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jessisabella's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
dahlface's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
2.0
Icky. Robert Evan’s, born in 1930, was the kind of man who called women dames and broads and thought of them as conquests not colleagues. He was “of a time” in Hollywood long before MeToo and, boy, are some of his recollections difficult to read today. Does it tell an interesting story about the 60s-90s in Hollywood? Yes. Do you like Evans? No. Womanizer, drug addict, narcissist to a tee. To make it worse, in 2013 he adds a few thin “updates” to the end that just double down on his love-affair with himself. If you’re a white man over the age of 80, you’ll probably love this. Otherwise, hard pass.
romination's review against another edition
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
First of all I think I'll say that Robert Evans is kind of a miserable author. The events in the book are arranged in a way that feels haphazard, important moments in the history of Hollywood given nothing more than a sentence or two of reminiscence before moving on to something else. While it's an interesting look through several decades on working with massive projects at Paramount, it can often make you feel unmoored in time - the Godfather has started, will start, has finished, in the space of three chapters, before he suddenly grounds you again like "it was 1963" which is years before the book of The Godfather was even written.
You feel jerked around, but still enticed, because if there's one thing about Robert Evans, it's that he's an enjoyable storyteller. You almost get the sense of him as the guy in the bar who keeps going "oh yeah you wanna hear some stories? Buy me another round and I'll tell ya one. Wanna hear about the time I got Kissinger to appear at a movie premiere as a personal favor? Or the time I met the Queen with my wife wearing a tie-dye pantsuit? Hell I'll tell ya anything, just don't ask me about the murder trial - not unless my lawyers are here, heh heh heh!" It all feels like he's going through a story and then being reminded partway through of something else, changing what he's talking about with his interests in the moment.
And yet it's an entertaining read about a guy who just seems to have lucked into success, but had the eye to continue turning out projects to keep him at the top until extenuating circumstances brought him down. Who is he? A former pants salesman who got his big Hollywood break because, lounging by the pool, a woman came up to him and basically said "you should play my late husband in the movie I'm producing - you just have that, presence, that someone needs to really inhabit him." From there, he made an impression with Daryl F. Zanuck, who gave him another break - but the power Zanuck had is what inspired him to want to become a producer, which, another lucky handshake with a great literary agent, gave him options to a book that got people's eyes on him. A bidding war broke out, Paramount won out in the end, and he spent the next 20 years delivering hits that saved the company. There was a time when the Paramount brass (a bunch of oil executives looking to get into the pictures because it's easy money!) were going to scrap the company and sell it to the cemetery behind the studio, but a couple quick hits from Evans, and suddenly they're back in the black!
To hear Evans tell it, the world was always against him, but, against all odds, he *drumroll* always stayed in the picture. They wanted to kick him off a movie he was acting in. They tanked a later film of his. They kept threatening to fire him. They kept not giving him the funding he knew he needed. They kept ignoring his ideas. But in the end, he managed to pull it off. One-sided? You bet! (this "question? quick answer!" thing is a writing tic Evans often returns to and I am worried now it has rubbed off on me). But a fun narrative all the way, because whatever lies and grains of truth were there, it gave me some kind of appreciation for the work a producer does, and the collaborative nature of filmmaking that tends to be glossed over by a lot of people through a (mis)understanding of the concept of "auteurism."
In fact there's an entire chapter about what he understands to be the place of a producer in Hollywood - or at least, the Hollywood he cut his teeth in. And I'll say that in general this book was good for that. I tend to think that "producer" is a kind of empty role, a sort of "I put money in and rubber stamped the finished product" kind of position, but a producer can be clearly so much more. The way he talks about himself, almost caught between the director and the studio as the person who's trying to find the right middle ground to make everyone happy. But as the last chapter suggests, perhaps the role of producer has changed - latter chapters in my version show him trying to make his way in 90s Hollywood, and struggling with the changes. Where he used to spend so much time fighting for films and dropping years in them, he was now amazed that he could get a movie greenlit in an afternoon.... only to find out that it's just to rush out a good idea into a mediocre movie to plug a gap in the Memorial Day Weekend.
On that subject, the version I had, ending with stories from his return to producing in the 90s, feels like the biggest misstep in the world. From what I can tell, the original book ended with him going through all his legal issues that brought him low, and ended with him signing back on with Paramount for a new movie and a love letter to his son. It seems like it would have been nice! And yet the unforced error of him telling stories about his time in the 90s.... it comes off as a dinosaur in a system that's moved past him. He tells us that someone I've never heard of will be the Coppola of the 90s, he talks about how certain movies he's working with will be successes when we now know they flopped massively, it's really sad stuff.
But perhaps the most confusing "bro why did you include this?" stuff is when he talks about how Sharon Stone didn't like him because she had heard about several abuses he's done to women. It's not just the Depp case being recent, but ending that chapter with "if you can prove what you're telling me, I'll acquiesce!" type language, it's icky. He goes from the previous chapters seeming like a handsome charming playboy to seeming like a lech that people know it's in their best interests to stay away from. He presents it as him being at the top of the world, but to me it seems like he still has no idea what he's doing - and has lost that spark for how to tell the story of it.
The book is a fun, if incredibly one-sided and self-serving, story, but I wouldn't look at it for anything but a tawdry little showbiz rag, and certainly not a document about the history of Hollywood and the massive changes that went through it from 1960-80. Evans approaches it all without any analysis or real consideration. Events just happen to him, and then he moves on. It goes back to what I was saying above - that he's not really considering much, just rattling off stories, and happy to tell you more stories if you'll just grab him another whiskey. It's a fun book, at times able to tell you something interesting or give insights into filmmaking that you might not have known otherwise, but it might as well have been titled "Robert Evans Has Never Done Anything Wrong Ever." And I know that, and I love him.
You feel jerked around, but still enticed, because if there's one thing about Robert Evans, it's that he's an enjoyable storyteller. You almost get the sense of him as the guy in the bar who keeps going "oh yeah you wanna hear some stories? Buy me another round and I'll tell ya one. Wanna hear about the time I got Kissinger to appear at a movie premiere as a personal favor? Or the time I met the Queen with my wife wearing a tie-dye pantsuit? Hell I'll tell ya anything, just don't ask me about the murder trial - not unless my lawyers are here, heh heh heh!" It all feels like he's going through a story and then being reminded partway through of something else, changing what he's talking about with his interests in the moment.
And yet it's an entertaining read about a guy who just seems to have lucked into success, but had the eye to continue turning out projects to keep him at the top until extenuating circumstances brought him down. Who is he? A former pants salesman who got his big Hollywood break because, lounging by the pool, a woman came up to him and basically said "you should play my late husband in the movie I'm producing - you just have that, presence, that someone needs to really inhabit him." From there, he made an impression with Daryl F. Zanuck, who gave him another break - but the power Zanuck had is what inspired him to want to become a producer, which, another lucky handshake with a great literary agent, gave him options to a book that got people's eyes on him. A bidding war broke out, Paramount won out in the end, and he spent the next 20 years delivering hits that saved the company. There was a time when the Paramount brass (a bunch of oil executives looking to get into the pictures because it's easy money!) were going to scrap the company and sell it to the cemetery behind the studio, but a couple quick hits from Evans, and suddenly they're back in the black!
To hear Evans tell it, the world was always against him, but, against all odds, he *drumroll* always stayed in the picture. They wanted to kick him off a movie he was acting in. They tanked a later film of his. They kept threatening to fire him. They kept not giving him the funding he knew he needed. They kept ignoring his ideas. But in the end, he managed to pull it off. One-sided? You bet! (this "question? quick answer!" thing is a writing tic Evans often returns to and I am worried now it has rubbed off on me). But a fun narrative all the way, because whatever lies and grains of truth were there, it gave me some kind of appreciation for the work a producer does, and the collaborative nature of filmmaking that tends to be glossed over by a lot of people through a (mis)understanding of the concept of "auteurism."
In fact there's an entire chapter about what he understands to be the place of a producer in Hollywood - or at least, the Hollywood he cut his teeth in. And I'll say that in general this book was good for that. I tend to think that "producer" is a kind of empty role, a sort of "I put money in and rubber stamped the finished product" kind of position, but a producer can be clearly so much more. The way he talks about himself, almost caught between the director and the studio as the person who's trying to find the right middle ground to make everyone happy. But as the last chapter suggests, perhaps the role of producer has changed - latter chapters in my version show him trying to make his way in 90s Hollywood, and struggling with the changes. Where he used to spend so much time fighting for films and dropping years in them, he was now amazed that he could get a movie greenlit in an afternoon.... only to find out that it's just to rush out a good idea into a mediocre movie to plug a gap in the Memorial Day Weekend.
On that subject, the version I had, ending with stories from his return to producing in the 90s, feels like the biggest misstep in the world. From what I can tell, the original book ended with him going through all his legal issues that brought him low, and ended with him signing back on with Paramount for a new movie and a love letter to his son. It seems like it would have been nice! And yet the unforced error of him telling stories about his time in the 90s.... it comes off as a dinosaur in a system that's moved past him. He tells us that someone I've never heard of will be the Coppola of the 90s, he talks about how certain movies he's working with will be successes when we now know they flopped massively, it's really sad stuff.
But perhaps the most confusing "bro why did you include this?" stuff is when he talks about how Sharon Stone didn't like him because she had heard about several abuses he's done to women. It's not just the Depp case being recent, but ending that chapter with "if you can prove what you're telling me, I'll acquiesce!" type language, it's icky. He goes from the previous chapters seeming like a handsome charming playboy to seeming like a lech that people know it's in their best interests to stay away from. He presents it as him being at the top of the world, but to me it seems like he still has no idea what he's doing - and has lost that spark for how to tell the story of it.
The book is a fun, if incredibly one-sided and self-serving, story, but I wouldn't look at it for anything but a tawdry little showbiz rag, and certainly not a document about the history of Hollywood and the massive changes that went through it from 1960-80. Evans approaches it all without any analysis or real consideration. Events just happen to him, and then he moves on. It goes back to what I was saying above - that he's not really considering much, just rattling off stories, and happy to tell you more stories if you'll just grab him another whiskey. It's a fun book, at times able to tell you something interesting or give insights into filmmaking that you might not have known otherwise, but it might as well have been titled "Robert Evans Has Never Done Anything Wrong Ever." And I know that, and I love him.
readpadread's review against another edition
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
Frank Sinatra was on line three and baby he wasn’t crooning.
eternan's review against another edition
emotional
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.25
slider9499's review against another edition
3.0
The book is definitely entertaining and moves very, very fast. You will need to re-read certain sentences and sections because the author assumes you know what and whom he is referring to. I think this has to do with the fact that this is a period book, one written and published when the references were well known at the time of publication. Reading it 25+ years later, many of those references are dated, as are many of the folks mentioned in this book.
The author's massive ego is evident from page one and it doesn't let up throughout the entire book. If you can get past him telling us how great he is, how good-looking he is and how successful he is and how many women he slept with - you'll be fine. At times these "attributes" help to propel the narrative. But most of the time, they are just there to feed his monumental ego.
One bit of advice - read this book in chunks. His story is a bit frenzied to take in all at one time.
The author's massive ego is evident from page one and it doesn't let up throughout the entire book. If you can get past him telling us how great he is, how good-looking he is and how successful he is and how many women he slept with - you'll be fine. At times these "attributes" help to propel the narrative. But most of the time, they are just there to feed his monumental ego.
One bit of advice - read this book in chunks. His story is a bit frenzied to take in all at one time.