MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT(but not necessarily): Robert Evans R...

OT(but not necessarily): Robert Evans RIP

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
8 replies | jump to latest

Robert Evans passed away this week, at the age of 89, which is pretty impressive for a guy who had a major coke problem in the 70s and 80s. But y'know, after that flurry of young drug deaths in the 70's(Jim, Janis, Jimi)...its like drug fanciers learned how NOT to die from them. Keith Richards, James Taylor, and Jimmy Buffett are still going strong.

And Evans had some strokes, too.

And bankruptcies. And a conviction for cocaine SALES. And a totally unfair linkage to a murder called "The Cotton Club murder" because Evans produced(with Francis "The Godfather" Coppola directing), that movie and a guy who was going to invest in it got killed.

Plus seven wives. Ali MacGraw left him for Steve McQueen(Evans is perhaps the only guy in Hollywood on record as really HATING McQueen; who tried to get custody of Evans son with Ali, and ended up facing a "dossier" of mysterious info that backed McQueen off.)

I always thought that Evans weirdest marriage was to Phyllis George, a clean-cut girl next door TV star and ex-Miss America. It was like Caligula and Pollyanna.

---

Evan's really big contribution to Hollywood is being given -- at a young age and with no experience -- a studio to run: Paramount. And Evans gets credit for greenlighting:

Rosemary's Baby
The Odd Couple
True Grit
Goodbye Columbus
Love Story
Harold and Maude
The Godfather

...and then, Evans was allowed to STAY a studio chief but also to produce:

Chinatown.

What a run.

Evans contended that Chinatown lost all but one of its 1974 Oscars(Original Screenplay) because Hollywood hated his "deal"(studio chief/producer.) Maybe. Personally I liked Chinatown a lot more than Godfather II. But they were BOTH damn good, yes? 1974. That's what I'm talking about.

I note this:

Taking a page from Hitchcock, Evans produced as his first producer films three THRILLERS in a row;

Chinatown(my favorite film of 1974)
Marathon Man(NOT my favorite film of 1976, but not far down the list.)
Black Sunday(my favorite film of 1977)

So, Evans is near and dear to my heart for THOSE three alone.

Evans claimed he forced Coppola to make The Godfather longer...and better. And I believe it. Because Evans was banned from Godfather II, and its slower and more self-indulgent. And then came Apocalyspe Now.

Anyway, that Great Big Bunch of Movies (and a few misfires, like The Great Gatsby) give Robert Evans a place in history.

As does his autobio "The Kid Stays in the Picture" which I found hilarious because every body he quotes -- Nicholson, Beatty, Hoffman -- all sound like EVANS. They're all saying "I'm on empty. I need green bad" (they're broke before they are stars) -- and that's EVANs phrase.

I like this story: a vacant and mean-looking beauty of the 70's was named Lois Chiles. Like Cybill Shepard, she seemed born to play beyotches. (She's "the other woman" in The Way We Were.")

Well, after some bedroom time, Evans promised her a role in The Great Gatsby and he got her the second female lead -- but not Daisy, the lead(Mia Farrow got that.) Chiles screamed at him "But I wanted DAISY" and he kicked her out. (She kept her role.)

True? Well there's this famous Evans quote: "There's your side, my side, and the truth. And nobody's lying."

Dustin Hoffman famously played the mumbling, deep voiced Evans(under another name) in Wag the Dog and got an Oscar nom for it.

So...what more can I say about Robert Evans?

Well, I got to hang out with him for about an hour one day in the 70's.

I"ve told this story before, but its relevant today, so one more time:

In the 70's I scoured LA for "seminars" (rather like "Actors Studio" gigs) where famous stars and directors would come and talk and we would ask questions, and that's all that happened.

Well, one of them was taught by a music mogul named ...David Geffen. He's superrich now, and makes movies sometimes(or did) but he was hot enough then to bring in these guys, once a week , for an hour to talk with us:

Robert Evans(producer of Chinatown)
Robert Towne(writer of Chinatown)
Jack Nichoslon(star of Chinatown)

so I guess you could say this was my "Chinatown" class. Of course, Jack was the biggest deal. It was 1976, he had just won his Oscar for Cuckoo's Nest and his movie with Brando ("The Missouri Breaks") was coming out, and during the Q/A somebody asked him about Missouri Breaks and he said "I don't think its that good," and some student reporter put that in a college newspaper and Geffen went NUTS. Screamed at all of us the next week and said:

"Well, after one of you bums ratted out Nicholson, you lost today's speaker, who would have been ...Warren Beatty."

(I said to my friend: "Whew, I'm glad we got Nicholson instead!")

Heady times.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As for Robert Evans the day he came to the Geffen seminar, he WAS a mumbler, he WAS tan, he was cool but very, very eccentric that day. About all I remember is how he talked about replacing the first "Chinatown" score with Jerry Goldsmith's classic score. Evans said "I think that saved the movie."

He may have been right.

And oh, during the Q/A, I asked Nicholson how he prepared for the profane Navy dramedy, "The Last Detail." He told me(and US) he had an uncle in the Coast Guard and based the Navy guy on HIM. So that's my chat with Jack Nicholson.

Ah, but wait...the possible Hitchcock connection(s):

ONE: In his book "The Kid Stays in the Picture," Evans is photographed in the 70's standing with Hitchcock, Bob Hope and 100-year old Adolph Zukor(at the latter's 100th birthday party. You don't see THAT every day.)

TWO: Hitchcock got some of his biggest hits at Paramount, and left for Universal after the biggest of them(Psycho.) The Universal years are a slow fade from The Birds through Topaz(with Frenzy as a comeback.)

But..what if Hitch had stayed at Paramount? Eventually (1967?) Evans would have run the studio and maybe...just maybe...kept Hitchcock around. To make the projects Universal vetoed, like Mary Rose and The First Frenzy(set in NYC.)

On the other hand, Evans fired Otto Preminger off the Paramount lot with glee, but he felt that Preminger was a real BLANK. (fill in the blank.)

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

About all I remember is how he talked about replacing the first "Chinatown" score with Jerry Goldsmith's classic score. Evans said "I think that saved the movie."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

About all I remember is how he talked about replacing the first "Chinatown" score with Jerry Goldsmith's classic score. Evans said "I think that saved the movie."
How Goldsmith was able to come up with one of greatest scores in Hollywood history in under a week is.... a miracle.

---

Yes, I think so. I have ALWAYS been worshipful of the great movie musical composers because.. I simply can't fathom the talent involved in doing what they do. Great as he was, I can at least "picture" how Hitchcock set up his camera -- low angle or high angle -- to get his great shots in Psycho. But how Herrmann DECIDED what the music would be, scene to scene, shot to shot in Psycho? The credit music? The three notes of madness at the end? The music for Lila's climb up the hill to the house? The music for Arbogast's final walk from his car to the motel? Herrmann had to first imagine the music, then WRITE IT, then CONDUCT IT.

Meanwhile, Goldsmith "solved" Chinatown with ITS opening credit music -- a "scary" harpsichord strum under the Paramount mountain("this is a thriller") , and then credit music which is, mainly, heart-wrenchingly, romantically SAD. Almost tearjerker sad...but with a soulful saxophone to suggest a private eye in the 30's.)

Of course, Goldsmith was one of the hardest working musical composers of the 60's through the 90's; a brand name of quality: lush, full, muscular. And so, so sad when necessary(Chinatown, The Sand Pebbles, Lonely are The Brave.) He did Westerns(Lonely are the Brave, Rio Conchos, Bandolero), epics(The Sand Pebbles, Patton.), horror(The Omen, Psycho II), thrillers(The Boys from Brazil, Capricorn One) and, near the end, the sharp and smart score for LA Confidential, which incorporated some of his Western themes into a Chinatown-inspired cop movie about "the new West."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

How Goldsmith was able to come up with one of greatest scores in Hollywood history in under a week is.... a miracle. In general the movie brat directors of the '70s were *incredibly* lucky that they had available to them an older generation of film composers who were complete masters by the '70s, ready to kick free, and capable of wonders almost on demand: Williams, Morricone, Goldsmith, Herrmann, Schifrin, E. Bernstein.

---

When you think about how much a great musical score "completes" a movie (Psycho and Vertigo aren't Psycho and Vertigo without Herrmann), tyros like DePalma and Scorsese scored right out of the box with Herrmann on Sisters, Obsession, and Taxi Driver. Their movies SOUNDED like Hitchcock movies.

John Williams rather fascinates me because that's his music on "potboilers" like The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno, but soon Spielberg(Jaws) and Lucas(Star Wars) would make a giant out of him (and he scored the final Hitchcock movie, Family Plot, and made THAT cheapjack knockoff of Hitchcock past into something bigger than it was.)

This one always tickled me: the last person to score Animal House would be, you'd think, Elmer Bernstein(The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, To Kill a Mockinbird.) But young director John Landis knew Bernstein's son and convinced Bernstein to score the crazy (and very smart) frat comedy. Bernstein scored Animal House with great, funny pomp and circumstance) and...next thing you know..Bernstein is a COMEDY musical composer(Stripes, Ghostbusters.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

BTW, Lois Chiles is mostly known to me as the main Bond-gal, Holly Goodhead (ahem), in the silly but very successful Moonraker (1979).

---

Ah, yes. Her most famous role. I also believe that she got a recurring role on Dallas.

Men and women who enter the movie business "make their mark," for better or worse. Lois Chiles WAS beautiful, but she was blank-faced and cold. Maybe she was really, really nice, but she didn't project it on screen. And Robert Evans contended she wasn't.

---

She didn't make much of an impression. I remember thinking that she was 'no Barbara Bach'. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), in which Bach had starred as a Russian agent with a normal, non-smutty name, was my only prior Bond experience at the time, and almost everything about Moonraker seemed to me a downgrade from that.

---

I've literally grown up on the Bond movies. I was old enough to see Dr. No first run in 1962 with my parents(who must have been a bit uncomfortable letting me) and I've tracked them ever since, seen all of them as if "from duty"(that's why they keep getting made.) I think folks forget there was a six year gap between License to Kill (1989) with Timothy Dalton and Goldeneye(with Pierce Brosnan); for awhile there, it looked like the series was over. But Brosnan passed off to Craig, and they are still being made and will likely...alas...OUTLIVE me. That's OK.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Anyway, one can "rank" the Bonds much as one ranks the Hitchcocks, the QTs, and the Scorseses, and Moonraker was an anomoly: it made a lot of money but it was AWFUL. Way too overproduced and yet way too "goofy" -- this was the one where a bad guy named "Jaws"(already derivative enough) got a giant girlfriend who looked like Pippi Longstocking...and memories of Connery's Bond as an amoral, rather sadistic sexual warrior were thrown overboard.

Moonraker was so poorly reviewed that the producers "stripped down" Bond for the next one: For Your Eyes Only, which was so minimal that it looked like a mid-budget B Kung Fu movie(with , hands down, the least "big" finale to any Bond movie.)

I guess it fit that Lois Chiles was the Moonraker Bond Girl. Mediocre. Except for That Name.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Here, to capture the "tone" of Robert Evans's autobio, and his personality, are the paragraphs about Lois Chiles and The Great Gatsby:

BEGIN:

'Lois, I've got a Merry Christmas for you. Get your ass up here, real quick!"
She was at the Carlyle in twenty minutes. If ever I felt like a mogul, it was then.
"You've got the part of Jordan, Lois. Congratulations."
She pulled away as I bent over to kiss her.
Her voice was one I'd never heard before. "JORDAN. You're telling me that I'm JORDAN? I want DAISY, do you hear me? DAISY!!"
From seductress to witch in one blink. Shocked? Yeah.
"Thanks, kid, you just put me through college. You've got the part. You earned it." I went to the door, opened it. "Now get the F--k out!"
She didn't get it. "But we're leaving for Acapulco tomorrow!"
Cutting her off with the warmth of an iceberg. "You're lucky the elevator's near. Now listen real close. I'm a memory. Got it? If we're in the same room, you don't see me. Got it! Now get the F out of my life. Got it!"

END

I'll note that a blurb on "The Kid Stays in the Picture" from Variety says: "The best Hollywood memoir I've ever read."

Heh.

Look, I don't know how much -- if any -- of Evans' story about dumping Lois Chiles is true, but the "texture" of his prose is downright funny when not being profoundly...beyond sexist?

Here's Chiles supposedly saying "I want DAISY, you hear me?" like something out of a 30's melodrama.

Here's Evans(as often in the book) talking somewhere between Damon Runyon and a cheap gangster("Get it? Got it!") and verbally slapping down this "witchy woman" who dared diss the role he got her. And he uses the "f word" on her a lot.

I dunno, maybe I DO believe it, and its a reminder that great movies like The Godfather and Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby were made by....real jerks. EVIL jerks. Sexist, sexually predatory jerks(male AND female, as the Lois Chiles tale tells us, maybe.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hitchcock dealt with a lot of these evil jerks himself I think the key to his success(at least partially) may have been his described "50 years of celibacy" in which a platonic love for wife Alma kept Hitch "off the Hollywood playing fields" where sex and drugs were the order of the day. (Though Hitch drank.)

There was that bizarre Tippi business near the end, but none of it sounds "consummated" and Tippi proved pretty damn weird herself, making that movie with REAL wild lions and tigers attacking her family and her for REAL on film.

Its amusing, that photo in "The Kid Stays in the Picture" where Hitchcock, Bob Hope and Evans all stand together. Evans may LOOK like the odd man out...but its really Hitchcock who is. Because Bob Hope was quite the ladies man, too.

Anyway, the page by page meaness, between men and men, between men and women, between EVERYBODY in Robert Evans autobio are a reminder that if you want to make it in Hollywood you better be pretty talented OR pretty tough and mean. Maybe both.