Long before his name became synonymous with scandal. courtroom drama, and comeback chatter, Robert Evans reigned over Hollywood as the Paramount executive who oversaw, or produced, such seminal 70s hits as Chinatown, Paper Moon, Love Story and The Godfather. Here, in the first of a two-part interview, Evans recalls the ups and downs of the roller coaster ride he says is still "the only game in town."
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If the '70s were the royal age of the movies, then Robert Evans wore the crown as the producer who rescued a major studio from the graveyard, and who brought to the screen some of the decade's most stunning achievements. In 1966, the former film actor and sportswear executive was plucked out of relative obscurity by Paramount CEO Charles Bluhdorn to become vice-president in charge of production at Paramount. Evans was the first actor to ever be put in such a position of power, and the odds were so big against him that no bookie would take the bet on his lasting more than a few months. Evans hung in for nine years--giving the go-ahead to and putting his energy behind such hits as Rosemary's Baby, The Odd Couple, Love Story, the two Godfathers, True Grit and Paper Moon. When he realized that the salary the studio was paying him couldn't compare to the money he could be making as an independent producer, he worked out a deal to produce several pictures for Paramount, among them Chinatown and Marathon Man.
Known as an obsessive worker, Evans has been on a fast track all his life. At 14 he was earning more money on the radio than his father was as a dentist. At 17 he was working as a deejay in a nightclub in Havana, during an era of decadence and debauchery that was depicted in The Godfather, Part II. He was discovered for movies twice: first by Norma Shearer, who thought he'd be perfect to play her deceased husband, producer Irving Thalberg, in Man of a Thousand Faces; then by producer Darryl F. Zanuck, who thought Evans could play the bullfighter in the film version of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
Evans was considered another rising young actor, but he knew that he didn't have what it took to become a major star and instead opted to rejoin his brother's clothing business, Evan-Picone. But the lure of movies was in his blood and he decided to find some properties he could produce. He came up with The Detective, which 20th Century Fox wanted, but before he could produce it, Paramount made him the bigger offer--and as a studio player, Evans quickly achieved the kind of fame that had eluded him as an actor.
Though his four marriages-- to three actresses and a former Miss America--lasted a total of less than seven years, Evans was unphased, for he had swinging friends like Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty to keep up with. There were movies to make, tennis to play, coke to snort...
And then it all came crashing down. By 1980 Evans was busted for possession of cocaine, beginning a sour decade that culminated in his name coming up during the investigation into the murder of a man named Roy Radin, who wanted to be his partner on The Cotton Club. It was a convoluted story: Evans, needing financing, wound up dealing with drug dealers and gangsters; though Evans was never charged per se, his name was dragged through headlines all over the world. After the failure of The Cotton Club--and additional bad press surrounding Evans's attempted return to acting, in the role later played by Harvey Keitel in the Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes--it was generally assumed that Robert Evans was no longer viable, that he was a relic of another generation.
But Evans is a man who thrives on challenges. So he went and found a property that would bring him back: The Saint. He presented it to Paramount as a potential industry: "Think of Bond," he told them, "of Indiana Jones." Paramount bought it, gave him back his office, and made a five-year deal with him. The Saint is in the works, but his first film under the deal was Sliver, which got savaged by the critics and did disappointing business.
In a two-part interview, Evans discusses everything from his climb to the top to his fall from grace. Here, Evans chats about his Hollywood heyday, the '70s.
LAWRENCE GROBEL: Do you work more at this office or at home?
ROBERT EVANS: I work mostly here. I have meetings at night at home and work with writers at home. My house is very conducive to working.
Q: How much business got done at your house during the '70s?
A: There were more deals made in my projection room than there were at Paramount during those days. My home has made Paramount over $1 billion. Charlie Bluhdorn used my home as Gulf + Western West.
Q: Tell me about some of the people who come to your house.
A: In my screening room, Jack Nicholson comes four or five times a week looking at pictures; a lot of directors come to look at their films. The Godfather was edited there, as was The Two Jakes. I can go on and on. A couple of years ago I needed new chairs. The old chairs were there for 22 years, cotton was coming out of them, it looked like the Salvation Army. I designed a chair and got six of them made and put them in. Nicholson comes over and asks, "Where are the old chairs?" I said I was looking to give them away to the Motion Picture and TV Fund convalescent home so I could get a write-off on them. He said he wanted them. So he sent down a truck and had them picked up.
Two weeks later he comes back and says to me, "You gave me the greatest gift I ever got. Those chairs. They're the most valuable chairs in all of Hollywood history. Do you know what happened in those chairs over the last 25 years? Mike Nichols wants one, Meryl, Warren, Bernardo... everyone wants a chair." I didn't know what I owned. He said, "I may give one to Meryl and to Bernardo. I'm not giving one to Warren." Suddenly I didn't like my new chairs anymore. [Laughs] And Jack won't give me back the old ones.
Q: What has he given you in exchange?
A: Loyalty. That he's given to me like no one else.
Q: How different is the business today than it was 20 years ago?
A: Totally different. In the '70s, there were four people who ran Paramount. We had a hundred actors around. Now there are a hundred executives and four actors around. Now, it's a committee business, a distribution business--you make a picture to make a date, you don't make a picture to make it good. Do I like it? I hate it. Am I on my knees glad I'm here? I'm on my knees glad I'm here. Because this is the only game in town.
When I ran the company it was so different because it went through me, I said yes or no, and there was no one else. We made 20 to 25 pictures a year with only two people here. Now there are 50 people here and they can't get 10 pictures made. Why? I don't know. It's become a commodity rather than an art form. And everything is researched, which is nauseating. I don't believe in the way they test pictures today at all. It's totally wrong. If you preview a picture, it's an invited audience. You don't get your highs, you don't get your lows, and so you don't know how good or bad the picture is. It's no different than if you came to my house for dinner and my food is lousy but you can't say, "Send it back, I can't eat it." But if you and I went over to Chasen's and the food was lousy, you can say, "Send it back, it's no good." When you pay for it, you can criticize. When you're invited, you can't.
Q: Are films better now than they were 20 years ago?
A: They're not nearly as good. Look at some of the pictures [from the year] Chinatown was up for an Academy Award. There were movies like Lenny, The Godfather, Part II, The Conversation and A Woman Under the Influence. Each of those pictures was really extraordinary. And you look at the pictures up for an Academy Award today, it's tough to pick five. Today, distribution runs the film business. Maybe because it's so expensive, and the numbers are so big today, but it seems that it's more and more difficult to put pictures together.
Q: And yet you're still doing it. Have you always believed you could pull it off?
A: I've been a success in whatever I've done. I've never looked at things any other way. The toughest time has been the last five years. It's easy at 20 to be hopeful, but when you're approaching 60 and you're on your ass, you have two places to go: one, the Motion Picture and TV Fund convalescent home, or two, down to live in Palm Springs. When you're successful at my age it's difficult to stay there, because I'm considered too old. To make a comeback at my age... it's like getting out of the grave. To get back is much more difficult than to get there.
Q: Of the films made while you were at Paramount in the '70s, which are your favorites?
A: Filmic-wise, The Godfather and Love Story are the two for me. The reason I say Love Story is it's a total aphrodisiac. There were more pregnancies from that picture than any other ever made in the history of film. And I was witness to it. Guys would bring a different girl every night and for that night they were in love. I'm the only producer still alive who has two pictures--The Godfather and Chinatown--selected by the Library of Congress to be among the 75 films of the 20th century to be [recommended for placement] in a vault for perpetuity.
Q: Whose idea was it to do The Godfather as a period family chronicle--rather than as another gangster movie?
A: Francis [Coppola] wanted to show capitalism in America. When I hired Francis, Dick Zanuck and John Calley both called me and told me I was going to be fired from my job. Dick said, "Bob, they're going to throw you off the picture, that guy's nuts." Calley called me and said Zoetrope owed them $600,000. "Don't use him, Bob, you don't know the problems you're going to get into." He'd made only three [studio] pictures at that time: You're a Big Boy Now, which did no business; Finian's Rainbow, which was a disaster; and Rain People, which was a slow art film.
Q: So why did you choose Coppola?
A: For one reason. He was the only Italian director in Hollywood. And I wanted it told from the viewpoint of a second-generation Italian. I made a very careful study. Even after I developed it from a 30-page treatment into the biggest bestseller of the decade, Paramount did not want to make it. Because there had not been one Mafia film ever made that had made a profit. They had all been written, directed, and/or acted by Jews. That's why I went with Coppola: I wanted to smell the spaghetti.
Q: Coppola claims he was fired three times from the picture.
A: Four. Two weeks into shooting I got a call from the editors who said they couldn't edit the scene where Al Pacino blows away Sterling Hayden in the restaurant. So I had the film sent to me and I edited it over the weekend and it was brilliant. I got on the red-eye, fired the editors, and told Francis he was brilliant. But he was so shaken at the time, he almost had a nervous breakdown. When the picture was finished, and he edited the film and I saw it, I said it was not releasable. He'd taken out all the texture. The picture was supposed to open that Christmas and I went to the Paramount hierarchy and said we couldn't open it then. I almost lost my job over it. They pushed the release back and we added 50 minutes to the picture.
Q: What was your initial reaction to Al Pacino as Michael?
A: I didn't want Pacino, Francis did. He didn't want Jimmy Caan, and I did. So we settled. But you know who talked me into using Pacino? Brando. Pacino didn't test well, and Brando called me. We didn't speak much, but he called me about this. He said, "Listen to me, Bob. He's a brooder. And if he's my son, that's what you need, because I'm a brooder." It was Brando's insight that made me understand why Al would work.
Q: Was Warren Beatty your first choice for Michael?
A: No, I wanted Alain Delon. He was the type, but he couldn't speak English well. Maybe I did want Warren. I may have thought of Jack, too, for it. Jack tells me I did, but I don't remember it. Dustin desperately wanted to do it.
Q: Did you eventually warm up to Pacino?
A: Al did an interview for The Godfather. It was the opening night and a reporter from Time was to talk to him. Al was living in a cellar at the time so he asked to use my suite at the Carlyle. He came up with a little navy pea cap, he looked like a second-story guy, and he said to me, "Can you loan me a fiver? I've got no money for a cab tonight for the opening." And I'm thinking, "This is the lead of The Godfather?" so I gave him two hundred-dollar bills. He put them in his pocket and went to do the interview.
Q: Ever get the money back?
A: Of course not. You ever get anything back from an actor? Uh-uh. [Laughs] Marthe Keller told me, about Al, that she went with him for years--until she couldn't afford him anymore.
Q: Did you consider Laurence Olivier for Don Corleone?
A: No. Marlon hadn't even read the book, but Francis did a silent test of him. Dino De Laurentiis, when he was told that Marlon was going to play the part, said he wouldn't be able to open the picture in Italy, he'd be laughed off the screen. Marlon was as dead as dead could be. Brando did The Godfather for $50,000, and he had one point of the gross after the first $10 million, two points for the second, three, four, and five points up to $60 million. Brando's attorney called me and said Marlon was desperately in need of $100,000. I told Charlie Bluhdorn and Charlie said to give it to him but to "get the points back." That $100,000 cost Brando $11 million.
Q: Did he ever try to renegotiate?
A: When it happened, he went crazy. And I don't blame him. He called me and said, "I'll play the part in The Great Gatsby but I want my deal back." I said one picture had nothing to do with the other.
Q: What was your bonus after the success of The Godfather?
A: A trip to the Virgin Islands.
Q: And did you buy Francis a Mercedes?
A: Yes. I had predicted that the picture would do $50 million. He said if it did, I should buy him a Mercedes. The day it did $50 million he went and bought the most expensive Mercedes he could, 12 cylinders, and charged it to me. He made it up to me 10 years later--he gave me a second asshole like no one has ever given it to me in my life.
Q: You're jumping ahead. We'll get to The Cotton Club in the second part of this interview, but let's stay with the two Godfathers.
A: Let me make it real clear what happened with those. I did The Godfather with Francis and we had horrendous fights. He only became the macho of the industry from that film; then he became a genius. If his cut was shown, it would have been on television. When we made The Godfather, Part II he wanted total autonomy, and he got it. I had nothing to do with it until we went to preview the picture in San Francisco two months before it was to open. When he walked into the theater they stood up and applauded him as if he was a king. By the time the picture was over, half the theater was empty. Here's what he had done: he left out the entire Havana sequence, the Meyer Lansky/Hyman Roth scene, and had more of Sicily-with-sub-titles. It was a bore. We went back and made over a hundred changes. We put back Havana, which was the best part of the movie. He doesn't know how to structure a movie.
Q: And after he received his second Oscar for The Godfather, Part II, he didn't acknowledge you. Was that hurtful?
A: On purpose. We stood at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the back. Chinatown was a 6-5 favorite against the field. And he said, "You're going to win, Evans," and I said, "No, you're going to win, Francis. This is your year." He said, "Isn't it funny? If I win it's because of you." I said, "I know." So he wins. I'm sitting there. He thanks everybody except me. Then, to put the knife in further, he said to me afterwards, "God, I for got to thank you--again!" That's how Machiavellian he is.
Q: Brando followed The Godfather with Last Tango in Paris. Did you have a shot at that?
A: I was going to do Last Tango. The Godfather hadn't come out yet. Everybody turned Last Tango down, Delon, Belmondo, but Brando took it. And I knew how great it was. Yet Paramount wouldn't make the deal because it was an X-rated picture.
Q: Had you ever been involved in an X-rated film?
A: I made Tropic of Cancer, which was X-rated. It was a damn good film. Henry Miller and I were good friends. He said, "You don't have the guts to make Cancer." I got it made and it was so rough, they pulled it after one theater. Ellen Burstyn was in it. She had her pussy showing, lice in her pussy, open legs. When Gulf + Western saw it they said, "Get rid of it." Then I made another picture they had to pull called Medium Cool with Haskell Wexler. It was so controversial that Gulf + Western wanted to get rid of that, too.
So when it came to Last Tango they turned it down. I was sick about it. I was the one who got Marlon in it. Maria Schneider came on at the last minute. Dominique Sanda was supposed to play the part but she got pregnant and Maria was Brigitte Bardot's stand-in.
She was wonderful in that film, as good as Marlon. It was her first movie. I knew her well, used to take her out. What a body she had! But then she got stuck on heroin. When Black Sunday came around she was up for that, but she was a total dyke at that time.
Q: You mentioned that you're also proud of Love Story. But no one wanted to make it, did they?
A: No, no one. Everybody said, "What kind of piece-of-shit, pulp junk is this?"
Q: Love Story was a screenplay before it was a book. How did you know to make it a book first?
A: That's instinct. You can't buy it, you don't learn it, you don't inherit it. You either have it or you don't. I cried when I read the script, so I told Erich Segal to write it as a book first. And then no one wanted to print the book. They printed 6,000 copies, they were going to give it away as a throwaway. I offered them $225,000 for advertising if they printed 25,000 books. So they did, and it became the number one bestseller of the decade.
Q: Love Story starred Ali MacGraw, who became your wife. Did you know her when the studio made Goodbye Columbus?
A: No, but I fell in love with her while watching the dailies. She didn't want to have anything to do with me. She disliked everything I stood for. She was a real bohemian. She was the one who gave me Love Story. I flipped for her. I got her to fly out for one night to look at Arthur Hiller's The Out-of-Towners. She came here, never saw the movie, never left my house. Until she dumped me three years later.
Q: Your obsession with The Godfather cost you that marriage, right? If you could do it over again, would you accept releasing The Godfather as a lesser picture if you could still be married to MacGraw?
A: Of course I would. My priorities were fucked up. When my son was born I was out here editing and fighting with Francis, instead of being in New York with Ali.
Q: You were a very hot couple--what went wrong with the marriage?
A: I fucked up the marriage. She told me before we got married, "I'm a hot lady, Evans, don't leave me for more than two weeks at a time." I left her for four months, without visiting her once. Plus, she was with one of the most attractive men in the world to boot [Steve McQueen, whom she later married], because I was too busy cutting the fucking Godfather. All right?
Q: Let's look at what excited you about some of the other films you gave the okay to. I'll name the picture, you say what comes into your head: The Odd Couple.
A: The Odd Couple was the first confrontation I had with Paramount. They wanted to put Jack Klugman and Tony Randall in the movie, but I wanted Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, who wanted a million dollars. Billy Wilder was locked in; all three were handled by William Morris. And Bluhdorn and Marty Davis didn't want to spend the money--we couldn't afford Lemmon, Matthau and Wilder. So Jack and Walter fucked Billy Wilder over and he was left out of the package.
Q: Barefoot in the Park.
A: That was made as I got there. I had nothing to do with that.
Q: Paint Your Wagon.
A: That was Charlie Bluhdorn's desire.
Q: The Little Prince, which you thought would be The Wizard of Oz of the '70s.
A: It should have been. I brought Lerner and Loewe back together again after they had broken up. Frank Sinatra was ready to come out of retirement to play the lead, but [director] Stanley Donen wouldn't work with him. Then Richard Burton wanted to play it. He sang beautifully, but Stanley didn't want to work with him, either. It was a big disappointment. No one went to see it. It played to empty theaters. But the picture was good. A dream that didn't come true.
Q: Blue, which was supposed to star Robert Redford.
A: Blue was one of the disasters of all time. Redford walked off four days before it was to start, and disappeared. Two years later he was going to do Rosemary's Baby and Roman [Polanski] had a meeting with him--and someone serves Redford with a subpoena because of Blue! We lost Redford because of that.
Q: Barbarella.
A: That was a big picture, very successful. [Roger] Vadim did that with Jane Fonda.
Q: The Molly Maguires, with Sean Connery and Richard Harris?
A: Disaster! It was about the coal business and it was a big, expensive mistake.
Q: Paper Moon.
A: No one would make it. The only way Peter [Bogdanovich] would make it was if he could use Tatum O'Neal, who had never done a part before. He line-fed her. I'm so proud of that one.
Q: Death Wish.
A: Big picture. Commercial. I didn't have much to do with it.
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.