by Robert Evans
Chapter Fifty-Two
My son, Joshua, rudely awakened me on a blistering August morning in the summer of 1993.
“Daddy, I don’t want to wake you, but I’m leaving for the beach and I have to tell you what happened last night. Natasha and I went to Club A, Mickey Rourke’s new place. He was there, too, at another table across the room. I didn’t even know he knew me, but suddenly two guys come over to the table and ask if I’m Bob Evans’s kid. I tell them yes. Then they tell me to leave. I couldn’t believe it. I asked why. One of them, a big guy, must have been six foot three, pulls my chair out and says, ‘Just get out of here, kid. Forget the tab. If you’re Evans’s kid, the boss don’t want you here.’ ”
A rude awakening? I was hotter than the weather. I picked up the phone and dialed the Mondrian Hotel.
“Daddy, I don’t want to cause a problem.”
“Then you shouldn’t have told me,” I barked.
The hotel operator plugged in. “Good morning, the Mondrian.”
“Marco Ricardi, please.”
“He’s at the pool. Should I page him there?”
“Just get him on the phone!” I growled.
“Well, pardon me!”
I didn’t answer.
Marco, a friend of mine for years, knew Mickey well. Unfortunately for him, he picked up my page at the pool.
“Marco, it’s Evans.”
“Stranger—” That’s all he could get out of his mouth.
“You know where Mickey Rourke is?”
“Yeah.”
Interrupting, “Find the motherfucker. Today! Tell him when it comes to me, he can talk or do anything that gets him off, but fucking over my kid—that’s different. I’m gonna shove a broken bat up his ass.”
“Evans, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You’re too cool a guy.”
“Well, believe it. I want a sit-down with this punk, today! He plays tough, but he’s still a fuckin’ actor to me.”
Marco starts laughing.
“What are you laughing about?”
“He’s sitting right across the pool.”
I know he’s trying to temper me.
“If you’re waiting for me to cool down, don’t!”
“Okay, okay. I could almost grab him from here.”
“Then do it. Tell him what I said. Don’t soft-pedal it, Marco. Set a time. Call me back,” smashing the phone down before he could respond.
Joshua knew he’d pushed the wrong button telling me the story.
It started fifteen years earlier—January of ’79, to be exact. I was in Las Vegas directing various tennis scenes with Pancho Gonzalez and many of the tennis greats for Players, a film I was producing. It was January 16, Joshua’s eighth birthday. His mother was out of the country. I arranged for my butler, David, to bring Joshua to Las Vegas for his birthday. Luckily it fell on a Friday, allowing us the weekend to be together. We had a blast, he by my side asking a thousand questions while I directed one tennis sequence after another. An up-and-coming eighteen-year-old tennis pro, who at the time was too shy to utter the three lines he had in the film, was teaching my kid how to put racquet to ball. His name—John McEnroe.
It was birthday night and my good friend Mort Viner, who at the time was Dean Martin’s manager, arranged a front-and-center table for six at Dean’s one-man show at the MGM Grand.
At the time, Dean was Vegas’s biggest attraction. His cardinal rule was never to break stride during a performance to introduce anyone, no matter how big the celebrity. With cake and all, eight candles burning, there walked Dean, center stage. He got down on his knee and crooned “Happy Birthday” to my little runt. Then Joshua blew out the candles to the applause of nearly two thousand. Did it excite Joshua? I think so. Did it excite me? Big!
What does this have to do with Mickey Rourke? Deborah Fuerer, a beautiful young actress whose family lived in Las Vegas, was my date that evening—our first. To paraphrase Claude Rains’s line to Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, it was the beginning of a beautiful romance.
Four years later, Deborah’s last name changed to Rourke—Mrs. Mickey Rourke. Though I knew her before Mickey ever set foot in California, it mattered little. With purpose, he’d never say hello, never step foot in my house, and made it known that it would be best for my health not to be in the same room with him. Ironically, I was a great fan of his, believing his presence on the screen was singular. As the eighties progressed so did Mickey’s career; he became the hot new stud, exuding danger onto the silver screen. He was number one on every lady’s “heat” list.
Yet until that blistering Sunday in August of ’93, never a word was uttered between us.
The phone rang. It was Marco.
“Evans, I don’t know how to tell you this, but when I walked over to tell Mickey you wanted to see him, his whole body began to shake. What did you do to this guy?”
“Did you tell him what I said, Marco?”
“I couldn’t. He got up and walked to the other side of the pool. I’m watching him now—he’s still shakin’.”
“I don’t give a shit what he’s doing, Marco. Arrange a sit-down with this actor punk. Now!”
“Trust me, Bob, the timing’s wrong.”
“Marco, I don’t want weather reports. Arrange it. Call me back when you do.”
Marco didn’t call back till the next morning.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Evans?”
“I didn’t hear you, Marco. Did you arrange it?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow at one, at his place.”
“At his place?”
“Yeah, that’s the only place he’ll meet.”
“Pick me up at twelve forty-five. We’ll drive there together.”
At 12:45 exactly, Marco was at my doorstep. Me, I was dressed and ready for showdown time.
I slid into Marco’s car. “Let’s get it on.”
“Bob, I gotta tell ya,” Marco cautioned me again, “I was with Mickey last night. When I brought your name up, he began to hyperventilate. I had to put a grocery bag over his head. You sure you want to go through with this?”
“Drive, Marco, will ya?”
We walked into Rourke’s offices three minutes before the strike of one, and stood in his anteroom. On the right was a large office. On the left, a smaller one. But no Mickey.
The secretary said, “Mr. Rourke will be here soon,” gesturing for us to sit in the larger office.
With purpose, I interrupted. “We’ll take the smaller one.”
Five minutes turned into ten, ten into fifteen, fifteen into twenty. Still we sat. Still no Rourke. You couldn’t help but notice that every inch of wall space of the twenty-by-twenty-foot office was covered with pictures—pictures of the same woman, in every extraordinary pose possible. What a beauty. The lady was his flame of the nineties, Carre Otis.
It was now close to 1:30. In walked Rourke—sleeveless, his tattooed arms bulging with muscle. Behind him were two goons who could easily have been George Foreman’s bouncers. Mickey approached me. I stood. Our eyes locked. Putting one hand on each of his shoulders, I said something I’d never chance again.
“Before we start, Mickey, I want you to know: I fucked Carre Otis too.”
Marco’s face turned ashen—Mickey’s, beet red. Slowly, Mickey did a double-take until our eyes locked again. For that split second, he wanted to break me in half or take my eyes out.
Before he had a chance to do either, I whispered, “I never even met her, you dumb fuck.”
A Tyson right hook couldn’t have floored him better.
Our noses not more than an inch apart, Mickey hissed, “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I’ve never laid eyes on her, that’s what!”
“You’re fuckin’ crazy. I could’ve done some heavy damage to you.”
Still nose to nose, I asked, “After fifteen years of not talking, how the hell else am I gonna shock you into some sense?”
“You are nuts! You know her, don’t ya?�
�
“I told you, I never even met her.”
Looking around at the two goons behind him, Rourke said, “This guy has some fuckin’ cojones.” Then turning to me again: “You’re sure you don’t know her?”
“How many times do I have to tell ya, I’ve never met her.”
Rourke threw Marco a glance. “Who is this guy?”
Marco shook his head. “I told you, Mickey, he’s one of us.”
Turning quickly back to me, he said, “I coulda whacked ya.”
“I know.”
“You’re fuckin’ nuts!”
“I know.”
“If you’ve got the guts to pull this shit on me, and come out whole, you own me. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it. Now let’s go to my joint and break bread.”
Three hours later, sitting under my several-hundred-year-old sycamore, still mangiare-ing grilled chicken sausages and linguini marinara, Mickey, his two gumbas, Marco, and I couldn’t stop laughing about the rough road we’d both left behind. Again paraphrasing Claude Rains, it was “the start of a beautiful romance,” but this time with a bit of loyalty thrown in.
Just as my career had gone south in the eighties, Mickey’s did in the nineties. But make no mistake, it’s only temporary. Why? He has more screen presence by accident than almost any leading man in town. Bad decisions served him roughly, possibly justly, but that’s not for me to judge. Rourke is somewhat reminiscent of Brando, who twenty-five years ago had to work for scale on The Godfather. At that moment in time no one would touch him. The Godfather delivered Brando not back to stardom, but to superstardom. Talent, like cream, does float to the top. As did Brando—as will Mickey. Let someone tell me I can’t use Rourke in a flick. They’ll get the same answer I gave twenty-five years ago when I was told unequivocally by the suits upstairs that Brando would play Don Corleone over their dead bodies. Well, their bodies are dead. I’m still alive, and so is Rourke.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Desperate for silence, I disappeared under an assumed name to Palm Springs in May of 1993. I yearned for the sound of crickets, not phones, to help me complete the manuscript of my autobiography, which was to be delivered that fall. Though I knew I’d make the date, I also knew that silence would help me uncover my memories and wrestle them onto paper. Without the desert solitude, the record of my bumpy road could easily turn out underwhelming.
One never stops learning. That four months of hearing the crickets did open up those elusive memory banks. But by disappearing I paid dearly, incurring the wrath of all the Paramount honchos.
When I first went into hiding, I left strict instructions that only emergencies could interrupt my seclusion. After three weeks an emergency with a capital E erupted. Splashed across the Business page of the Los Angeles Times: “EVANS INVOLVED IN $300 MILLION FRAUD.”
Unsympathetic to my creative flow, lawyers galore quickly surrounded my desert retreat. Their concern—damage control of yet another Evans scandal. A class-action suit had been filed by four nondescript people, naming over three hundred defendants including Bank of America, Bankers Trust, Home Savings, and many other multibillion-dollar companies. Neither Bank of America nor Bankers Trust ever made the headlines. Robert Evans did. Though the suit was no more than a caprice—not one of the more than three hundred defendants was ever served—it made little difference. Front and center, picture and all, was the name Robert Evans, with yet another label attached to it: fraud. After much investigation, my consiglieres realized that, once again, veracity meant little when it came to Evans making headlines.
Thank heavens for beautiful men. A stranger named Keith Bardelini, a lawyer no less, entered my life to put some spin control on my so-called wicked ways. Though I was totally innocent of any wrongdoing, he became Mr. Damage Control and lost his partnership in a very prestigious law firm because of it. But oh how wealthy he must feel now.
Getting back into the groove of silence and creativity was no easy task, but them crickets sure worked wonders. Again I was gushing out thoughts that would have remained buried forever had I not taken pen to paper. In total seclusion, I was completely unaware of how widely the fraud story had been circulated. Another emergency call. Stanley Jaffe, who was then chairman of Paramount, insisted that I be available for him Monday, August 8, at 2:00 P.M. He was flying west on his private jet and I was first on his agenda. One thing I was sure of—he wasn’t flying west to give me a bonus.
Taking a three-day break from The Kid, I drove back to L.A. to prepare myself for the Jaffe meeting. At Sunday breakfast the next morning, front and center on the first page of the Los Angeles Times, was a huge photo of Heidi Fleiss. Surrounding the picture was a two-page story describing the sting operation that led to her arrest for pandering and money laundering. Whose name was under the picture? Mine.
At first glance, one would think I was her partner. In reality, I was a good friend of both Heidi and her family. But that’s where it ended. The timing couldn’t have been worse—the second part of a one-two punch, the day before my meeting with Chairman Jaffe.
Monday at 1:30 P.M. I stood in Chairman Jaffe’s anteroom awaiting his demanded pow-wow.
Expressionless, the secretary looked up, “Mr. Jaffe’s ready to see you now; please go right in.”
There sat the chairman, ensconced behind his desk, the very man who was responsible for my comeback, who had given me my second shot. I seated myself across the desk from him, and an uncomfortable silence ensued. Jaffe took off his glasses.
In a staccato voice he started: “Murder. Drugs. Fraud. Prostitution.” His voice shook. “What’s next, Evans?”
I took off my glasses. It was High Noon. Our weapons—eyes, not guns.
A dramatic pause. “Stanley, now that you’ve brought it up, I might as well tell you. Nine months ago, I hired a British butler. His name—Alan Selka, S-E-L-K-A. You’re not gonna like what I’m gonna tell ya.”
Again, I paused. “Ten days ago, the CIA paid me a visit. This Selka guy is Qaddafi’s right-hand man. He’s using me as his cover. He’s come here on a secret mission . . . to blow up the White House.”
Stanley all but jumped out of his chair and his skin. His face beet red, the vein on the side of his temple pulsating, he screamed, “Evans, I can’t take it anymore! I can’t take it anymore.”
It must have been the worst ten seconds of his life until he realized my bizarre, black humor. He didn’t laugh.
In a cold sweat, he shook his head. He kept repeating, “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take it anymore.”
Finally he looked at me, “I love you, Evans, but you’re too hot to handle.”
“I’ve always been a hot ticket, Stanley. Who knows that better than you? Twenty-five years ago, Bluhdorn said the same thing. You were standing right there. What the fuck can I do about it?”
Shaking his head, Stanley mumbled, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Though no longer at Paramount, to this day, Stanley still doesn’t know. The shock wave of that August 8 meeting in all probability damaged our friendship, although my feelings for him will never change. How could they? His feelings toward me? Well, that’s another story.
Chapter Fifty-Four
On reflection, three letters describe the two most extraordinary highs of my life—K-I-D. The first high was the birth of my son, Joshua. No high will ever touch that. The surprise is the second—The Kid Stays in the Picture. Put all my films together in one balloon and it could never reach the high The Kid has given me.
After four years of painful pregnancy, I ain’t shy about bragging about my Kid. First of all, he broke my virginity as an author by winning the nod as the Best of the Best Autobiography of 1994 from the elite Publishers Weekly, the first time ever for a Hollywood memoir. Damn, I wish it could happen to me in the world of flicks.
Several months ago while lunching with ICM chairman Jeff Berg, who for decades has been a very close friend, I couldn’t help but remember that only six years ea
rlier he summoned me to his office, flatly laying out the bad news.
“Our friendship, Bob, perpetuated my personally calling every studio in town trying to sell you the best I could to help get you back in action. I suppose I’m a lousy agent” (which he sure as hell is not), “but I batted zero for ten. No one wants to take a chance. They’re scared, Bob. Not one of them wants the name Evans on their roster, no matter what perks you bring to the party.”
“Sounds like Fatty Arbuckle time, Jeff.”
Shaking his head, “It is. What can I tell you? It stinks, Bob. I’m sorry. I wish I had the answer, but I don’t.”
Was I surprised? No. Did it hurt? What do you think? Yet I understood.
Now, six years later, he had a different story to tell, so bizarre it even shocked him.
“How you got up from the canvas at the count of nine still amazes me. But you did, and I love you for it. I’m gonna tell it to you straight, Evans. Until a year ago, you were still looked upon, not only with skepticism, but as a dinosaur. How’s a guy in his sixties gonna start from scratch? Let’s face it, you were one big question mark.”
A rare Berg laugh, “This is the shocker. If you produced Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump in the same year, it wouldn’t have done for you what your fuckin’ book has. From the mailroom up—every kid, agent, lawyer, actor, you name it—either read your book or heard your audio. You know me, Bob, I don’t believe in miracles, but suddenly there are more requests to meet you than any of my top clients.”
Shaking his head again, “You’re a fucking phoenix, Evans.”
Jeff must have been right. Within a month of the book’s publication (which, by the way, got better reviews than any flick I’ve ever made, including Godfather and Chinatown), I was forced to hire a secretary to fend off the calls and letters that poured in from around the world. From Harvard to the University of Southern California, from Oxford to the Sorbonne, invitations piled up requesting that I be their graduating class’s commencement speaker. My wildest dreams could never fathom a high school dropout with a degree in infamy addressing an ivy league school’s senior class. Yet everyone, from the heads of multinational corporations to infomercial producer-entrepreneurs, insisted that I tape or deliver from the podium their commencement address. I was living proof that the impossible dream could be possible.
