television, not for theatrical release. Strangely, the Academy’s intransigence worked in her favor. Their snubbing caused an industry backlash, as most everyone felt her performance was far and away Oscar time. As they did for Sharon Stone after Basic Instinct, both critics and audiences around the world now eagerly await Fiorentino’s next screen appearance. Call it dumb luck—we uncovered a zircon and it turned out to be the Hope Diamond.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Whether it be actor, writer, or director, I’ve never flinched in my feelings that you judge someone by their best. Why? Very few have bests.
Mediocre is the M.O. of the game. Me? I’d rather work with an artist who, among his or her failures, touched magic rather than money. Then it is up to me, the producer, to help that person touch magic once again.
The singularly talented Billy Friedkin is the quintessential example of that philosophy. Spanning back decades, from the time he directed The French Connection and The Exorcist, I’d always yearned to work with him yet never had. Whether the bottom line be black or red, whatever story he translated to the big screen had a flair of originality. No hack he, rather an explorer in the art of film. Jade was our introduction. From our first meeting I kept wondering, Is this guy as talented as I thought?
After several months of working closely together, I found out I had been wrong. He’s more talented. In one capacity or another, I’ve been intricately involved in the making of over three hundred flicks. I haven’t worked with everyone, but I’ve worked with most. Unequivocally, I can state that no one outshines Billy when it comes to enhancing the written word on the big screen. His knowledge of film, music, literature, and technique are only overshadowed by his camaraderie, collaborative embrace, and single-minded focus—that of striving for excellence.
Whether Jade grabs the brass ring or is hit with brass knuckles, it matters little in terms of my respect for Billy’s artistry. In a perfect world my wish would be to partner with Maestro Friedkin forever.
One evening, pre-Christmas 1991, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and I were watching a flick called 29th Street at my home. We had heard good things about it, even though it had opened and closed with little notice. It was close to midnight when the final credits started to roll. Impulse prevailed over pragmatism as I dialed Barry Diller, who at the time was chairman of Twentieth Century–Fox.
Awakening him, I rattled, “I’m here with Warren and Jack and we’ve just seen a picture of yours. If only two church scenes were added and some of the four-letter words deleted, it could give It’s a Wonderful Life a run for its money as the perennial Christmas gift to the world. How come, Barry, it got lost in the shuffle of a September release?”
A long silence ensued. “Bob, do you realize it’s nearly midnight?”
“Barry, I apologize, but if I waited till morning, I’d never make the call.”
Yawning, Barry asked, “What picture are you talking about?”
“29th Street.”
Another long silence. I don’t think he ever saw it, but a week later the head of Distribution was fired by Chairman Diller. Me, I wanted to meet the guy who created and directed this unseen jewel. His name, George Gallo. “This is the next Coppola,” I kept telling myself.
But a big problem separated Gallo from Evans, a problem I never knew existed until summer 1995. For the first time in my career I had midnight-called the chairman of a major studio expounding my thoughts on one of his pictures. Yet days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and, yes, months to years and this Gallo guy refused to meet me. More insulting, his fuckin’ career was going south and he still wouldn’t meet me. For more than three years this hide-and-seek game continued. Anger turned to curiosity. Finally, in the beginning of January 1995, a top agent at ICM named Bill Block needed a big favor. And Bill Block represented George Gallo.
“It’s granted, Bill, with one condition. George Gallo has to be in my office within twenty-four hours.”
Block had little choice. The favor he needed was that important and, fortuitously, I was the only one who could make it happen. Almost to the minute, twenty-four hours later Gallo was sharing a cup of coffee with me at my offices at Paramount. Not only was it love at first sight, but within two weeks Block closed a deal with Paramount’s president, John Goldwyn, on a best-selling novel that I had owned for more than seven years, The Cinch. George would write and direct; I would produce. Consummated in forty-eight hours, the deal was one of the quickest I’ve made in my entire career. These days closing a deal in forty-eight hours is tantamount to running a three-minute mile.
Four months later, Gallo, Gary Chazen (George’s right-hand guy), and I were at the Palm restaurant celebrating the completion of George’s first-draft screenplay.
Giving Gallo the nudge, Gary pressed George to tell me why he refused meeting me for three years.
“Cut it, will ya, Gary? Evans’ll be pissed.”
“He won’t, George. Tell him.”
Gallo tersely interrupted Gary: “I can’t. Now let’s drop it.”
“You better tell me, George,” I growled. “I’ve never known a broad who refused a hello for four years.”
Sheepishly, George looked at me, then at Gary. “I wish the fuck you hadn’t brought it up.”
“I’m glad he did, partner. Now spill it.”
Gulping down the last of his martini, he mumbled, “Don’t take it wrong now, will ya, Evans?”
“I’m listening, George. Start talking.”
The big gumba starts, but he stutters. “You gotta understand, when a guy’s name ends with a vowel and the vowel is an o, and he’s spent most of his life growing up in New York with other guys whose names end with an o, and none of them make thirty, well, he gets a little paranoid. He sure don’t want coppers knocking on his door in the middle of the night. He’s not lookin’ to get cuffed, put under the lamp. Gettin’ questioned till the sun comes up.”
Gallo’s stuttering became more pronounced. “You’re not gonna like what I’m about to tell you. Everyone told me to stay away from you, that you’re a made guy . . . connected big. That’s all I had to hear. I’m not looking for midnight surprises, coppers knockin’ at my door. I don’t need no subpoenas. That’s why I moved out here. You wanna know the truth, Evans?”
Cold cocking him with my eyes. “It better be, motherfucker.”
A nervous Gallo laugh. “My own agent even told me you were hot, to stay away from you. But now that we’ve been working together, I don’t care how connected you are. You’re okay with me.”
Gallo’s face read like the phone book. He was scared shitless that I carried more than a pen in my pocket. I half-whispered, “You played it smart, got the right advice, George. Hope the script’s good, pal.”
Gallo’s face turned ashen. Gary burst out laughing. I didn’t.
Till this day, George, the gumba, still doesn’t know how connected Evans is. Good. Bet your last dime, fear and fear alone made the gumba Gallo turn in the best damn screenplay I’d gotten in years. With a little bit of luck, we may have another Godfather on our hands. As far as Gallo’s concerned, I don’t think, I know: he’s the Coppola of the nineties.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.”
Those words of advice were written to F. Scott Fitzgerald by Ernest Hemingway in 1934. That same advice gave me the guts not to cheat with the truth, to tell it as it is. In that spirit, Papa Hemingway, don’t take affront to what follows.
In the spring of 1991 I finally met a lady I’d longed to meet for years, the statuesque beauty, Margaux Hemingway. Call it attraction, love, lust, call it what you want, but it was instant Fourth of July fireworks from the start. A month or so later, off we flew to Saint-Tropez and Paris. Sharing a cozy booth and celebrating my birthday at the Ritz Hotel’s Hemingway Bar in Paris was nothing less than touching heaven. Yet I couldn’t stop wondering if it was for all the wrong reasons. How darling she was, toasting our being together for all my birthdays to come.
At one point she whispered, “There are a lot of girls out there who are jealous of us. Always know I would never use you.”
I quickly interrupted: “Margaux, my ego’s too big to believe that you would. It could be, though, I’m using you.”
Ordering another bottle of Dom Pérignon pink, we embraced,
kissed, and must have looked like two very overaged high school kids—certainly, I must have. The waiter filled our glasses from the new bottle.
Kissing the tip of her nose, I toasted, “To love, not revenge.”
Paying little heed to my toast, Margaux purred, “To lust and more lust.”
“I know you were Papa’s favorite.”
“He was mine too. Always will be,” she whispered back.
Then I let it flow. “When we were shooting The Sun Also Rises in Moralelia, he never stopped talking about his little Margaux. Couldn’t hear everything because he never talked to me directly. Never looked at me directly either. Papa sure was one unhappy author. I think he talked more about me than you—how this Jew boy from New York was going to ruin his best work. The first time he saw me on location, he looked at me, pointed his finger square at my nose, turned to the director—‘Him playing Pedro Romero opposite Ava Gardner? No way! Not if I have anything to say about it!’ And he had plenty to say. Didn’t keep his feelings to himself either. Everyone on the set knew Papa’s thoughts about how this Jew boy would ruin the film of his prized novel.”
I laughed. “Yeah, but he couldn’t convince Zanuck. Zanuck was the producer, and he wanted only one person to play Romero the bullfighter—me.”
Though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but laugh again. “Papa? Nothing would have gotten him off more than seeing me stabbed in the cojones by a bull’s horn. Yeah, one thing—seeing me dead.”
Pouring the last of the bottle’s pink champagne, I reflected, “Instead, he’s dead and I’m alive, drinking pink champagne with his favorite of favorites.”
Maybe it was the champagne, but more possibly thirty years of pent-up anger. I was on a roll.
