Last month, Robert Evans talked about his Hollywood heyday as a studio exec and producer in the '70s. In the decade that followed, Evans's life and career went into a tailspin that reads like a primer about why you might want to never succeed in show biz. Here, Evans talks about everything from drug busts and public humiliation to thoughts of suicide and his visit to a loony bin. Along the way, he gives a glimpse or two into what went wrong with Popeye, The Two Jakes, and The Cotton Club.
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In recent years, Robert Evans has been making more headlines than movies. Headlines about drug busts. Headlines about murder trials. Headlines about wronged investors. Headlines, even, about disappointing movies. When I met with him to talk for this interview, days before his most recent film, Sliver, was due to open, it was at his palatial home above Sunset Boulevard, not far from the Beverly Hills Hotel. When I arrived, his butler took me through the main house and into the projection room, which is sandwiched between his oval swimming pool and the tennis court. Evans was late, so I had ample opportunity to admire the Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec prints, and the nude drawings by Jean Negulesco. I looked at the framed pictures from every decade of Evans's many careers: clothing executive, contract actor, studio head, moviemaker, starlets' husband. And when he arrived, Evans showed me another snap: a Polaroid of his caricature from The Palm restaurant, a nearby show biz watering hole, with the words "The Robert Evans" next to it.
"I'm the only one who has that," he said, about the "The." "It might work as a title to your piece. It's just a thought."
Though he has weathered more ups and downs than any other denizen of contemporary Hollywood, you wouldn't know it from his company: Evans is a man of boundless energy. He likes to hum, and during the next seven hours he went between his house and the projection room at least a dozen times, humming as he walked.
During our first talk we concentrated on his tenure as vice-president in charge of production at Paramount between 1966 and 1974. After that he became an independent producer (a word he doesn't like: producers are "dependent," he insists) and over the next six years he produced six films for Paramount. Three were hits (Chinatown, Marathon Man, Urban Cowboy) but three were not (Black Sunday, Players, Popeye).
By the end of the decade, Evans was clearly going downhill. He was busted for cocaine possession. He failed to make a comeback as an actor in his ill-fated sequel to Chinatown, The Two Jakes (the movie started, then stopped, and when it finally was released--with a different cast working under a different director--nobody cared).
Then he got involved in trying to make The Cotton Club, which turned into a huge nightmare that almost destroyed him. One of the people he was involved with served time for hiring others to commit murder. Evans was cleared of having anything to do with it, but the association certainly tainted his name.
In spite of the failures, Evans has seemingly beaten the odds and managed to stage a return to the spotlight. He was given back his old office at Paramount, and a sweetheart of a deal. Though his first picture since his Phoenix-like rise, Sliver, was far from a smash, he's now working on a franchise-type endeavor based on The Saint. Evans remains a man loaded with ideas, running on a full tank, hoping to catch the magic once again. And he's not afraid to say what he thinks in an industry that usually prefers to keep the lid on what goes on behind-the-scenes.
LAWRENCE GROBEL: You were an actor before you were a studio executive or a producer. Tell me why an actress is more than a woman and an actor is less than a man.
ROBERT EVANS: The man who told me that was Henry Kissinger. The easiest girl to get to, to fuck, is the wife or girlfriend of an actor, whether he's the biggest movie star in the world or an extra. Because invariably the woman he's with becomes his mother--he's that involved with himself, and he can't help it. It's no one's fault. As an actor, you need protection, and the woman you're with becomes your old lady. And after a while, when she's depended upon to do everything including tying his shoelaces for him, the woman gets bored with it.
Conversely, a woman needs that same protection if she's an actress. Really, they're both the same. But in a woman it's attractive, it gives a man a macho feeling to give her that umbrella of protection. Actresses are so unsure of themselves, so insecure, that they come to the man for protection and it makes him feel good. So on a man as an actor, it's unattractive, but on a woman, it makes her man feel good.
Q: When you were young, did you have ambitions to get into the movies?
A: I was a kid actor for many years. When I was 11 years old, I acted on the radio. I was assigned to a Universal picture when I was 17, called City Across the River, but my lung collapsed and I couldn't do the part.
Q: For years, you've had the reputation of being a notorious playboy. How wild was your life as a young actor?
A: I led a wild life as a kid. My parents always backed me in whatever I wanted to do, against their friends' advice--in those days when a kid wanted to be an actor he was looked at as very peculiar. But I always had a good voice, and I did accents very well, so I played Nazis during World War II on the radio. Dicky Van Patten and I used to work together a lot. Dicky's father was a bookie, and we used to go up to the Red Rooster in Harlem. There was a whore house upstairs and gambling downstairs. We went for the fascination, because all the girls would pick up their tips with their pussies. And in the eyes of a 15-year-old kid, that was something!
Q: At 14 weren't you earning $1,500 a week as a radio actor?
A: Some weeks. Some weeks less. Then everything dropped out under me. After my lung collapsed I couldn't get a job. I became a disc jockey--first in Palm Beach, then in Miami, then in Havana, Cuba. It was a show in the lounge of the Copa Cabana Hotel. I gambled there, and probably would have stayed a professional gambler if it wasn't for not wanting to disappoint my family. You know, this business is made up of gamblers: the Louis B. Mayers, the Schencks, Harry Cohn. Darryl Zanuck was busted because of gambling--he had to borrow money from Howard Hughes. You have to be a gambler to be in this business, to be in a position to put up $20 million on the seat of your pants, because there's no closeout value. Unlike a car, which you can close out if it doesn't sell, a film is like a parachute: if it doesn't open, you're dead.
Q: Havana during that time must have been a wild city.
A: It was the wildest place in the entire world. It was like The Godfather, Part II. I had to make a very quick exit from Cuba, because I was witness to something I shouldn't have been, which I cannot get into to this day. I don't want to talk about it. I was brought into a room, blindfolded, taken out and put on a sea plane, which landed in Miami on a desolate beach. I was given $10,000 and told never to come back again.
Q: Was this the government kicking you out, or a private party?
A: I'm not saying who did it. I was 17. I had a gun to my head. I shit in my pants, but I didn't talk. That's the truth.
Q: So what did you do when you returned to New York? Is that when you joined your brother Charles in the clothing business?
A: No, my brother was out of a job at that time. I took a job as a male model in a clothing firm. I wanted to get into films. I wound up out in California handling a clothing line and got signed by Paramount Pictures. I was under contract for six months and they dumped me. My brother by then had started a little company called Evan-Picone and we decided to go into the pant business instead of making skirts. That was my job: to start women wearing pants in America. I'm very proud of it. In the '50s women weren't allowed to wear pants. It was taboo. I started a fashion that's a lot more important than most of the movies I ever made, and it's something that will remain far after I'm dead.
Q: Let's talk about your acting career. Why didn't Ernest Hemingway like you for the 1957 film version of his novel The Sun Also Rises?
A: He wanted a real bullfighter, and I was a laugh. I don't blame him. No one wanted me in the picture, and yet I got all the reviews. [Takes down a framed Time review which says a "handsome" Evans displayed a "fierce intensity."]
Q: Though everyone wanted you fired from that film, Darryl Zanuck came to your defense. Why?
A: It's called sense of discovery. There's an ego involved with it. Not that I was the best person for that part, but he found me. I was his. When we were making The Sun Also Rises in Mexico, a telegram went out to Darryl Zanuck, who was in London. The telegram read: "If Robert Evans plays Pedro Romero, The Sun Also Rises will be a disaster. Signed: Ernest Hemingway, Henry King, Ava Gardner, Tyrone Power, Mel Ferrer, Eddie Albert, Peter Viertel." Errol Flynn refused to sign it. Word comes back that Zanuck is flying in, and I'm told to report to the corrida to do my quitas and veronicas. I was sure I was going to get fired.
So I walk into the arena, there's Zanuck on one side, on the other side is Ava Gardner, Tyrone Power, and everyone else. I go through my motions with a fake bull, bow to him, and Zanuck takes a megaphone and says: "The kid stays in the picture. And anybody who doesn't like it can quit." Then he put the megaphone down and walked out. That's what a producer is: the boss.
Q: Was that an epiphany for you? You saw all the actors, and you saw the power of the producer...
A: Exactly! I wanted to be him and not me.
Q: Why, after only four films, did you decide to quit acting?
A: Because I had to make a choice. The parts I wanted I didn't get, the parts I was offered I didn't want. Meanwhile, our business, Evan-Picone, had grown very big. My brother and his partner came to me and said, "Look, you're spending nine months of the year in California. Either sell out your interest in the business or come back and work for the company." They were right. I looked at myself in the mirror--and this was as tough a decision as I've ever had to make--I said to myself, "You ain't good enough to make it all the way. You ain't gonna be Paul Newman. You're not that good an actor." So I gave up my contract, turned down the two pictures I was supposed to do--The Chapman Report and The Longest Day--and moved back to New York selling ladies' pants. It was the single best decision I ever made in my life. I'd be working as a waiter at Hamburger Hamlet now if I'd stayed an actor.
Q: You then took a big chance and became a studio executive. [See Robert Evans interview, Part I, in the August issue.] Later, when you became a producer, you kept taking chances. One of the biggest chances you took was producing the 1980 movie musical Popeye, which didn't meet the expectations many had for it. Didn't you want Dustin Hoffman, with Hal Ashby directing, until you and Hoffman had a falling out?
A: I had Dustin, and we had a falling out because he wanted to fire Jules Feiffer as the writer and I refused. He had an epileptic fit with me, he was furious.
Q: You and Dustin didn't speak for six months?
A: Longer. And our friendship has never been the same.
Q: Do you think Popeye would have been any different had Hoffman and Ashby done it instead of Robin Williams and Robert Altman?
A: The real problem was it shouldn't have been a musical. The reason it was a musical was because I had tried to buy Annie.
Q: How dark a business is the movie business? Outsiders see the glamour. You're on the inside, what do you see?
A: There's no glamour in this business. There are accountants, lawyers, agents. For every bit of magic you spend a month of misery in negotiations. It's not glamorous, but it's not the agents who hurt the business, it's the lawyers. The agents want to close deals, they pay their light bills that way; the lawyers find reasons to build up bills, so they always find things that are wrong. At my table at home, Bob Towne, Jack Nicholson and I put out our hands and agreed we were going to make The Two Jakes for nothing. I was going to co-star and produce with Jack, and Bob was going to direct and write it.
And no agents and no lawyers were going to fuck it up. And [then] it got fucked up over lawyers and agents [anyway], even when we were working for nothing! We were going to make The Two Jakes for $11 million, with Jack, myself, Bob Towne, Kelly McGillis and Cathy Moriarty.
Q: But it didn't happen. When it was clear that you weren't going to be acting in it, was Dustin Hoffman ever considered to take your role--which was later played by Harvey Keitel--opposite Nicholson?
A: No, we couldn't accommodate both Nicholson and Hoffman. The other part wasn't that big, it was like eight scenes. I didn't want to do it, [but] Bob Towne insisted. It was [based on] his father--it's a true story. And Jack said in front of Bob Towne, Bert Fields, Ned Tanen and Frank Mancuso: "Listen clearly, gentlemen. I will make The Two Jakes for nothing, with Evans. Otherwise I want $6 million without him. And Towne, I'll buy your screenplay for $2 million and you get out. Because you know what's going to make this picture? Our noses [Evans's and Nicholson's] next to each other, that's what's going to make this picture." That's loyalty. Let me show you the pictures we took. [Goes and brings back large photos taken by Helmut Newton of him and Nicholson in profile, their noses almost touching.]
Q: What did you think of the end result when The Two Jakes was finally made?
A: Sad. Bob Towne never turned in a screenplay. He terribly resented Jack directing it. But it was the only way we could do it. Jack didn't want to direct it. We had a $4 million encumbrance against us because we had our own money up for it. There were lawsuits and everything and he wanted to clean the slate. He worked his ass off on it, and I was of no help to him, I was a vegetable at the time. He was so kind. I didn't show up on the set because I was embarrassed and ashamed because of the stuff going on in the papers. It was such a bad time for me because this was right after The Cotton Club. The drug thing happened in 1980. The Cotton Club was '80-'84, then The Two Jakes, then this Roy Radin case blew up in my face, which had absolutely nothing to do with me. I had 10 years of Kafka.
Q: Let's talk about those years. You took a rap for someone who was caught in New York buying cocaine from an undercover cop. You were in California at the time, yet you admitted to buying into that score. Were you guilty?
A: I was totally innocent of the charge. I took a dive. But I don't want to get into it. I was guilty of [cocaine] usage, but innocent of the charge. It was the most costly non-blow in the history of the world. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't do it. I never realized the consequences. Robert Redford, Warren Beatty or Tom Cruise wouldn't have gotten bigger headlines. And I had nothing to do with it! Aljean Harmetz in the The New York Times wrote what happened, and said that I wasn't there. [All the publicity] made me "the cocaine kid" when I wasn't involved.
I never thought it would have the devastating effect it did. To this day, if I'm at The Palm restaurant and I have to take a piss, I'll piss in my pants before I'll go to the John, because if I go people will think I'm taking a snort of coke. And I have pissed in my pants rather than go to the John. That will stay with me for the rest of my life. However, during it, I did something which shows that sometimes good comes from bad. I did a show for NBC called "Get High On Yourself." It became the biggest anti-drug campaign in the history of America. I had every big star in the world go on it.
Q: After that anti-drug campaign you wound up in the headlines again when Roy Radin was killed. It was a sensational case which became known as "The Cotton Club Murder" because Radin was involved with you trying to raise money for your movie, The Cotton Club. And you were supposedly involved with the woman, Laney Jacobs Greenberger, a drug dealer who was imprisoned for her involvement in his death. Why did you refuse to testify at a preliminary hearing?
A: No one thought I was guilty of it. The police knew I wasn't guilty. They were pressing me to talk and I had nothing to say.
Q: Who was guilty in Radin's murder?
A: I don't know. I knew the person [Greenberger], but I don't know if she's guilty or not. But as horrible a person as she's supposed to be, she could have said something about me to cop a plea and she never did. She had nothing to say, but people can lie. And I had nothing to do with it and thank God someone was honest about it. When you're a public figure you're guilty until proven innocent.
Q: What it did seem to show was how one might go to extremes to raise money to make a film.
A: I didn't need the money, I already had the money. [The Cotton Club] was all financed. We were in pre-production.
Q: Wasn't Radin involved in helping you finance it?
A: No, no, not at all. He was trying to form a company of some kind. You know what it was? A media title: "The Cotton Club Murder." It had zero to do with The Cotton Club. None of them put up any money and the movie got made, didn't it? It goes to prove it had nothing to do with The Cotton Club. But it sounded good. It was sexy.
Q: Do you reflect upon it today?
A: It's an ugly story. I don't know what happened. I don't want to know what happened. I don't want to talk about it, because it's not my story.
Q: Did you ever live in fear?
A: Never. I'm not fearful. I only lived in fear for my kid, possibly. I didn't do anything. The police were terrible to me, they tried to frighten me, but I had nothing to be frightened about. I was a sexy guy for them to have. I was meat for them.
Q: How did all of this affect your life?
A: I walked into The Palm restaurant with my son, and Michael Eisner was there and he shouted, "Bob, did you really murder him?" It was a joke to him, but it went through me like cobalt. The whole restaurant heard. I walked over to him and said, "No, I didn't, but watch out, Michael, if you don't make my next picture." I made a joke of it, but my son was with me, you understand?
Q: Before Richard Gere was cast in the leading role of The Cotton Club, wasn't Sylvester Stallone interested in doing it?
A: Stallone wanted desperately to do the film. During that period he was making Rocky III. He used to come over here every day trying on hats to see how he'd look in the picture. [Later] I'm over in Cannes to meet with 300 key exhibitors from around the world to sell The Cotton Club, and at two a.m. I get a call from Sly in Philadelphia:
"Bob, listen, I didn't like the new script."
I said, "What are you talking about, you wrote it."
"I don't think I want to be in the picture."
"Sly, wait a minute, in seven hours I'm going downstairs to announce you starring in The Cotton Club and you're telling me you don't want to do it? We have a contract. What is it, Sly?"
"Well, I got a lousy deal."
"You motherfucker," I said, "you no-good guinea cocksucker! Fuck you!" And I hung the phone up.
I went downstairs. Mario Puzo happened to be there and I asked him to join me at the meeting. I had a huge poster that emphasized the action and the music that startled the world. In front of these 300 men I took up the poster and said, "This is the movie. It's not going to be any better than this poster. If anybody doesn't like the poster, don't buy the movie." There's a guy sitting in the back from Switzerland. He raises his hand and asks who is going to be in the movie. I told him he couldn't have the movie if he paid double his competitor. "Do you know why?" I said. "The man sitting next to me, Mario Puzo, has written five screenplays: The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II, Superman, Superman II and Earthquake. They've done over two billion dollars. And you're asking me who's in the movie? You can't have the picture. Any other questions?"
I raised $8 million in 45 minutes, more than has ever been raised in the history of Cannes, with no actor and no script. With a poster. I came back to the U.S. and I'm thinking about that cocksucker Stallone. I wrote him a letter, which I sent to him, his manager Jerry Weintraub, the L.A. Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and "Entertainment Tonight." They thought he was going to kill me when he got this letter.
[Shows me the letter, part of which says: "Your deportment in our relationship both personally and professionally I find repugnant, cowardly, and ill-mannered and, concerning you, most self-destructive. I hope Mr. Weintraub will find for you the magic property that will elevate you to be a bona-fide star without having to wear boxing gloves.... I think your wisest move would be to prepare Rocky IV. This letter is not written in any way to entice you to come home. At this point in my career I have the luxury of not having to heed to the slippery innuendos of carpetbag managers who are looking to prove their worth.... I do have deep respect for your many talents. Personally, however, you are someone who totally lacks moral, ethical, and professional substance. Evans is wrong again. I should have paid heed to all the doubters. You didn't earn your reputation by mistake."]
It appeared in the papers. Saturday night I'm home alone in bed when the phone rings. "Evans, it's Sly. Hey, what the fuck are you crazy with this fucking letter? It's appearing in the papers. You must be fucking crazy!" Stallone starts shouting.
"You deserve worse, you motherfucker," I said. "You don't leave me waiting at the altar when [I've] been there for you to stop a bullet. You don't do it, you cocksucker!"
"I want to do the picture," he said.
"I wouldn't use you," I said.
"I want to do it."
"You want to do it, then come over on your knees tomorrow morning and apologize."
He came over the next morning and apologized. I said, "Listen Sly, no more brother shit anymore. I'm the director and producer and you're the fucking actor. If you don't like it, don't do it. I really don't care. If you're going to ask for one dollar more, then get the fuck out of here now. But if you meet my terms, you're on, because I think you're right for the part, and that's the only reason."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"Hey, Sly, don't give me this humble bullshit." So we shake hands and then he calls me three days later.
"You gotta come to my place," he says. He was living in Pacific Palisades at the time. We took a walk and he said, "Bob, I don't think I can do the picture. But you gotta know why. My cunt wife thinks that if I go to New York with you for a year we'll be through more broads than there are in all of Manhattan. She told me she'd divorce me. I don't give a fuck if she divorces me or not, but since Rocky III came out it's going to cost me 15 million bucks for the divorce, and I'm only getting paid two million from you, so it's going to cost me $13 million to make your fucking movie."
He didn't do it because of that reason. [Laughs] Two years later they get divorced and she got $30 million instead of $15 million. True story.
Q: Do you think any actor could have saved that movie?
A: No. [The problem] wasn't the actor, it was Francis Coppola. Richard Gere could have been terrific in it. Film is made in the editing room, In The Cotton Club I had The Godfather with music, but it was [left] on the cutting room floor. Francis shot it--it was there. He spent $1.2 million shooting "Stormy Weather," the most important number in the piece, and he didn't put it in the film! It was the same thing that had happened with The Godfather: Francis's version ran two hours and six minutes and I [went back and] added 50 minutes to it. We should have done the same with The Cotton Club, but I didn't have control. He barred me.
We were in New York and I had given [Francis] a birthday party at Elaine's. In front of all the department heads he stood there and said, "Evans, I'm ready to go back to San Francisco. This is not The Godfather, Evans, do you understand that? You're not the boss here." He had hostility for 10 years he was waiting to vent, and I had no idea. He said, "You're not allowed on the set. You can come out and look at the dailies, but I have final cut." I couldn't do anything about it because we had private financing. If it was [back during my days] at Paramount I would have thrown him out the window. I would have said, "Get the fuck out of here, you fat fuck!" But I couldn't--it was my money, it was other people's money. It was the single biggest error in my career, using Francis Coppola for that movie.
I spent years on it, from 1979 to '84. Sydney Pollack begged to direct it, and I [explained] I wanted to direct it myself. Then I called Francis to ask for help on the rewrite. It was the most expensive call I ever made. I said, "Francis, my kid [the script] needs an operation, and I need you to recommend someone to help me give a rewrite to this screenplay. I want the best doctor in the world." He said, "It's me. I'll do it for nothing." Ha ha ha. Call it the beginning of the end. He oozed his way in and it was brilliant, how he did it. I fell for him like a groupie. After he did the rewrite I thought, Fuck it, let Francis direct it.
He said, "The only way I'll direct it is if we're Siamese twins--we'll work together and never leave each other's side, because this is your picture, Bob." He was as genuine in making that statement as Hitler was in saying he wanted the Jews to live. All the time he knew he wanted to give me a second asshole. And he did.
Q: Did Coppola walk off during the making of the picture?
A: He walked off in the middle of it because his contract wasn't signed, and he went to Paris until the deal was signed. It was costing us $40,000 a day. What he did to us was unconscionable. After I saw the preview, I wrote him a letter.
[Shows me the 15-page letter he sent to Coppola, criticizing his cut of the film. "What you are about to read bears greater consequence to our lives and careers than any decisions we have ever fought over or agreed to in the past," he wrote. Concerned that the previews had all gone badly, Evans wanted to change the movie, putting back scenes Coppola had cut, including 17 musical numbers. "It is your film, Francis," he wrote, "not mine... [But] not having communication [with you] at this very pivotal moment is so very counterproductive. My God, Francis, if Gromyko and Reagan can meet and have an exchange of dialogue, why can't we? You owe it to yourself if no one else to put personal feelings aside. Use me. Use my objectivity..." The suggestions are numerous and detailed. ]
Q: And were any of your suggestions taken?
A: None. After Francis read the letter he said, "This cocksucker is right, but I'd rather see the picture do $300,000 than $300 million and see that prick get credit for it."
Q: In our first interview, you told me that Coppola's early cut of The Godfather, Part II had no structure, and now you say you had that same experience on The Cotton Club. What about The Godfather, Part III, which you had no hand in? It turned out a mess.
A: That's absolutely Francis, totally. End of story. That says it all. Godfather III was a 10th-generation Xerox copy of The Godfather. He's a brilliant director with actors, but he cannot structure a picture. Not just The Cotton Club. It took him years to edit Apocalypse Now, and it took him years to edit The Conversation.
Q: If he had come to you for help on The Godfather, Part III, would you have worked with him?
A: Oh, no. I would never talk to Francis Coppola again, because he's an evil person. I think Al [Pacino] feels that way about him too. Francis is a direct descendent of Machiavelli's prince. He is so seductive, so brilliant [at] bringing people in[to] his web, he makes Elmer Gantry look like Don Knotts. He fooled me.
Q: With all your troubles in the last 10 years, how have you managed to survive?
A: I went broke. In 1979 I was a very wealthy man. The only money I earned during the entire decade of the '80s was as a male model for a cosmetic company from a picture that Scavullo took. I was paid several thousand dollars a month for that picture, selling women's cosmetics. I had to use the money that I saved. I sold my Gulf + Western stock.
Q: Did anyone offer to help you out?
A: Jack [Nicholson] helped me out. Not monetarily, I'm too proud. My brother helped me and I paid him back.
Q: By 1989 you were contemplating suicide and you put yourself in an insane asylum. Why?
A: After this murder stuff came up, which I don't want to get into, I became a media event, just like Roman [Polanski] did. My son could not get a date to his graduation because I was his father. That's how low I got. I was so depressed over it that I was just in a fetal position for months. I had a hundred Nembutal by my bed. If it wasn't for my son I would have taken them. But rather than have that happen, I checked myself into the loony bin. But I couldn't believe I had, and I escaped within 24 hours. I'm not embarrassed to admit it, because if I can come back at my age, anybody can.
Q: Where are you going to be 10 years from now?
A: I hope alive. And healthy. And I want to be busy. I love what I do. I feel I'm a very wealthy man because of that. You know what I would really love, more than anything? Peace of mind. I'd love to hear just crickets instead of phones. I'd love to have some silence in my life. I haven't had three weeks off in 20 years. And it's taken its toll.
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Lawrence Grobel interviewed Robert Evans for the August Movieline.