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The Kid Stays in the Picture

The Kid Stays in the Picture

List Price: $28.00
Your Price: $18.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best Biography I've Read
Review: A true Horatio Alger! Easily one of the most interesting books I've read. Even if your not interested in the genre of Movies & Entertainment. Evans spares nobody, including himself for how he made it, lost it and made it again. An inspirational book for anyone who enjoys biographies.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 5 stars for sheer enjoyment...
Review: And what more can you ask for in a book but sheer enjoyment? In a stressful world, this book is a great antidote. Dear Bob: Thanks so much for the drama. And that includes all the fabulous movies you made available to us. For one thing, I agree with you that POPEYE is one of the greatest and most underappreciated movies ever made. An artistic triumph...Just the fact that Evans was behind this movie makes me love him. I loved hearing the book read by the man himself. He's a wise guy-rabbi and a hell of a story teller. But Bob - I gotta know: who's the "seductress" in the cornball poem? And what's the "other lie" Sharon Stone told about you? Also: I agree with others who have loved this book but complained: why have you been villified? I have never figured this out. Is it just the whole mishagus about the Cotton Club? Your (very human) coke problem? Or is it just that, as you told us yourself, producers are "the enemy" in Hollyrude?

Anyway, a lot of people were happy to hear your story from the horse's mouth, and we want more, more, more! I know you read these comments, Evans - we all know that...you're an egomaniac with an inferiority complex, as they say of us addicts. So keep it coming, and soon, please. We need the magic! Love, love, love, peace and healing to you, a very loveable guy.

Oh, by the way - are you really Italian? That would make sense, but I guess the whole world is Jewish anyway, cause wasn't it Adam who offered Eve "a little piece of fruit?"
(Threw that in to make YOU laugh, Bob...a thanks.)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Tycoon's odd lesson of life
Review: Bob Evans lived it all, saw it all, had them all and lost it all. This book is a strange life lesson from one of the most unique man you'll ever read about. Move aside Jackie Collins, Evans give us the real thing with a capital "T". The glamour of his life and the tragedy of his losses are funny and poignant at the same time. A must read!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Much more entertaining than it has a right to be!
Review: Bob Evans. What a guy. I must admit I loved this book. It is pure gossip and not exactly Dickens. But, Evans is completely honest and his own harshest critic. He tells fantastic stories (was there a woman in Hollywood he did not date between 1950 and 1980?). He takes responsiblity for the many, many mistakes in his life and spins fantastic yarns. Toward the end, it can be a bit annoying reading about how once again, he made the right choice and get railroaded by justice, but at the same time, you care about him. Those amazingly honest stories (particularly about his destruction of his marriages--the story on Phyllis George is a hoot) make the book even more interesting. A must read for film fans and anyone interested in one of our more fascinating Americans. Who else would tell stories about Jack, Warren, and Henry Kissinger? It ends in 1994, before his stroke and bizarre 10 day marriage to Catherine Oxenberg (and his highly medicore movies of the last 7 years or so); but that is nomatter. You'll want to hang at Woodland with Evans by the end. You might even be using "the kid stays in the picture" as your own mantra. Then again, maybe not. Just find a copy and read it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: okay
Review: Evans oozes vanity and egomania. Men I admire like Mario Puzo and producer David Brown counted him a great friend, so he must not be as bad as I think. I know someone connected with one part of this book, who said that it's garbage the bit she knows about. So It makes me wonder how much else in this book is fabricated. But on its own terms, it's not a bad Hollywood read. But I'm not surprised to see that it's out of print (in book form), either.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Evans paints an unbelievable picture of his life in flicks.
Review: Evans paints an unbelievable picture of his life in flicks. But believe it! They say truth is stranger than fiction and this book is living proof. Anecdote after anecdote about Nicholson, Hoffman,Olivier,Rourke and just about any one you can think of associated with the world of films pop up throughout. This is truly the insiders book on Hollywood and I can only hope that Evans hangs around long enough to write a sequel.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Brilliant Accomplishments of the Best Hollywood Madman
Review: Evans tells it all, and it is all true about the inner workings of Hollywood, and his rise, fall, and plateau within the film industry. Evans, a man with virtually no production or business experience, along with the help of Peter Bart, then a New York Times Columnist, saved the Paramount Studio from becoming extinct. Their work persuaded Gulf and Western to keep the studioalive. Under their tenure, such films as Love Story, The Godfather, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, and the Odd Couple helped tobring Paramount back in business. Evans' account is a great historical romp on his superhero excess and success in Hollywood. As a 'Renaissance Man', he describes how he also started the Evan Picone fashion company with his brother. His life will teach many lessons to youngsters who are 'wet-behind the ears' and desire to work in the film business. Evans doesn't crucify people in his book like Julia Phillips does in hers. Evans tells the truth on how Hollywood can make you a hero for a year, and a vagrant the next. Evans' text indirectly warns readers of the dangers of excess.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Gotta Love Bob...
Review: He was kicked many times when he was down, at one point only a few of his loyalists remained, but he didn't skewer his fellow "peers."
The guy is a survivor, a legend in his time, and perhaps in his own mind.
His is a story about not giving up regardless of the hand you are dealt.
The title is appripo.....

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Justyfies my impression of Hollywood...
Review: Hollywood is a town run by geeks. A famous producer friend told me that once and I believe it. Evans' life story has the potential of being a blockbuster with all the inside looks this man was afforded during his lifetime but ends up being a cover-my-... diatribe of Hollywood proportions.

Occasionally, Evans affords glimpses of the world outsiders covet more than any other world in existence. His patois though, which is a cross between a Jewish Frank Sinatra and a Godfather ..., makes the whole story-telling ludicrous. Like listening to your rabbi recite the Story of O.

What convinced this man that he is responsible for some of the most altering movies of the 70s is beyond me. I guess he thought that he needed canonization after all these years in the "business." Poor Robert Evans. He portrays himself as the Ultimate Victim in a book that is trying so hard to prove the opposite.

In a book dedicated to his son, I think, he should have condensed it to a long letter. But given Evans' propensity for hyperbole, I don't doubt it would have been as disingenuous as the book. If I was Josh I would want to know the actual truth, and not the script of it.

My favorite part is the poem. If you can last through that without needing stitches from laughing, you are better than I.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Kiss and Tell
Review: I Knew Bob. I was a bored suburban girl.

Bob's values were not so strange if you know he was italian not jewish. Think about it. How else would he be so beautiful. Started out to live no more flashly or ruthlessly than a 1960's Sinatra, mob never far away. In the Ali M. days he manged to shift from Sinatra bad boy to 60's swinger. His morality no stranger than anyone elses in Hollywood

But Bob was vibrant enough to want to prove himself with a Hollywood run by Jewish financiers. He was smart enough, so he did! His Godfather was a true triumph, with Kissenger, the biggest jewish mobster of them all at his side, saying to his jewish bosses, Im your equal in the money business, I can make a brilliant movie, and look at the subject dont forget we Italians although not so smart but we are tougher than you.

His brother, suprisingly not discussed at all in the movie, (he must have requested it) was critical to his success. Charles, the self made Evan-Piccone (Piccone a Sicilian) multi-millionaire, changed his name along with Bob to Evans, bankrolled Bob and bailed him out whenever he was in trouble.

I could tell you a secret about Bob's body...but I wont. Suffice it to say he seemed constantly out to prove himself as a man, when really no proof was required. He was so insecure, hard though that is to believe, which is why women really liked him. Why else was he such a superficial ego-maniac if he not because he felt so inadequate. His love for Ali M. greatest because she jilted him the most publicly. Like a child. He was for the first part of his life so busy working he never grew up. And the second half too coked up.

All so sad, he was a genuinely clever, basically kind, and really able man, a loyal friend, with an innate eye for beauty and quality, whose immature morals and screwed up values caused him, and really no one else, a whole lot of pain. .

From the 80's onwards he was an absolute Coke Junky. Like the rich and powerful able to afford so much more stuff (pre crack) and slide so much further without anyone having the power or confidence to tell him to stop. Hitchens comes to mind. 15 - 20 years of life just drugs, nothing else. Couldnt handle the Cotton Club, was too coked up.

This story - book and movie benefits from his fall (and satisfying for us the unsucessful), but in truth if he hadnt had coke and so the fall, I think he may have grown up, matured, settled with a good woman, and done some amazing stuff. He was better than this. Charming as hell. He was more than a great raconteur.


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