Back in the 1950s, Robert Evans suddenly found himself working as an actor in films. He decided, however, that he wanted more power than that, and so became a producer instead. Finally Evans was made the vice-president of the somewhat decrepit Paramount studios, and was charged with the awesome responsibility of turning around its commercial fortunes and saving it from being closed down. This he did by producing such hits as Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story, The Godfather, and Chinatown, before Evans’ world came down in the 1980s in a blizzard of drugs, murder and madness.
The Kid Stays In The Picture is a new documentary on Robert Evans’ life and times, and is based on Evans’ autobiography of the same name. Indeed, the film is so closely based upon the book that excerpts from the audiobook version, read by Evans himself, are used as the narration of the film. This is in keeping with the nature of the film as being almost entirely built out of pre-existing film footage and photographs, but it highlights some of the film’s problems.
For a start, Evans’ reading from the book simply doesn’t work as a narration for a documentary, and structuring the film around it tends to make it kind of frustrating. On a technical level it’s not always very well mixed in with the sounds from the other film material, which occasionally makes it difficult to make out, but apart from that it just doesn’t work. It’s a reading straight from a book, not a script for a film.
Plus there’s some fairly significant gaps in the story, including a ten-year one between Evans’ giving up acting to his appointment as v.p. of Paramount Pictures. What exactly was he doing all that time? That’s probably the worst example of the film not giving us enough information (apart from the way the story ends in 1990 and just skates lightly over the next twelve years), but it’s not the only one; and since the film is structured around the narration, those parts of the story where you’d like to know more do stand out.
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