Focus Features

The Kid Stays in the Picture traces the meteoric rise, fall, and rise again of legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans. Adapted from Mr. Evans’s tell-all autobiography, the movie takes the audience on an intimate journey into the mind of this Hollywood legend.

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The Kid Stays in the Picture traces the meteoric rise, fall, and rise again of legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans. Adapted from Mr. Evans’s tell-all autobiography, the movie takes the audience on an intimate journey into the mind of this Hollywood legend.

Robert Evans lived the life that many only dream of. His film career started in 1956, at the oddest of places: poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel. His good looks, charm, and overwhelming confidence captured the eye of screen legend Norma Shearer. She offered him a role in the picture “Man of a Thousand Faces.” After a glamorous, but short-lived, career as a movie star, Evans decided to try his hand at producing. Miraculously, at the age of 34, with no producing credits to his name, he landed a job as chief of production at Paramount Pictures. Evans ran the studio from 1966-1974. During his tenure, Evans was responsible for bringing some of the greatest films of the era to the screen, including “The Godfather,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Love Story,” “The Odd Couple,” “The Conformist,” “Harold and Maude,” and “Chinatown.”

By the early ‘80s, the “Golden Boy” of Hollywood was losing his luster. After a failed marriage to Ali MacGraw, a cocaine bust, and, finally, a rumored involvement in the “Cotton Club” murder, Evans disappeared into near-obscurity. Only through tremendous will and uncanny luck did he once again rise as “the kid who stays in the picture.”

Through the years, Evans’s closest friends have included Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski, Henry Kissinger, and Dustin Hoffman. Long considered one of Tinseltown’s most enduring bachelors, Evans has enjoyed meaningful love affairs with some of the most beautiful women of the past half-century, including Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Lana Turner, Ali MacGraw, Cheryl Tiegs, Raquel Welch, and Margaux Hemingway. The Kid Stays in the Picture shares gripping anecdotes about Evans’s unusual friendships and follows the thread of his tumultuous love life.

The Kid Stays in the Picture is narrated by Mr. Evans in his distinctive voice and storytelling manner. Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein (“On the Ropes”) and producer Graydon Carter bring this Hollywood tale to life utilizing visual effects, archival footage, clips from classic films, and 35MM photography by cinematographer John Bailey to create a rich visual and aural portrait of the man who, throughout the 1970s, was considered Hollywood’s “Golden Boy.” The Kid Stays in the Picture made its World Premiere at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.