Robert Evans: Glory Days

Q: Lady Sings the Blues.

A: Berry Gordy and I reedited the entire film. It was a success but it didn't do as much business as it should have. Diana Ross was nominated for an Academy Award. I'm very proud of that film. And it had all to do with me because no one wanted to make it. They didn't want to make a black picture.

Q: True Grit.

A: No one wanted to see John Wayne with a patch over his eye, but Hal Wallis and I said we've got to make this picture. Duke and I were very friendly. He won the Academy Award for it.

Q: Catch-22.

A: I thought that was brilliant, but it was too sophisticated.

Q: On Chinatown, Faye Dunaway credits you with changing the music for her love scene with Jack Nicholson, which she claims made all the difference.

A: It did.

Q: Everyone disagreed on the ending: Robert Towne thought John Huston's character should be killed, while you and Roman wanted Faye Dunaway killed. Would the picture have been as memorable if Towne had got his way?

A: Never! Never!

Q: Is Towne still angry about it?

A: Of course.

Q: And what about John Huston? Did you know him before?

A: I spent some time with John. I liked him. I knew him through Toots as well, Anjelica. John was wonderful on that film.

Q: Is it true that Blake Edwards challenged you to a fight during the production of Darling Lili?

A: Yeah. And I'd love to have fought him, too. When people challenge you to a fight they don't throw the punch.

Q: Have you been in many physical fights?

A: A lot. I fought in the Golden Gloves. I'm a rough guy. I'm afraid of nothing. I'm not afraid of being killed.

Q: Doesn't everyone have some fear?

A: I don't want to have a slow death--that's my only fear. I've had a gun put in my mouth, a gun put at my temple. I can tell you I've had a gun put on me five different times to talk and not once have I ever talked. The last couple of times it hasn't bothered me because I was too well-known for them to have blown me away.

Q: After the success last year of The Silence of the Lambs, did you think back to Black Sunday, which was Thomas Harris's first novel?

A: Sure. Black Sunday was the biggest disappointment of any picture I ever had. It cost me $6 million. I was offered that for my points. When it was shown to the exhibitors, they stood up and applauded like no other picture I've ever been involved with. I thought I had a winner. And I had 37 points of it. Ended up not making enough money to make a phone call.

Q: Marathon Man and Black Sunday were made at the same time. Was there bad blood between Dustin Hoffman and John Schlesinger during Marathon Man?

A: Terrible. They never talked. John Schlesinger did not want Dustin Hoffman in the film. He thought he was too old. The reason he really didn't want him was six years earlier Dustin had to screen-test for Midnight Cowboy and was paid $60,000, and now he was making $2 million. Dustin is a very difficult actor to work with.

Q: Of all the movies we've just named, what's the biggest chance you took?

A: It wasn't a movie--I took a big chance becoming the head of the studio when I had never produced a film. I was the laughingstock of the whole city. I was called Bluhdorn's Folly. They thought I'd last three days. Variety said I'd be fired at the end of the month. I called Bluhdorn once after I had read that I was being let go and I got him out of a meeting to ask if I was being fired. "Listen carefully, Evans," he said. "As long as I own Paramount, you're head of the studio unless you call me like this again." And he hung the phone up.

Q: Did you have your own doubts?

A: Never. I always believed in myself. But I believe I could walk on a court and beat Jimmy Connors in tennis--and I won't get a point. You've got to believe in yourself.

Q: When you first came to Paramount, you had to fire a lot of people, and rather than look to the established talent, you went with new, young talent. How courageous was that?

A: The single most popular man in Hollywood was at Paramount: Howard Koch. Everyone loved Howard. To put me in and take Howard out meant that everyone--from the guards to the secretaries--hated me. They laughed at me. Hal Wallis, Otto Preminger, they all had to report to me. I had to take the prima donnas on like you can't imagine. There were eight studios and we were ninth when I came here. I was greeted with skepticism and disdain.

However, there's an old saying: "When your back's against the wall, the impossible becomes possible." But when I wanted to make a picture about a 20-year-old boy who falls in love with a 79-year-old woman, Harold and Maude, they thought I was crazy. They wanted to throw me out.

Q: Within six years you turned Paramount around...

A: In 1970 the studio was going to close and move to New York. I turned in my resignation. I had Mike Nichols shooting Catch-22 at the time, so I had him shoot me talking about some of the movies that were in the works--A New Leaf, Plaza Suite, Love Story--and I went to New York with it. I said to the 18 board of directors of Gulf + Western, "I'm sorry business is going so terrible. I don't want anything for my severance, I'll sign off now, but I just want you to watch something that I just put together, what I believe Paramount is all about." Marty Davis backed me on this, and it was the start of turning things around. What brought us over the top was Love Story, The Godfather, True Grit--there were six or seven big hits--and suddenly from being no one, we were the biggest studio in the industry.

Q: Yet you've said you were a lousy executive.

A: I'm a terrible executive. I'm terrible at financial things, that's why I have no money.

Q: Is it because you could only concentrate on one or two pictures a year?

A: That's my problem, I can't make many pictures. I focused on four or five pictures each year. To do a Harold and Maude you had to have belief in it, it was such a crazy idea. Romeo and Juliet was another one. But you can spend just as much time on a failure as on a success.

Q: Speaking of failures, wasn't it on the Barbra Streisand musical that you made at Paramount, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, where you first met Jack Nicholson?

A: This is a great Jack Nicholson story: I'm making On a Clear Day with Barbra Streisand, and there's the part of Tad, Streisand's stepbrother, still to be cast. I looked at 50 actors for the role and I saw this one guy and asked who it was. The head of casting and talent wanted me to look at someone else, but I kept going back to this guy with a smile. "Find out who the guy with the smile is," I said. Comes back that it's "some nut named Nicholson who works for Roger Corman." I said I wanted to meet him. But he was in Cannes, and I'm told he's crazy and I should forget about it.

I had to fly to New York and I got a call from an agent who said Jack Nicholson was in town. We hadn't cast the part yet. "Have him come over to the Sherry, I'll meet him," I said. He walked in with the agent, and this is why I love working at home and not an office. We're sitting and talking for a while and I said to him, "You know, kid, I love your smile. I'm going to star you with Barbra Streisand and Yves Montand in On a Clear Day and I'm going to pay you $10,000 for six weeks work." He smiled and said, "That's great, but I just finished a picture called Easy Rider..." I said, "I don't want to hear about that shit, another motorcycle picture. This is Barbra Streisand. You'll be singing a song with her." So Nicholson said, "Can I talk to you alone, Mr. Evans?" We walked to the window, it was snowing out, and he looked at me and said, "You know, pal, I just got divorced, I got a kid, I've got no money to pay alimony or child support. Can you make it 15?" I said, "How about twelve-five?" "Do you mean it?" he asked. And we hugged and kissed. That's how we met, and we've remained friends ever since. That could never have happened in an office. Because when you're sitting behind a desk, it's intimidating. Here we were sitting, with our feet up, on the couch and we could talk.

Q: Since we're talking about Nicholson, who are your five closest friends?

A: I don't want to say, but of the top 10, seven are women. I wish it wasn't that way, because I do business with men. During the making of The Cotton Club I had to get $2 million to pay the weekly payroll. Money was due to me from Orion the following Thursday, but money had to be paid that Friday. I went to four men to ask them for the loan, guaranteed by Orion the following Thursday, and all four--each of whom I had made $100 million for or more--gave me an excuse why they couldn't give it to me. The first two women I went to gave it to me before I finished the sentence, and asked me if I wanted more. Liv Ullmann and Cheryl Tiegs. I rest my case.

Q: What women have you loved most?

A: How can I say? Ali, because we're locked at the hip, we've had a kid together. We shared magic together for two years with Love Story. She's in my life, she's in my will.

Q: None of your four marriages worked out. How difficult are you to live with?

A: I'm a romantic. All of my marriages put together were less than seven years. I'm easy to live with, that's not the problem. For better or worse, I'm not a married type. John Huston tried five times, I tried four. All my wives are lovely girls. My priorities were just fucked. I was a flagrant cheat, all the time. That's why my marriages couldn't work out--because I couldn't lie.

Q: Do you still feel that the older you get the less you understand women?

A: No, I just think that they are more intuitive than we are, brighter than we are. Whether it be a country, an army, a team, a business, a family, a person--it's only as good as its weakest link. And every man has the same weak link: ego. Women don't have that. A good example: you're married to a girl and she's cheating every day. When you get in bed at night you can't think she's fucking around because "she's married to me, how can she do it?"

Reverse: you're living with a woman and you fuck around. The first day you fuck she touches you and she can feel it, she knows it. A man doesn't because of his ego. A woman doesn't have that. How many times I've gone to pick up beautiful women to take them out and they won't go out because they think they look so awful. They don't--they look beautiful. But I always think I look great!

If a woman knows how to be fetching as a woman, that's the strongest asset in the world. There's a saying that has nothing to do with sex: "The hair on a woman's pussy is stronger than the Atlantic cable." And it's true. Jack Nicholson has an expression: "Hey, Bob, don't try to figure them out. You can't, they don't play fair." That's a way to look at it.

Q: How would you describe yourself?

A: I'm a loner. I enjoy being alone. I'm an easy mark: I give to too many people. And I'd rather be remembered than be rich.

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Part two of Lawrence Grobel's interview with Robert Evans will be published in the September issue of Movieline.

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