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The Los Angeles Times
once said...

that never in the history
of Hollywood...

has such glamour and talent
sat under one tree.

Dr. Kissinger is here,
and there's no accident.

There's more oil on Bob Evans...

Take him home.
Take him home!

Just get him the hell
out of here!

These past 10 years as chief of
production at Paramount Pictures,

I've been lucky, or fortunate enough,
to be closely involved...

with such unique pictures
as Rosemary's Baby,

True Grit, Love Story,
The Godfather.

How did you get discovered
for the movies?

Well,
I got discovered by jumping into a swimming pool.

But I was an actor for many
years as a kid before that.

In essence, what happened, however,
I was at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool.

I was a businessman at the time. I was
not an actor. What was your business?

I was partners with my brother in a company
called Evan-Picone. We made women's pants.

In other words,
I was in women's pants.

We actually started the fad
of women wearing slacks.

I'll never forget it because it
was the day of the Eisenhower...

It was the fall of 1956.

I flew out to Los Angeles to
set up Evan-Picone boutiques.

One afternoon,
I decided to play hooky...

and sit by the pool and get
some sun at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Suddenly, a woman approached me.

"Excuse me, young man.
Are you an actor?"

"Yeah, I was
a long time ago."

It was Norma Shearer.

Norma Shearer, at the time, was one of the
few remaining icons of Hollywood aristocracy.

A petite blonde
in a striped, short robe.

"Pardon me for being curious, young man,
but why are you always on the phone?"

"Gotta pay my bills,
that's why."

"You're not a bookmaker,
are you?" "No, I'm not a bookmaker."

Then she changed
the entire course of my life.

"Would you like to play my deceased husband,
Irving Thalberg,

in a film, Mr. Evans?"

I looked at her. Looked at her again. I
didn't know what she was talkin' about.

"They're making a film at Universal
called Man Of A Thousand Faces."

My friend, Jimmy Cagney,
is playing the title role of Lon Chaney.

Irving was the guy who discovered him
and made him the biggest star in silent film.

Do you know, Mr. Evans,
he was only 20 at the time?

"He was even too young to sign the checks,
but not too young to run a studio."

I'm thinking to myself, "Wow,
this can't be happening to me."

"Miss Shearer,
it would be an honor. Why not?

'Cause Cagney is the one guy
I've always wanted to meet."

Two hours later, I'm on
a sound stage at Universal.

Here I am, like out of a dream,
I'm testing opposite Jimmy Cagney.

Mind if I come in a minute?

I know I don't look dressed for the barricades,
but I've just come from a revolution...

The premiere of The Jazz Singer.

Lon, you should have
seen that audience.

When Jolson's voice came
from the screen,

I could hear the bells
tolling for silent pictures.

You haven't heard a word I said.

I'm sorry, Irving.

What were you saying?
Nothing much.

I was just trying to tell you
about a modern miracle.

Pictures that not only move,
Lon, but they speak.

Oh, yeah, sure.
Talking pictures.

It's the horse and the automobile
all over again. No use tryin' to fight it.

When it was over, Cagney gave me a quick look,
"You did good, kid."

Forty-eight hours later,
I made every newspaper around the country.

"New York Businessman Dives into
Pool and Comes Out a Movie Star."

Was I lucky?
I think so.

If I had stayed just an actor,
Norma never would have given me a second look.

What caught her eye was a young go-getter,
sure about himself, persuasive.

A subliminal reminder of the man who
was once her mentor and her husband.

It's the old story, though.
Luck doesn't happen by mistake.

Rather, luck is when opportunity
meets preparation.

As soon as the picture wrapped,
I flew back to the Big Apple.

Evan-Picone was on fire.

The showrooms were packed with them
leggy ladies prancin' in their patrician pants.

It was turn-on plus.

My brother, Charles,
had built the top fashion company of its time.

And me?
I was lucky to be part of it,

never having a second thought
about returning to La-La Land.

Why should I? In New York,
I was suddenly a celebrity.

From debutramp to starlet to model,
there I was on their "most wanted" list.

Was I enjoying it?
You bet your ass I was.

One night, my brother and I took
a few femme fatales to El Morocco.

Me? I didn't feel like conversation,
so I hit the dance floor.

Well, that night someone had eyes for me,
and it wasn't "her."

It was Darryl Zanuck,
head honcho of Twentieth Century Fox.

He had no idea who I was.
But just looking at me,

he thought, "That kid's right to play
the matador opposite Ava Gardner."

And after years and years of knocking on doors,
being turned down,

here I am, discovered to star in
two pictures within six months.

That's what you call incident, and that's
what's also known as sense of discovery.

Thank God
I was the one discovered.

I'm sent down to Mexico
to study to be a bullfighter.

Mind you, I have never
once seen a bull in my life.

I worked my ass off
for three months,

wearing a rubber girdle each day so
I'd lose weight around my midsection.

There was one big problem:

No one wanted me in the picture.

Ernest Hemingway was furious they'd pick
some guy out of a nightclub to play Pedro Romero,

who in the true-life story
was him.

A telegram goes out
to Darryl Zanuck.

It reads, "With Robert Evans
playing Pedro Romero,

The Sun Also Rises
will be a disaster.

Signed, Ernest Hemingway,
Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Eddie Albert."

The only one who refused to sign
it was Errol Flynn. He just laughed.

I know I'm gonna get fired.

But that gave me the resolve.
I said, "Fuck 'em."

And, you know, when I knew
that telegram went out,

I became Pedro Romero
in one week.

Zanuck arrives in Morelia, Mexico,
and I'm summoned to show up in the bullring...

to do my quites and veronicas
in front of him.

I walk into the bullring,

take off my hat,
throw it to him,

"For you."

And then I started going
through my various things,

except I feel like an idiot...
I know I'm gonna get fired.

Aha. Ah.
¡Toro!

¡Olé! ¡Olé!

Suddenly, Zanuck stands up,
all five-foot-three of him,

picks up a bullhorn,

"The kid stays in the picture.

And anybody who doesn't
like it can quit."

Puts the bullhorn down...
and walks out.

And also it was then I realized,
"That's what Evans wants to be.

Not some actor shitting in
his pants waiting to get a role,

but the guy who can say,
'The kid stays in the picture."'

Bob Evans is
a 28-year-old New Yorker,

who currently is in
the enviable position...

of pursuing two successful
careers on two coasts.

Here in the East, Bob Evans
devotes his time and energy...

to being a vice president of
the Evan-Picone sportswear firm.

On the West Coast, Bob Evans devotes
his time and energy to being a movie star.

And at last reports,
he's doing pretty well at both.

Good evening, Bob.
Good evening, Ed.

How are you?
Very fine, thank you.

Well, now that you're getting established
and recognized as a movie star,

how much longer do you think you'll
be able to hold out as a bachelor?

Just introduce me to the right girl, Ed,
and I can end my bachelorhood right here.

With all the hullabaloo and
excitement about the new Valentino,

I wasn't gettin' the parts
I wanted.

Yeah, there were half a dozen
parts that they offered to me.

I was looking for bigger things.

One day, my agent calls,
George Chasen.

"Bob, I'm calling
with good news.

Fox is remaking Kiss of Death into a western,
and we've got you up for the Widmark part.

It made him a star overnight."

Finally, I got
my first title role. Wow.

He's a kooky killer,

the most diabolical horror
that ever roamed the earth.

The Fiend Who Walked The West.

He'll cut out your heart
or break your neck,

and laugh while he's doing it.

My acting career was over
and out.

It was my last appearance
on the silver screen.

By decade's end,
I was sure of one thing:

I was a half-assed actor,
and I knew it.

I knew I'd never become
the next Paul Newman.

Maybe the next Troy Donahue.

But you know who
I really wanted to become?

The next Darryl Zanuck.

Thus was my goal for the '60s.

And I went for it all the way.

Sounds easy, doesn't it?

It ain't.

Next to winning the Olympics, I don't
think that there's a more difficult thing...

than a pretty-boy actor
transforming himself into producer,

especially in those days.

I realized that I had to own
something that nobody else could get.

I met a guy named George Weiser
who worked for Publishers Weekly.

He moonlighted for me
for about 150 bucks a week.

He comes to me and he says, "I just
finished a book, Bob. It's called The Detective."

This is one hot book.

I read it, put $5,000 down
on it as an option,

and go in to see David Brown,

who's a pal of mine from Twentieth Century Fox,
who's a top producer there.

I say, "David, I think
I have the next big book."

He reads it. In 48 hours he says,
"Bob, we're in business."

"Uh-uh-uh, David.
Not so quick.

I wanna know what kind
of business we're in.

Now, these are my conditions:
I want a full spread of offices.

I want a three-picture deal."

To make a very long story short,
I get everything I ask for.

By the way,
they would have bought me out for half a million.

But I wanted my foot in the door,
and I got it in the door, but good.

I learned a lot from that. When
you own the property, you're king.

Without it, you're a peon.

If the euphemism, "You live by the press,
and you die by the press"...

ever fit anyone, it fit me.

Who would have thought a journalist
would change the entire course of my life...

and also my career?

On reflection, I don't know whether
I should love him or hate him.

Peter Bart, the West Coast
correspondent for The New York Times,

said he wanted to write a feature story
about me in the Arts & Leisure section.

"Is this a joke, Peter?
Come on."

He said,
"Uh-uh. This is not a joke.

What's interesting about you, Evans,
and why you're worth writing about,

is you're beating all these
big shots at their own game.

You know, you could become the guy you played,
the next Thalberg."

That's just what I want the audience to see,
Mr. Chaney...

The soul of a man
that God made different.

If I was really smart,
I should have retired after Peter's article.

Instead, Greg Bautzer,
the power broker of the town, calls and says,

"Pack your bags, Evans.
You're goin' to New York."

"I can't, Greg. I got plans."
"Break 'em.

Charlie Bluhdorn just bought
Paramount and wants to meet you.

He read the article about you
in Sunday's New York Times.

"He's a doer, Bob, not a talker.
Now pack your bags."

And pack 'em I did.

♪♪

Within five minutes after meeting
Charlie Bluhdorn, I know this is no kibitzer.

Before I finished trying to answer one question,
he was asking me more.

With him was a guy named
Marty Davis, his top capo.

He was the one responsible for the
go-go conglomerate Gulf and Western,

buying this aging mountain
they call Paramount.

There were eight major studios
at the time.

Paramount?
It was ninth.

Bluhdorn bought this sleeping
giant at bargain-basement prices.

That's the only way
he knew how to buy.

Still, everybody thought he was nuts to get
involved in a business he knew nothing about,

much less a business
as crazy as show business.

"But, guys, I got a deal
with Twentieth and"...

"Get out of it! You'll be running
Paramount in a few months.

Is that right, Marty?"
Davis gives me a look.

"If you're gonna run Paramount,
you better be tougher than you seem to be."

Did I get the message?
You bet.

Then Bluhdorn blasted my other ear,
"Go by the seat of your pants."

Make pictures people wanna see,
not fancy-schmancy stuff people don't understand.

I want to see tears, laughs. I want
pretty girls in the pictures, beautiful girls.

Pictures people in
Kansas City want to see.

"That's all,
Evans. What else do we have to go over?"

Being the production head
of a studio such as Paramount...

And I'm sure you're well aware of it...
involves a tremendous responsibility.

You are dealing
with millions of dollars.

They sure as hell had
great names for me.

One was "Bluhdorn's Folly"
by The New York Times.

Another was "Bluhdorn's Blow
Job" by Hollywood Close-up.

Good feeling, huh?

There was, to put it mildly,
a great deal of skepticism...

from people in the industry.

After all, where does an
ex-actor, and a bad one at that,

come off running a studio?

From the day I arrived,
the rumor mill had me packing my bags.

Time magazine ran a story
saying my firing was imminent.

Friends, columnists, agents,
lawyers, all of them let me know...

that I wasn't going to
be there for Christmas.

Then it happened.
Front page of Variety:

"Evans Tenure
Over By End Of Month."

I called Charles Bluhdorn,
who was chairman of the board of Gulf and Western,

who owns Paramount,
who had bought Paramount and put me in there.

And he was in Spain at the time.

And I... I got him out of a board of
directors meeting in Madrid, and I said,

"Uh, Charles, there's a story in
Variety that I'm gonna get fired.

If it's true,
tell me. I don't like... Tell me if it's true."

I'll pick up my laundry,
you know? I'm ready to go.

And he says, "Let me
tell you something, Bob."

When you're gonna get fired, I'll let you
know. Stop reading this Hollywood gossip.

As long as I own Paramount,
you're gonna be right where you are.

Now just relax and do your job."
And he hung the phone up.

My first move was to hire
Peter Bart as my right-hand man.

He's not Hollywood. He doesn't read
synopses. He reads the entire text.

He can read six books over a weekend
and I'm hard-pressed to finish one in six.

And even more important, it was his
article that got me into this fuckin' mess.

The two of us caucused in
Palm Springs for a full week...

trying to strategize how
an actor and a journalist...

could turn a white elephant
into a contender.

Patience was not a quality neither
Bluhdorn nor Davis claimed to have,

and the clock
was already ticking.

With the little experience
we had, we knew one thing:

That property is the star.

"Let's go back to basics, Peter."

You can have stars up the ass,

but if it's not on the page,
it's not gonna be on the screen.

It's no mistake Paramount's
been in ninth place for five years.

"It's time to pick up new dice.
Now let's try and do it."

♪ La, la, la, la
la, la, la, la, la ♪

Between Peter and myself, we went
through maybe dozens and dozens of scripts,

maybe hundreds.

Nothing clicked.
It always felt tired.

There was nothing...
Nothing fresh about it.

And we were looking
for the unexpected...

Something that sounded new
and what we were gonna be about.

Then one day, Bill Castle,
the veteran producer,

walked into my office with a
manuscript he had just optioned...

tucked under his arm.

It was Rosemary's Baby.
And I loved it.

Castle insisted on directing it.

I only had one director
in mind for it.

I saw brilliance
in his little films.

It was the little Polack
himself, Roman Polanski.

Not a little Polack. The
biggest Polack I've ever met,

and one of the biggest men
I've ever met.

The films I saw of his
were Knife in the Water,

Repulsion, Cul-de-sac,
all offbeat thrillers.

Roman was a big cinema star over in Europe,
as well as director,

and he'd just finished
his first Hollywood film.

Get this title...
The Fearless Vampire Killers,

or Pardon Me,
But Your Teeth Are In My Neck.

Though no one really wanted him in America,
he couldn't care less.

He was a big star in Europe. Where
do I get him? And how do I get to him?

Ah, he's an avid skier. I lured
him all the way to America,

thinking he was gonna direct
Downhill Racer.

Polanski walks in.
This is some character.

Within five minutes, this Polack's
acting out crazy stories right before me.

I don't know, they're somewhere between
Shakespeare and the theater of the absurd.

Maybe that's why
we clicked so well.

We both come out of the same
school of drama... the drama of life.

I didn't wanna bullshit him.

"Roman, will you read this?"

I shoved the galleys of Rosemary's
Baby across the desk at him.

"Is this about skiing?"
"Read it, Polack.

If you don't like it, your next ski trip is on me,
anywhere you wanna go in the world."

A gamble? Sure.
It paid off. Roman loved it.

But then the fights began.
You know, fighting is healthy.

If everyone has too much reverence for each other,
or for the material,

believe me, and check it out
and think about it,

invariably, it turns out
underwhelming.

By the end of the first week's shooting in
New York, Roman was a week behind schedule.

Everyone from Bluhdorn,
and certainly to Bill Castle,

wanted me to throw him
off the picture.

Roman's dailies were weird.

They touched off
an ominous sense of fright,

one I'd never seen
on film before.

At the same time, Bill Castle
was pressing the right buttons,

getting the New York brass
unnerved on the Polish discovery...

My Polish discovery.

We're 10 days into shooting,
and Roman was already five days behind schedule.

"Fire the Polack,"
were the words from New York.

"Fire him? Fuck you.
He goes, I go."

For a moment, I thought I'd have
to pay my own plane fare back.

I grabbed Roman aside.
"Listen to me carefully, Roman.

My ass ain't on the line. My ass is out the door,
and so are you.

Now pick up the fuckin' pace,
or we'll both end up in Warsaw."

Bluhdorn and company weren't the
only ones screaming about Roman.

Another power entered the scene.

My secretary comes in
with an urgent message.

"Frank Sinatra's on the horn.
He wants to speak with you."

I picked the phone up. "I'm pullin'
Mia from your fuckin' picture, Evans,

if she ain't finished
by November 14.

She's starting in my picture
on the 17th. Got it straight?"

His picture happened
to have been The Detective,

the project that had launched
my producing career.

And now it was about to sink it.

"Frank, you don't understand something.
We're not gonna be finished till mid-February."

"Ah, then she's quittin'.
Don't fuck around with me.

We go back too far. She's my old lady,
and she'll do as I tell her."

Before I could say anything,
he hangs the phone up.

Well, Frank didn't bark.

He bit.
Bit Mia pretty good.

"You stay in Rosemary's Baby,
you go back to Mia Farrow.

Forget the name Sinatra."

Suddenly,
this little girl hysterically runs into my office.

"I love him,
Bob! I love him so! I don't wanna lose Frank!

I'm gonna have to leave
the movie."

"Mia, if you walk out in the middle of this film,
you'll never work again."

"I don't care! I don't care!
I just love Frank."

Well, if ever my experience
with dames came in handy...

I mean, actress dames...
This was the moment.

I knew what makes the head
of an actress tick,

and I finally found its purpose.

"Come on with me, Mia.
I wanna show you something."

We both walked into
the executive screening room,

and I showed her a full hour of
Rosemary's Baby cut together.

Dr. Hill?
Dr. Hill, there's a plot.

I know that sounds crazy,
and you're probably thinking,

"My God, this poor girl
has really flipped."

But I... I haven't flipped,
Dr. Hill.

I swear by all the saints,
I haven't.

"Mia, you're brilliant.

I never thought you had
it in you. It'll shock 'em all.

I want you to know something. You're
a shoo-in to win the Academy Award."

Suddenly, her tears were gone.
Her face lights up.

"Do you really think so?"

"The one thing I'm not
is prone to exaggerate, Mia.

You're a shoo-in.
I mean, a shoo-in, kid."

"Sinatra who?"
Suddenly, a smile.

She didn't walk off the film.

But Frank did serve her divorce
papers right on the set,

delivered by Mickey Rudin,
his attorney.

Wow, it's strange.
Women recover real quick.

It may
have taken her a full week.

And then, suddenly, the only thing
she wanted was that Rosemary's Baby...

would out-gross The Detective.

You want to know
about actresses?

Mia's one satisfaction
would be...

that the pictures would open on the same day,
and I arranged that.

The Detective opened
to real good box office.

Ah, but Rosemary's Baby
was the smash hit of the summer.

Overnight, Mia was
a full-fledged star.

She had one request
I couldn't fill:

Take a double-page ad out in the
Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter.

On one side, she wanted me to put in bold
numbers the theater grosses of Rosemary's Baby.

On the other, the theater
grosses of The Detective.

Hell hath no fury
like a woman scorned.

A decade before, Norma Shearer
took me for a short walk.

Within 10 minutes of the Beverly Hills Hotel,
we entered a hidden oasis.

It was a world away
from Beverly Hills.

It was protected by
hundred-foot-tall eucalyptus trees.

Greta Garbo used to hide away
there whenever she came into town.

I'd never forgotten the day
I was there.

God, it must have been
a hundred times I thought,

"One day, I could own that house. God,
I'd love to live there."

The grounds, the trees, the acreage,
the towering eucalyptus,

thousands of roses,
everything is quiet and secret behind walls.

Was it for sale? No.

But in L.A.,
there's nothing that isn't.

For 290,000 buckaroos,

the place of my dreams
was now mine.

♪♪

♪ Hey, Sunday sun ♪

♪ Let's go walking and
we'll talk about some things ♪

♪ Kick my shoes off ♪

♪ And we'll dream
about some dreams ♪

♪ Got to get away
when the world gets on me

♪ Kids in the park ♪

♪ Don't take long before
I'm laughin' along with them ♪

♪ Almost makes me think
those times can come again ♪

♪ Gets me feeling good
and yet sad at the same time ♪

♪ Sunday sun ♪♪
♪ Glory, glory, hallelujah ♪

In the mid-to-late '60s,

movie attendance
was spiraling south.

Outside the gates of Paramount,
a cultural revolution was taking place.

The so-called brass at the studios
didn't know who to cater their movies to...

The old guard,
who we thought wanted to see...

their favorite aging movie stars
in lavish productions,

or the youth, who no one
seemed to understand.

In the same year alone,
Paramount released Medium Cool,

a film catering to
the so-called "youth" market,

and Paint Your Wagon,
a film that catered to... no one.

♪ And it's carryin' lips
that are wine ♪

♪ And it's comin' with arms
that are pillows ♪

We were losing money every year
on big, extravagant productions.

The board of directors
were getting nervous.

We needed a picture
that could unite audiences.

Like all good films, it needed
to start with a script.

Well, we found it.

Or should I say,
Miss MacGraw found it.

A simple little film about a boy
and a girl falling in love.

It was Love Story.

I set up a lunch date with
Love Story's mentor and star,

Miss MacGraw.

Damn it, by the time
dessert was served,

I would have made
the phone book with her.

Do you think she got to me?
I can tell you this.

I sure as hell
didn't get to her.

She kept on digging into me.
Oh, and she was loving it.

She keeps on interjecting,
all during the lunch how much in love she was.

Then she gives me
her last zinger.

"Peter and I are getting married
in the fall.

We plan to spend October
in Venice. Ever been there?"

"Nope."

"Then wait. Only go there
when you're madly in love."

That was it for me.
I grabbed her arm.

"Never plan, kid.
Planning's for the poor."

"If anything goes wrong between you and
blondie between now and post time, take my number.

I'm seven digits away."

Hate to admit it,
but she never called.

In the spring of 1969, holding Love
Story sure as hell wasn't holding aces.

I couldn't even find
a fucking director to do it.

You know what my batting
average was? A thousand.

Everyone turned it down.

Suddenly,
a minor miracle. I get a director. Arthur Hiller.

He's willing to direct
my angel with a very dirty face.

Well, when you get a first bite,
there's no way you're gonna let it go.

It was a Wednesday night. Suddenly,
Miss Snotnose remembers my seven digits.

This was one angry broad.

I say angry
with a capital "A."

"The audacity you have,
Mr. Evans,

to sign a director I've never even
heard of without consulting me.

It's my property. I'm doing
the picture for slave wages.

I'm living up
to my option agreement.

"Have you forgotten the word
'courtesy?"'

I thought
I was hyperventilating.

"Ali, listen to me. Why don't
you come out to L.A. tomorrow?

Take a look at Hiller's film. If you
don't like it, we'll get someone else.

Trust me.
I think you'll enjoy it."

The next night at 5:00, I pick up Snotnose
MacGraw in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Did it bug me? You bet,
needing this starlet's nod of approval.

I was hoping
she wouldn't like Hiller...

so I could tell her
she was a one-way ticket east.

Her flick's over and out.
Canceled.

At least I'd get my nuts off.

I'm saying to myself, "Uh-uh.

Miss Charming ain't
gonna get to me tonight."

I walked her through my front doors, out and
around my pool, towards my projection room.

Well, what I was thinking didn't
quite work out the way I thought.

She looks up to me,
with her crooked tooth and all, and says,

"I feel like I'm walking through
my own private park in Paris."

Prepared for her bullshit charm,
it hardly made a ripple.

Arthur Hiller's audition was
ready to roll. It never did.

The screen never came down.

Yeah, but Miss Flower Child
Snotnose...

soon got wet... very wet...

Jumping into the egg-shaped pool
totally clothed,

from her shoes to her headband.

Me?
I'm laughin' on the inside.

I'm thinking, "For a bohemian",

she sure as hell became
comfortable very quickly...

behind them so-called
Beverly Hills gates...

with 2,000 rose bushes,

"surrounded by gardenias,
daisies, you name it."

She called herself
a flower child,

and now the flowers were hers.

October 24, 1969,
a Friday morning,

Miss Snotnose is on her way
to becoming Mrs. Evans.

Both of us climb
into our Mercedes two-seater...

and head for the town hall
in Riverside.

Afterward,
we uncorked one magnum of Dom after the other.

Where?
On the courthouse lawn.

And did we get loaded.

We had a long two-day honeymoon
in Palm Springs.

I held Ali tight in my arms.

"I love you, Evans. I love you.

Forever, Evans. Forever."

I whispered back,
"Forever, darling."

"And promise me,
never leave me."

"I promise you, baby, I won't.
Not even for two weeks.

Not for one, kid."

"I'm a hot lady, Evans."

I hugged her and I kissed her.

"Never change, baby.
Never change."

"And never let anything get between us,
Evans. Promise?"

"Promise."

I forgot my key.

Jenny, I... I'm sorry.

Don't.

Love means never having
to say you're sorry.

"Cut!" says Hiller.
"That's it. We've got it.

You did a good job, Ali.
You had me in tears."

She runs over to me,
smothers me with kisses.

"Evans, did you really like it?
The tears, they were for you."

My eyes start to swell.
I actually started crying.

Crying about happiness and feeling
that I'm the luckiest guy in the whole world.

Camelot was ours.

Well, at least I thought it was.

"Evans, there's a big problem."

The board of directors,
they want me out of Paramount.

They can't afford it anymore. It's
turning a cash flow into a cash drought.

They've had it. They want me out,
too, out of show business.

"Get back to what I do best.
Making money, not movies."

Charlie was not prone to making practical jokes,
and this was no joke.

"Fuck 'em, Charlie.
Stall 'em if you can.

With your eyes closed,
you can buy another quarter. I know you can.

Give us one more shot at the table. You can do it,
Charlie."

"Evans, the board's
already decided.

They called an emergency
meeting a week from tomorrow.

The studio will be closed
by the end of next week."

Damn it. This couldn't
be happening to me.

And we were just on a roll.

Then it hit me.

"Give me a half hour,
Charlie, with the board.

Just one half hour,
that's all I need."

"Evans, the one person
they don't wanna see is you.

Are you crazy, Evans?"

"Yeah.
But crazy good, Charlie.

Love Story.

And I'm gonna build
a hand around it."

"All right, Evans. You got a half
hour. That's all, just a half hour.

Be in New York next Monday
at the board meeting.

And buy a one-way ticket,
and don't be late."

Peter Bart asked Mike Nichols
for an afternoon of his time...

to film a presentation reel
for his boss to deliver...

to the board of directors
of Gulf and Western.

Mike directed me in, I'm sure,
the best performance of my life.

"Where were you, Mike, when I needed
you 10 years ago when I was an actor?"

That Sunday at 6:00 p.m.,
I caught the red-eye into New York.

No luggage, but a can
of film under my arm.

This was our
one and only chance.

If the film didn't play,
the board of directors would shut down the studio,

effective immediately.

As I walked into
the Gulf and Western building,

Bluhdorn handed me
my walking papers.

"Well, Evans,
at least we tried."

I pushed them away.

"Hold these for another 20 minutes,
will you, Charlie?"

I walked into the boardroom,
a 100-to-1 shot.

Before me sat 16 of America's
finest non-smilers.

"Gentlemen, I apologize
for not being better dressed,

but when you've got
a one-way ticket and no hotel,

it ain't that easy to keep up
with the style of the room."

Not a laugh.
Not a crack.

Not even a white
of a tooth in sight.

Quickly, I stepped out
of the room...

and handed the projectionist
Paramount's future.

Good afternoon.
My name is Robert Evans,

and I'm senior vice president
of Paramount Pictures.

By the way, uh, this is...
This is not my office.

We tried to shoot
this scene in my office.

We brought the cameras up,
but there was one problem:

My office is too small
to get the cameras in.

I came down to the studio to
borrow a set from The Young Lawyers,

and that's where we are now.

As a matter of fact,
I don't even have offices at the studio anymore.

Last year,
we packed up our gear,

cut down our staff,
tightened our belts,

and moved into small quarters at
little offices in Beverly Hills.

They're good enough for us,
believe me, they are.

These, uh, past few years
have been rough for Hollywood.

We've made a lot of mistakes.

Some people have learned from them,
and some people haven't. We have.

The money we spend is not
gonna be to extravagances.

The money we spend is gonna be
on the screen.

And speaking of the screen, I think, well,
maybe that's the reason we're here today.

I'd like to have the opportunity of
showing you some of our product for 1971.

And right now,
we're approaching Christmas,

and Paramount's Christmas gift
to the world is Love Story.

I think Love Story is gonna
start a new trend in movies.

A trend towards the romantic,
towards love,

towards people,

towards telling a story
about how it feels...

rather than where it's at.

I think Love Story
is going to bring the people...

back into the theater in droves.

I could go on for an hour...

and tell you about 20 or 30 projects
that are in various stages of development...

and bore you with it,
so I won't.

But I wanna bring up one project,
and that's The Godfather.

I bring it up
for several reasons.

One, that it's starting
production next month.

Two, that's it's gonna be
our next Christmas's picture.

And three,
to bring up the similarity...

between The Godfather
and Love Story,

which are the two biggest books
of the last decade.

Paramount owns them both.

But Paramount has more
than just owning them both.

We didn't sit back
in our plush chairs...

and write a check out for a million or a
million-and-a-half dollars for the books,

which happens so often
in our industry.

We developed both
of these books.

If it weren't for Paramount,
the book Love Story would never have been written.

If it weren't for Paramount,
The Godfather would never have been written.

Because we were in there in the beginning,
spurring the writers on, working closely with them,

to make these books
the best sellers that they are,

and what we think will be the
great movies they're going to be.

We at Paramount
don't look at ourselves...

as passive backers of film.

We look at ourselves as a
creative force unto ourself.

And that is why...

Paramount is going to be
paramount in the industry in the '70s.

I promise you that.

Ten minutes later,
Bluhdorn walked in.

"Well, I'm fired, huh?"

"You're a bigger fraud
than I thought."

"You're some showman, Evans. You
really pulled the wool over their eyes."

No kiss on the lips,
but a Bluhdorn hug.

And that's more than an engagement
ring. It was the gold band itself.

Then in typical Bluhdorn
fashion, "Go back to work.

We need pictures.
And you need plenty of mazel."

On December 16, 1970,

Love Story had its world premiere at
the Loew's State Theater in New York.

The lights went down.

Francis Lai's haunting
piano strings started up.

Ryan O'Neal, alone and bereft
in a snowy Central Park,

said in a voice-over...

What can you say about
a 25-year-old girl who died?

Love Story didn't open.

It exploded.

All over the world, boys and girls would
walk out of that theater in love for the night.

Why did it do such business? A guy
would take a different girl every night.

I think there were more pregnancies
over Love Story than any film ever made.

People went back to see it
three, four, five, six times.

It was an aphrodisiac.

It even got raves from the
critics. This I couldn't believe.

Time magazine said it started a "new Hollywood,"
and Ali ended up on its cover.

Me?
I felt like Casanova.

The most extraordinary lady
in the world on my arm,

and in her belly,
a little Evans to be.

Hey, Ali.
What's new?

Yep. No, you can say
that on television now.

Go ahead. Okay. Well,
I'm gonna have a baby.

Isn't that great?

That's... That's beautiful.
Are you excited?

Oh, sure.
It's fabulous.

We're expecting to talk about your
expecting today on Dinah's Place.

I'd have to say no two people
in the entire world...

were happier
than Ali and myself.

We had to pinch ourselves each day
to believe all this was happening to us.

We had our Joshua.
We had ourselves.

Ali and Jackie Kennedy,
at the moment,

were considered the two
most admired women in America.

And me? I'm sure
the luckiest motherfucker.

♪ La, la, la, la, la, la
la, la, la, la ♪

♪ La, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la ♪

♪ La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la ♪

For the first time since I became head of
the studio, I finally had some job security.

Now it's garbage.

We had put together a string of hits,
including Rosemary's Baby,

Harold and Maude,
The Odd Couple,

True Grit and Love Story.

In 1970, we finally reached
the mountaintop.

That air smelled
mighty good up there.

Of all the major studios,
Paramount was now in first place.

It's hard to believe that just four years earlier,
we were in ninth.

It was the beginning of what would
become the golden era of the New Hollywood.

Over the next four years,
we would collect a 144 Oscar nominations,

stay number-one, and go through a streak of hits,
that, to this day, is unprecedented.

♪ Oh, baby
Baby, it's a wild world ♪

♪ I'll always remember you ♪

If I had to pick
our crowning jewel,

I'd say it was a 30-page
treatment to a novel called Mafia,

written by Mario Puzo.

In turning the treatment
into a novel,

Mario asked me if he could
change the name to Godfather.

"Sure, why not?" I never
thought he would finish it anyway.

Well, he finished it. It became
the biggest book of the decade.

And there I was,
holding the Hope diamond.

Euphoria?
Uh-uh, wrong.

Paramount didn't wanna
make the film.

"Sicilian mobster films don't play." That's
what these distribution guys had to say.

"And when you bat zero,
don't make another sucker bet."

I called up Peter Bart at the studio
late that night. "What the fuck do we do?"

Peter shook his head, laughed,
"Evans, we got a problem."

"No, we don't. We've gotta find a solution,
Peter."

It must have been after 2:00
in the morning, and we found it.

Outside of red ink, every one of the
films shared another thing in common:

They were written,
directed and produced,

and usually starred Jews,
not Sicilians.

"There's a thin line, Peter,
between a Jew and a Sicilian.

We're gonna make a picture
that's gonna be Sicilian to the core.

You're gonna smell
the spaghetti."

There was one problem. It's hard to believe,
but in 1969...

there wasn't a single
Italian-American director,

that's with any credibility.

Bart looks at me and he says,
"What about Coppola?"

"Are you nuts?
One thing for sure is, he is."

Bart snaps right back at me,
"Brilliant, though."

"Yeah, yeah,
yeah. That's your esoteric bullshit coming out."

Let's face it,
Bart. This genius has made three pictures.

You're a Big Boy Now... some artsy-fartsy
kind of picture, that did no business.

Finian's Rainbow, which was a top
Broadway musical... He made it into a disaster.

And now he's got The Rain People out there,
which everyone's rained on.

"There's gotta be someone else.
Come on."

There wasn't.

But then there was another
problem. Coppola didn't wanna do it.

This guy couldn't get
a cartoon made in town.

Yet he didn't wanna make
The Godfather.

I gotta give the guy credit.
His convictions were strong.

He didn't want to immortalize the
families that blackened his Italian heritage.

After three long days
of discussion with this guy,

Peter was on the horn.

"Coppola will make the picture,
on one condition:

That it's not a film about
organized gangsters."

"It's not about organized
gangsters? It ain't a musical, Peter.

I told you the guy's nuts. "He has an idea,
Evans. It's not bad.

He wants to make it as a family chronicle,
a metaphor for capitalism in America."

"Fuck him and the horse he rode in
on! He is nuts! Now get him outta here!"

"Bob, I will if you want me to,
but take 10 steps first.

Let's not forget,
he's Italian."

I had less than 48 hours
to make the decision.

Sell it, or shake hands
with the devil.

Coppola was announced as
The Godfather's maestro.

The shooting of The Godfather
should take several months,

and the picture's scheduled
for release...

sometime around Christmas 1971.

So if, in the next few months,
you see some old cars dashing...

around or about New York,

or see a gentleman taking another gentleman
somewhere at the point of a loaded gun,

don't raise a hue and cry,

because it's only
the filming of The Godfather.

But then, New Yorkers don't
raise a hue and cry...

about that
sort of thing anyway, do they?

This is Gene Huebert,
Fifth Avenue and 31st Street.

It was the unveiling of
Francis's cut of The Godfather.

In the theater sat Francis...

with his quadrille of assistants
and editors and ass-kissers.

Plus,
the rest of his production team were all there.

The film was to open
in four months,

Paramount's big
Christmas gift to the world.

The lights went down.
The picture started.

Two hours and six minutes later,
the room began to fill with light.

"Francis, I wanna speak with you,
alone." I was on fire.

And the prince himself took
a half hour to get to my office.

"Thanks for showing, Francis."

"I couldn't help it. All my boys were
telling me how great the picture is.

They tell me
not to touch a frame."

"The picture stinks, Francis.
Got it?"

You shot a great film.
Where the fuck is it?

In your kitchen with your
spaghetti? It sure ain't on the screen.

Where's the family,
the heart, the feeling?

"Is that left in the kitchen too?" Ooh,
did Coppola glare.

"Schmuck. Name me a studio head that
tells a director to make a picture longer?"

"Only a nut like me would.
But you're gonna do it.

You shot a saga, pal,
but you turned in a trailer.

Now, go back
and give me a movie."

The next morning
I told the New York honchos...

that the picture could
not be ready for Christmas.

I didn't need a phone
to hear their screams.

Coppola, of course
he agreed with them.

"You've got it for Christmas.
Don't worry. Evans is crazy.

He wants to change everything.

Hear this.
He wants me to make it longer."

Then I get my orders,
an unalterable.

"Evans, the picture is to be ready for Christmas,
and that is it."

"Fine. I quit."

The year before they would've
booted me out on my ass.

Yeah, but Love Story
saved Paramount,

and I was their fair-haired boy.

When you've only got one shot,

either you pull down
that beautiful brass ring,

or you get them brass knuckles
in the balls.

You've got
no second time around.

To Francis and
the entire company's chagrin,

Bluhdorn backed me
and backed me all the way.

Once again the eastern
seaboard is reminded...

that winter is never over until
Jack Frost gets a hot foot...

that will send him
scurrying on his way.

It was the morning
of The Godfather premiere.

Outside,
New York was suffering...

through the worst
March blizzard of the decade.

I was parked at the Carlyle Hotel
making last-minute preparations...

when Ali came in from the cold.

Against her strong wishes,
I packed her off to Texas...

to star with Steve McQueen
in The Getaway.

Two months had passed, and I hadn't
once bothered to visit her on location.

Quickly we embraced.

Instead of kissing her, I whispered,
"Wait here. I'm expecting a call."

Weeks ago, I had invited
Henry Kissinger to the premiere.

My timing
couldn't have been worse.

The North Vietnamese offensive had just begun,
and, naturally, he begged off.

"Hello. This is Robert Evans. May
I please speak to Dr. Kissinger?"

"No, Dr. Kissinger's with the president,
Mr. Evans. He'll have to call you back."

"Have him call me as soon as possible,
please. This is urgent."

Quicker than a junior agent
at the William Morris Agency,

within 10 minutes,
Kissinger's on the phone.

"Bob, Bob, what's the urgency?"
"The Godfather."

"What?" "Tonight it's for me,
Henry. It's the premiere.

Win or lose, it would be worth
it if I could just walk in with you."

"I have a 7:30 breakfast
I can't get out of, Bob.

I'm leaving
the country tomorrow."

"Henry, you didn't hear me.
I said I need you tonight."

Only later did I learn
that his leaving the country...

was, in actuality,
a secret mission to Moscow.

The 7:30 breakfast was
with the Joint Chief of Staffs...

to resolve the mining
of Haiphong Harbor.

I hung up, quickly called Bluhdorn. "Charlie,
Kissinger's coming."

"Kissinger? Kissinger? Evans,
I love you. I love you."

That was Charlie Bluhdorn.
Not easy, but not bad either.

♪♪

The doors opened.

Enough flashbulbs went off to light
up the entire state of New Jersey.

On one arm, Ali MacGraw,
the ravishing Mrs. Evans.

On the other,
the most charismatic statesman in the world.

Was this really happening to me?

♪ Was doing a thing
called the crocodile rock ♪

♪ While the other kids
were rockin' round the clock ♪

♪ We were hoppin' and boppin'
to the crocodile rock ♪

♪ Well, crocodile rockin'
is something shockin' ♪

When your feet
just can't keep still ♪

♪ I never knew me
a better time ♪

♪ And I guess I never will ♪♪

It was a blast.

I played master of ceremonies,
introducing anyone and everyone.

The screaming,
the fights, the threats...

that never let up since day
one of filming were worth it.

Even Francis Coppola, the director,
whom I had hired over Paramount's objections...

and then personally fired four different times,
came over to hug me,

closing the book on two years
of terrible battles.

Ali, well,
she never looked more radiant.

For the rest of the night,
we danced as one.

Holding her tightly in my arms,

I felt I was
the luckiest man in the world.

Could be
the highest moment of my life.

Was I dreaming it?

Any man who thinks he can
read the mind of a woman...

is a man who knows nothing.

A month later, I was in Paris...

working on the translation
of The Godfather...

into French, Italian,
German and Spanish.

I called up Ali on the set
of The Getaway,

but there
was no answer in her room.

Jumping up in a cold sweat from a bad dream,
I called El Paso again.

No Ali.

"Nah," I said to myself.
"It couldn't be."

Later that afternoon,
I connected.

"Where the hell
have you been, baby?"

"I fell asleep
in my dressing room."

"You're lying, Ali."

"You're with McQueen,
aren't you?"

"That's right."

"Well, expect me
in El Paso tomorrow."

"It's too late,
Evans. You missed the plane a long time ago."

I flew out that night to Texas.

Joshua and his nanny
were at the airport to greet me.

But no Ali.

I checked into a hotel
20 miles out of town.

Holding back my tears,
I played with my son for the next hours.

Ali arrived
at 9:00 that evening.

The last thing she wanted was to
spend the night with me, but she did.

The next evening she didn't
return to my border hideout.

I sped into town,
ran up the stairs to Ali's hotel...

and banged on the door.

"I need time to think, Evans. Please,
please, let me finish the picture...

and get home,
for Josh's sake."

On the plane back to L.A.,
I checked my watch.

How could I have been
so fucking dumb?

It's an hour-and-40-minute
flight. I never once took it,

until infidelity
got me off my ass.

Ali and McQueen had been
having an affair for months.

Was it her fault?
Mm-mmm.

It was mine.

I ignored her one promise...
Never to leave her.

Instead, I buried myself
into The Godfather.

Ali filed for divorce.

A few months later,
she and McQueen got hitched.

Joshua would live with them.

He would only know me now
as a weekend father.

Did it haunt me?

Well, let's just say when a woman leaves you,
it ain't easy.

It never is.

But when that woman leaves you
for the biggest movie star in the world,

well, let's just say
it makes you feel small.

Finally, I turned all my attention
back to my other great love...

The mountain.

Maybe it was my mood,
but the more I thought about it,

the angrier I became.

For the last years,
I had worked night and day for Paramount.

Bluhdorn's golden boy now
wanted some gold of his own.

While I was living rich,
everyone around me was getting rich.

He's right.

Give 'em an inch,
and they step all over you.

My contract's up, but I've
been throwing sevens too long.

And here I am.
I'm still behind the eight ball.

I called on my consigliere and closest friend,
Sidney Korshak,

one of the most feared lawyers
in the country.

"I'll take care of it
and quick," said Korshak.

"You're gonna get gross. I don't care
if it's just one percent on every film."

Korshak may have been known as the myth,
but he was no myth to Charlie.

His proposal was turned down
flatter than Twiggy's chest.

Bluhdorn wasn't smart.
He was brilliant.

He knew my weak link... ego...
And he sure pressed it,

knowing it
far overshadowed my greed.

"Sidney, I want everybody
to get rich, but don't rape me.

Don't rape me."

The real love of Charlie's life was
not family or sex or even business.

It was negotiating.

Charlie would negotiate for anything,
from an airline to a potato.

"I want Bob to make history."

I'm gonna let him make a
picture of his own for five years...

under his own banner
and still run Paramount.

The last person to have that was Darryl
Zanuck 30 years ago. I want him to get rich.

"I'm so proud
of him, Sidney."

Proud.

I would stay on at Paramount
as head of the studio,

and I would get to produce
a picture a year for five years.

But no raise.

- You produced Chinatown.
- Right.

But when we talk about that movie,
we call it Roman Polanski's Chinatown.

Does that make you...
That's a possessive credit...

from a Director's Guild point of view,
which is very unfair.

It's not Roman Polan... It is
Roman Polanski's Chinatown.

It's also Bob Towne's Chinatown.

But more so... and I don't say
this from an egotistical way...

It's Bob Evans's Chinatown.

I was on the picture
for five years, four years,

and Roman was on it
for nine months.

But it says,
"Roman Polanski's Chinatown."

My first independent production had its
origins over a steak dinner with Bob Towne.

Towne unraveled an original
story he was writing.

"It's about how Los Angeles
became a boomtown, Evans."

Incest and water.
It's set in the '30s.

Second-rate shamus gets 86'd
by a mysterious socialite.

"I'm writing it for Nicholson."

I had met Nicholson a few years back,
and we'd become great pals.

"Sounds perfect for Irish.
What's it called?"

"Chinatown."

"Chinatown"? You mean it
takes place in Chinatown?

"No, no, no.

Chinatown is a state of mind."
"Oh, I got it."

I had no idea what the fuck
he was talking about.

Six months later,
Towne delivered his first draft of the script.

Just like the title,
it was pure Chinese.

Was I alone
in my confusion? Uh-uh.

Nobody...

I mean nobody... understood it.

One day I was summoned to a
meeting with Charles Bluhdorn.

"Evans, don't make this
your first picture.

No one at the studio
understands a word of it.

The only place it'll play
is in your projection room."

I'm thinking,
thinking, thinking.

I knew I had Nicholson locked.

And even though
I didn't understand the script,

I knew Towne
was a brilliant writer.

"Sorry, Charlie.
Chinatown's my next picture.

I'm gonna make it."

Well, tonight we're honoring
for Best Motion Picture, Drama.

Chinatown, The Conversation,

Earthquake,
The Godfather Part II,

A Woman Under the lnfluence.

And the winner is...

The winner is...

Chinatown.

Robert Evans
of Paramount Pictures...

will accept the Golden
Globe award for Chinatown.

Chinatown. It wins every
award you could ever think of.

Till this day,
I believe it's considered...

the quintessential
private-eye film of its time.

It's a hell of a way to meet
Catherine Deneuve. I'll tell you that.

It certainly is. Uh...

This is the second award,
and I'm only a small part of it,

that I've won in my life.

Uh, the first one was for the Most
Promising Newcomer of the Year.

It was the Photoplay award
in 1957.

And were they wrong.

The attention the picture got
caused an uproar...

with every creative bit
of talent in the studio.

"Hey, how can Evans
run the studio,

be involved with our pictures
and make his own?"

They were all fucking jealous.

If the picture would've flopped,
it wouldn't have made a difference.

Confrontation time.

Continue running the studio,

with a much
increased deal by the way,

or go out with my own banner
and make films.

It was a tough choice.

But I was just tired of working 18 hours a day,
eight days a week...

to make everyone else rich
but myself.

With that in mind,
I said, "Good-bye, studio.

Hello, producer,"

and went out on my own.

Though I was in my '40s, the entire
drug era had passed me by without notice.

It wasn't my scene.
I rarely ever drank.

For two years,
I had been suffering from a severe pain,

the result
of a sciatic nerve problem.

Lying beside me one night
was a Hollywood princess.

"Is it me?" she asked.
"The pain can't be that bad."

Wearing only her necklace,
she handed it to me.

Unscrewing the top,
she whispered,

"Take a sniff,
a sniff of life."

It was my first experience...

into the world of white.

The seducer had been seduced.

I was working 18 hours a day,
seven days a week with no plans to slow down.

With six pictures in development
and two in production,

I felt invincible.

The first flick to hit
was Marathon Man,

and it went straight
through the roof.

I salute you. To your
health. Hear! Hear!

I followed it up with Black Sunday,
then Urban Cowboy.

Popeye was on its way.

At the age of 50,
I was on my way...

to become the youngest
recipient of the Thalberg Award.

Good-bye, '70s. Hello, '80s.
Here I come.

It would be fair to say that
you live a lot of people's dream.

You're seen in magazines
dating models and movie stars.

Is it as good as it looks?

I must probably lead as much of
a lonely life as any man you know.

I have no free time for myself.

I have no way of really
knowing myself as a person.

I don't like myself as a person.

Bob, I keep reading
in publications...

I keep seeing pictures
of you with gorgeous women.

Are they important
in your life? Women?

Yes, women are
very important in my life.

How... How important?

I haven't had the opportunity of
really taking advantage of life at all.

You say you see pictures
of me with beautiful women.

I don't go out that much. And I don't
go with that many different women.

My life is not to be envied. I envy
many other people, not myself.

I sometimes can go 10 days,
a week without going out with anybody.

I'm a real loner. Don't
you get terrible headaches?

No, no.

Are you
an obsessive record-keeper?

'Cause it said you had albums of
pictures and things. And you have...

I'm not as...

I wish I had...
Was more obsessive about that.

Is that Jack Nicholson? If he knew
that picture was being shown, he'd kill me.

I-I took it... it was taken
in the privacy of a room.

I have to inject here a moment,
because Bobby Evans...

I... We dated and we had
a great time together.

I also dated him.
What a sweetheart.

Is there anybody on the panel
who didn't date Bobby Evans?

I didn't date him. He
was very busy in the '50s.

On May 2, 1980,

I got a call from an
associate of mine in New York.

A woman we knew was offering
to sell us pharmaceutical cocaine...

at bargain-basement prices.

Pharmaceutical cocaine
was mythical,

manufactured by only one
company in America... Merck.

So mythical was its allure...

that it became the D.E.A.'s most
effective bait to entrap schmuck buyers.

Twenty-four hours later,
my associate was on the horn.

"What do I tell her?
She's called twice."

Me being the gambler,
and maybe the fool,

said, "Hell, let's buy it."

The deal was
to go down on Friday.

I waited by the phone all day.
No call.

At 7:45 that evening, I was going out
the door when my houseman hailed me.

It was my associate.

"Bob, Mike and I
have been arrested.

We've been set up by the D.E.A."

"Arrested?
What are you talking about?"

"Don't worry. Nothing is gonna
go wrong. It'll all be taken care of.

You have nothing to worry about.
Your name was not mentioned."

It was the biggest mistake
of my life.

How could I have been
so fucking dumb?

Was Bluhdorn angry?

Foaming at the mouth.

"I'll never
forgive you, Evans."

He never did.

Gone now was
the sacred embrace of Bluhdorn,

never to return again.

Paramount, the company
I saved from the graveyard,

gave a terse statement to the
press concerning my new infamy.

"Evans is not
an employee of Paramount...

and has not been an employee
of Paramount for years.

He is an independent contractor
producing pictures for us."

May 2, 1980.

What a difference a day makes.

Judge Broderick's dictate...

was to produce
a 30-second anti-drug spot.

Well, I did
a little more than that.

I produced a series
of weeklong specials for NBC...

entitled Get High on Yourself.

It was a happening.

All my friends showed,
and it became known as the Woodstock of the '80s.

♪ You can be somebody ♪

♪ With your
own point of view ♪

♪ Just by acting yourself ♪

♪ In whatever you do ♪

♪ You can be somebody ♪

♪ 'Cause the choice
is up to you ♪

♪ By making up
your own mind ♪

♪ Doing things your own way ♪

♪ Setting up your own style ♪

♪ Being yourself ♪

♪ Being yourself ♪

♪ Being yourself ♪

I've never been as high
on myself as I am now.

It must have been
a month and a half ago.

I had a hundred people here,
and my kid was here, and I ran the commercials.

And, when it was over,
he came over to me...

and said,
"I'm so proud of you, Daddy."

The first time he's ever said
it. "I'm so proud of you, Daddy.

Can I sleep
in your bed tonight?"

Aw.
If I get nothing more out of it... nothing...

I've been really paid my remuneration
for whatever I've done. That's worth years.

Bob, aside from Get High on Yourself,
what can we look for from Bob Evans?

What are your future projects?

I have The Cotton Club,
which I was supposed to start in October.

I'm pushing it back to June.
It's a project I love.

Ain't as important as Get High on Yourself,
though.

♪ Being yourself ♪♪
Yeah!

Paramount had no interest in my next picture,
The Cotton Club.

So in May of '82, I flew
to the Cannes Film Festival...

to secure independent financing.

Sylvester Stallone, at the time the biggest
star in the world, had agreed to play the lead,

and I was there to announce it.

I was supposed to meet 400 distributors
on a Monday morning at 9:00 a.m...

at breakfast
at the Hotel Du Cap.

I get a call at 2:00 in the
morning, that Monday morning...

from... "Hello, Bob.
This is Sly."

And I say, "Yeah, Sly?"

"You know, Bob,
I don't think I wanna do the picture."

"I don't quite understand.
I mean, we have a contract."

"You don't understand, Bob.
I don't like the script."

"You worked on it.

What is it,
Sly?" "I'm not getting paid enough money for it."

To make
a very long story short...

and a very long conversation
rather bitter... short...

He backed away.

Now,
here I have 400 of the top buyers in the world,

and I have no star,
and I have a half a script.

I said, "Ladies and gentlemen,
I'm gonna show you a poster.

But when I show you this poster,
I wanna tell you...

that the film will not be
any better than the poster.

So if you don't like the poster,
please don't buy the film."

And I showed... I went... I
took... unraveled the poster,

which I had worked on for
eight months with two artists,

and I said,
"This is the poster."

And I passed it around,
and they all looked at it.

And it says the whole story.

"Its Violence
Startled the World."

No. "Its Violence
Startled the Nation,

and its Music
Startled the World."

They all looked at the poster. I said,
"That's the picture, ladies and gentlemen."

So one fella from Switzerland says,
"Who's gonna star in the film?"

I said, "What's your name?"
He said, "Mr. Schmidt."

I said, "Mr. Schmidt, I won't
let you have the picture."

♪♪

On August 28, 1983,
principal photography commenced.

Francis offered
to direct the film.

How could I refuse?

Francis directing it,
Mario writing it, me producing it.

What a shot of touching magic.

Hey, we didn't do too bad
on The Godfather, did we?

Was I wrong.

The production was a disaster.

Over-budget, over-schedule.

And me? I was barred from
the set by the prince himself.

It was the hottest movie
drama in Los Angeles today,

and it took place in a
downtown federal courtroom.

The legal battle was over who would
control production of the film Cotton Club.

♪♪

...been the subject of intense
interest and backstairs gossip.

The Cotton Club,
a multimillion-dollar...

production of Robert Evans
and Francis Ford Coppola...

has become the subject
of a vicious...

You were saying that Evans would
second-guess you if he was back in command.

Evans... that's his middle name.
That's what he does, all these years.

Do you think the picture will be a
success despite all of these problems?

Francis's work on it is brilliant,
and I hope we'll be working together.

We fought before many times,
only it wasn't in court.

I just hope we have the same luck
as we had on The Godfather together.

Despite what's expected
to be a lengthy court battle,

the film is expected to open in
theaters sometime in December.

The Cotton Club
opened later that month.

While some of the critics praised the film,
others just didn't get it.

Neither did the audiences.

The picture quickly faded away,

thus ending
the first half of the '80s...

The good half.

I had no idea what lay ahead.

Two days ago,
a badly decomposed body...

was found in this dry riverbed
in Copco Canyon near Gorman...

in northern Los Angeles county.

An autopsy indicated the victim
died of a single gunshot wound.

A beekeeper, Glen Fisher,
made a grisly discovery.

I crossed through a dry wash,
went around a bush,

and around the bush,
there was a hand sticking up,

and there was
a body laying there.

The body found in the Gorman
area this past Friday...

has positively been
identified as Mr. Roy Radin.

It was midnight
when the phone rang.

A bit pissed,
I picked up the phone. "Yeah?"

It was my attorney,
Robert Shapiro.

"Roy Radin is dead."

I laid there in shock,
totally stunned.

I met Roy Radin
a few months earlier...

through a mutual acquaintance
named Laney Jacobs.

Radin and I met and discussed
forming a production company.

The Cotton Club might have been
one of the films under the banner.

We shook hands, but nothing
ever really came of it.

"What does that have to do with
me?" "Nothing and everything."

Shapiro told me that the
police would be calling,

and they'd want to talk to me.

Both of us would sit down with
them while I told them everything...

that I had remembered
about Roy Radin.

Laney Jacobs introduced
Evans to Roy Radin.

For the next six years,

the name Robert Evans
is making headlines again.

No, I wasn't buying Warner Bros.

This time I was buying infamy.

The Cotton Club
murder case began...

Roy Radin was a threat...

Doors closed on me quietly.

Calls made were not returned.

Though I was still ensconced in
the primo offices at Paramount,

I may as well
have been a shadow.

Finally, in the spring of '89,

after six long years
of innuendos on my character,

the Roy Radin case
went to trial.

Laney Jacobs, the woman
who introduced me to Radin,

was tried for his murder.

The prosecutor outlined
a case of money and drugs.

The evidence is gonna show
in this trial...

that this woman here,
Laney Greenberger, had two problems...

with a man
by the name of Roy Radin.

He told the jury...

that Laney had asked Radin
for a finder's fee...

for introducing him to myself.

When Radin refused to pay it,
Laney became irate.

And then two weeks before his murder,
Laney, who was a part-time coke dealer...

suspected Radin of stealing a
large amount of cocaine from her.

At this point,
Laney decided to kill him.

After getting into her
chauffeur-driven limousine with her,

Mr. Radin was never
seen alive again.

Jacobs and her accomplices were
convicted for the murder of Roy Radin.

Me? Well, I wasn't
even a suspect.

I was a tangential character
in the proceedings, at best.

However,
the name Evans gets ink.

If you live by the sword,
know damn well you can die by it.

And many a decade, the sword
treated me real well.

Maybe too well.

Popeye and Urban Cowboy
hit the screens in 1980.

Now, seven years later,

the only product Evans was delivering
to the mountain of Paramount...

was embarrassment.

Ending whatever I had left
of a legacy to be,

I was paid a rare visit
by Richard Zimbert,

the head honcho
of business affairs.

He walked into my office,
not a happy camper.

"We go back too long, Evans.

And this is not me talking.
It's orders. I can't help it.

Do you want the truth?"

Our eyes met.
I knew what he was going to say.

"No, but I got
to hear it, Dick. Shoot."

"Bob, there's not
one person at Paramount...

that wants
to do business with you."

"Dick, the only surprise is that
it's taken you this long to tell me.

I suppose
when it's over, it's over."

It was hard for him
to say the next words.

"Your office, Bob.
We need a date."

"Is 90 days okay, Dick?"

"Yeah. Sure.
If want more, take more."

"No. Ninety days will be fine."

Once, king of the mountain.

Now I was not even
allowed to climb it.

My 20-year home
had been pulled from under me.

From behind the gates
of Paramount,

I was now
behind the gates of Woodland.

For an entire decade, my kid stood
watching his father's life fall to shambles.

Once I was a king,
his mother told him. Hmph.

My character, persona,
and professional abilities were now lost.

Each month, below the belt,
punches were hitting me harder and harder...

from all directions.

The effects of public disgrace,
the effects of drugs...

and the effects of continued failure,
never before experienced,

all but shriveled me
into obscurity.

So deep was my depression...

that I wanted to get into a
car and drive south one way.

Finally,
I'd rid myself of the last bastion of my dignity.

I sold my Woodland home to
a wealthy French industrialist.

The effect was that I all
but lost the will to function.

Nightmares were telling me
I would never leave there alive.

Then lightning struck.
Bad lightning.

I had nowhere to turn.

Fearing the worst, suicide,

I looked for protection.

I committed myself to the Scripps
Memorial Hospital, a loony bin.

I was put behind bars and
stripped of all my belongings.

The claustrophobia alone shot my
blood pressure up over the 200 mark.

Sure as hell not wanting
a D.O.A. on their hands,

the nurses kept shoving sedatives down my throat,
trying to calm me.

Horrible mistake,
with no way out.

Is it safe?

I had to take control of the never-ending
bad dream that my life had become.

Never having been
psychiatrically orientated,

I knew that action, not therapy,
was my only shot at survival.

Take your time.
Tell me.

That night I snuck out
of my cell-like room...

and found my way
to a phone booth in the ward.

I called my limo driver,
John Paul, collect.

"John Paul,
meet me tomorrow at noon on the dot and wait.

It may be an hour,
a day, a week. I don't care.

Keep your motor running.
Got it?"

The next morning when all
the attendants were busy,

I made my dash,
and I made the elevator as it closed behind me.

"I made it. I made it,"
I thought to myself.

As soon as I hit the bottom floor,
the door opened.

There were two goons
waiting for me.

You're a very nosy fella,
kitty cat, huh?

You know what happens
to nosy fellas?

Huh? No?
Wanna guess?

Huh? No? Okay.
They lose their noses.

I made my dash.

The two goons were right behind. A
hundred yards away, my car was waiting.

I had to make the hundred yards
before they got me.

I was older than the two of them put together,
but they lacked one thing: heart.

I breathlessly
made it into the car,

and slammed the door as I
grabbed for a tiny bottle of J&B.

"Back to Woodland,"
I said to John Paul.

My limo was pulling
into the gates...

of my once-owned
Woodland sanctuary.

What had been my Garden of Eden
for close to a quarter of a century...

was mine no more.

Even more painful was that I
was now a tenant in my own home,

paying $25,000 a month
for the privilege of living there.

Could I afford it?

Not by a long shot.

I knew that getting my home,
my roots of 25 years, back...

was vital to my survival.

There was a big problem.

The new owner,
a wealthy French industrialist named Tony Murray,

had no intention
of selling it back.

Without asking, Jack Nicholson
did a Henry Kissinger.

He flew to Monte Carlo and begged
Tony to sell me back my home.

Tony was shocked that Jack
would fly halfway around the world...

to plead on my behalf...

for what he considered
just a piece of real estate.

Wherever Tony went that summer,
he'd tell the story.

"Imagine Jack Nicholson
on his knees to me.

These film people,
they're all crazy."

The impact of Jack's plea,
however, caused Tony to waiver.

He got me back my home.
Thanks, pal.

A year passed.

It was close to midnight
on a Tuesday evening.

The phone kept ringing and
awakening me out of a deep sleep.

I looked at the clock,
and it was only 11:00.

"Should I pick it up? Nah.

I know I didn't win the lottery.

Hey, maybe it's the broad I
slipped my number to last night.

Hey, it's not too late.
I'm up. I hope it's her."

Disguising my voice to protect
me from bad news or bad company,

I Englished it.

"Evans residence." Well,
I was wrong again. It wasn't the broad.

But I sure won
the fucking lottery.

It was Stanley Jaffe
on the phone,

and he was just made
head of Paramount.

I'd given Stanley his
first big gig back in 1967...

on Goodbye, Columbus.

"I called to tell you one thing.

From this day on, the life of Robert
Evans is going to be a better one.

You're way overdue, kid.
Now, sleep well."

Stanley Jaffe's loyalty to me...

was such that it
gave me back my dignity.

Back behind the gates
of Paramount I went...

and back to my old offices,
the best on the lot.

Do you believe in miracles?
Well, I do now.

I don't understand it,
this world of fickle flicks.

It's been 30 years now,
and I'm still here,

still standing
behind them 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.

I've either worked with them, fought with them,
hired them, fired them, laughed with them,

cried with them, figuratively fucked by 'em,
literally fucked 'em.

It's been one hell of a ride.

Where is everyone?
Dead? Most.

Wealthy? Some.
Destitute? Yeah. Many.

Retired? I don't know.
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.

Got to keep standing,
stay in the picture.

My life today?

More volatile than ever.

This last year alone I've been shot down,
bloodied, trampled,

accused, threatened, disgraced,
betrayed, scandalized, maligned.

Tough? You bet your ass it is.

But I ain't complaining.
Nothing comes easy.

The last question is:

Is it truly worth it?

Sure. Know why?
I love what I do,

and very few people do.

When you think that most of
your work that you do in life,

most of people's lives
are spent on their endeavors,

and very few people really enjoy what they do,
and I love what I do.

So yeah. It's worth it.
Damn right it's worth it.

♪ Gone is the romance ♪

♪ That was so divine ♪

♪ 'Tis broken ♪

♪ And cannot ♪

♪ Be mended ♪

♪ You must go your way ♪

Okay. 1996.

Robert Evans 20 years from now.

Are we rolling? We're
rolling. Why didn't you tell me?

I don't know if we're
rolling. We're rolling.

Thank you very much.

My fellow Americans,
I'm coming to you tonight,

because I am contemplating
ending my life.

For many years,
as being head of Paramount studios...

and then becoming
an independent producer...

and, uh, uh, suffering
a terrible disaster...

with my first independent
ven-ven-ven, uh... venture.

Uh... uh... uh...

Marathon in Drag, something.
I can't remember. 20 years ago.

Anyways, what I would like to do
is ask you... all over the country...

If you have a script and it's a love story,
I'll do it.

I don't care if it's in drag.

It could be a monkey
fucking an elephant.

If it's a good script,
I'll do it. As promised. You send it to me.

And I just wanna say that
I would talk more to you.

I don't have the strength to
talk. I'm in the hospital now.

There's a Sony tape recorder,
and I'm lying here.

This is a maternity ward.

They claim I just had a baby.
I never knew I had a vagina.

There's a vagina down there.
It came as a shock to me.

But I just talked to
my wife Sue Mengers,

and she says,
didn't I know she had a cock all the time.

I never knew it.
I never knew it.

I give you my word.

She came in yesterday and
showed it. It was a terrific cock.

It was one of the
biggest I ever saw.

Wait a minute. Is
that phone for me?

I'm recording.
I can't talk.

Yeah, what is it?
Who? Joyce Haber?

Yeah, I remember.
That was 20 years ago.

She died.
I can't come to the funeral.

She hasn't written anything
of mine for 20 years.

I'm sorry.
I'm too busy.

Send her something. I don't
know. Whatever she eats. Candy.

Oh, she's dead now?

If she's dead,
what do you want me to see her for?

I'm sorry. No. I... I... Just
get it done immediately.

I got to go. Thanks.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, Sue?
How are you?

My wife... Mrs. Mengers,
one of the top agents in the town...

20 years ago.

Today,
the business is terrible. She's in Las Vegas.

She's a croupier at the Dunes.

At night she doubles as a dune.

She's a dune.
People go see her.

Sue Mengers is a dune.
She's a dune.

She's a good dune, though.
The best dune...

She's the best dune
I ever fucked.

I'm sorry, Sue.
No, I can't.

I have to go back in
my closet and clean it.

I haven't cleaned my
closet in a long time.

I don't know why
they put me in a closet.

They said I'd understand.

But I'm coming out
of the closet very soon.

Yes,
Sue. The delivery was fine. It hurt a little.

But it was wonderful.
They shaved me.

I can't talk. I got
to go see dailies.

I wanna see dailies
of my delivery.

I wanna see myself giving birth.

A big close-up of my
cunt. It was terrific.

All right, I'll see you.
Take care.

Anyways,
I wanna thank you very much for listening.

And I wanna say that I
wish all of you a healthy life,

because my life is over.

And I'm just gonna
ask one favor.

President Warren Beatty has
asked me to ask your vote again,

and I ask you to do it,
just for me.

Because he has some terrible
scandal on me I don't want to get out.

I'm afraid he's gonna tell it,

and it's very
embarrassing to me.

Please vote for Warren Beatty
for a second term as president.

I wish you a good evening,

and, uh... uh... uh...

♪ What'll I do ♪

♪ When I ♪

♪ Am wondering who ♪

♪ Is kissing you ♪

♪ What'll I do ♪

♪ What'll I do ♪

♪ With just ♪

♪ A photograph ♪

♪ To tell my troubles ♪

♪ To ♪

♪ When I'm alone ♪

♪ With only dreams ♪

♪ Of you ♪

♪ That won't ♪

♪ Come true ♪

♪ What'll I do ♪♪