The Kid Stays in the Picture

The story of Robert Evans, as written by Robert Evans and narrated by Robert Evans. Who is Robert Evans? Well, aside from being the kind of guy who thinks everyone would enjoy hearing him tell his life story, he was also one of the most important producers in Hollywood in the 1970s, shepherding in such pics as Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, Love Story andThe Godfather. But really, what makes Evans Evans is that he is, indeed, the kind of guy who thinks his life is incredibly interesting. Given that, he works hard to make it so, with sharp and witty narration and a string of hot little stories about starlets, cinema and the drugs that fuel the whole process. Kid Stays in the Picture is kind of a middle-brow-aspiring-to-high-brow version of such lowbrow fare as Behind the Music. What sets Evans apart from the "musicians" on the VH-1 series is that he’s not a manipulated tool of some behind-the-scenes power broker, but rather is the behind-the-scenes power broker, so he’s ultimately more interesting on every level. He’s not just the train wreck: He’s the engineer, and it’s high time America started celebrating the people who are actually screwing things up, rather than the sleek torso-ed teens who we mistakenly think of as "stars."