The Fat Lady Sang

by Robert Evans

  With a silent whisper, I begged for His embrace.

  The impossible, I asked. Is it possible?

  It was.

  Just months later, as I was still working through my MRI challenge, more enticing plans came into play.

  The intercom buzzed.

  “Jeff Berg on the phone, sir.”

  “I’m not here.”

  “He says it’s urgent, Mr. Evans.”

  “I’m not here!”

  No such luck.

  An hour later, Jeff Berg walked right through my door like the captain of industry he was. In actuality he had been my good friend and agent for twenty-five years and a no-nonsense man if ever there was one.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your ass, that’s what.”

  “Yeah, sure. Let me get back under the covers, will ya?”

  Like a Marine sergeant he tore the sheets off the bed.

  “Now listen and listen carefully. No more of this self-pity shit! I’m not here to get a commission!”

  “A commission?” My first laugh of the day. “I’ve never paid you a dime in twenty-five years. You never wanted one. You were with me at the beginning. . . . Yeah, and you’re with me at the end.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Evans! You’ve just struck football!”

  Football? “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Two hours ago I got the most bizarre call of the year. The top honcho of ESPN. I don’t even know the guy. But he wants you!”

  “Me?”

  “That’s right, you! ESPN has just bought the rights for Sunday Night Football. They’re spending a fortune promoting it. It’s a huge commitment for them. They’re launching against the networks, so they have to launch big. And they’ve come up with an ingenious preseason promotional campaign. They’re making the largest dollar commitment they’ve ever made—every station of every kind across the board. They’re determined to make the public aware of their new flagship sports empire.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?” I slurred.

  “They want you to be the voice of ESPN Sunday Night Football, that’s all!”

  “Are you crazy? Jeff! That stroke left me with half a tongue! One half moves one way, the other half moves another. Sure, it’s getting better. But the only thing I could promote audibly would be a freak show!”

  Berg interrupted.

  “Keep quiet and listen, will you? First of all, they don’t know you had a stroke. The reason they want you is your fuckin’ audio of The Kid. You’re their first, second, and third choice to be the voice of ESPN’s new sports breakthrough. You’re doing this, Evans!”

  “But Jeff, I can’t.”

  “. . . and you don’t have to do it until late August, early September. You’ve got three months to prepare.”

  “Prepare, my ass! I got half a tongue! What’s the other half gonna do?”

  “Get better, that’s what! How many hours a day do you spend on speech therapy?”

  “Two to three hours, seven days a week. Is that enough?”

  “No! Double it! You can do it! Anyway, it’s too late. I committed you for it.”

  “But Jeff . . . !”

  “There’s no buts!”

  If ever an aphorism fit the crime, this was it: When your back’s against the wall, the impossible becomes possible.

  For the next three months, I spent half my days slowly, painfully retraining the left half of my tongue to work in concert with the right. That one inch of flesh became the biggest hurdle of my life. The right side of my tongue . . . connecting with the left . . .

  Think it’s easy? Hah!

  Post time was August 24. That gave me three months to start sounding like Orson Welles.

  As I worked, Jeff negotiated. A whopper of a contract! Thanks, Jeff! But how was I gonna get the fuckin’ words out of my mouth?

  Progress, when it came, was excruciating. The deadline was looming.

  I was sure I was going to make a fool of myself. The studio they were using to record was in Long Island. A few days before the recording date, on August 21, I went to my brother Charlie’s in Quahog just a few minutes away, hoping to dispel my fears. But they only got worse.

  On the appointed day every omen seemed against me. Walking into the recording studio, I found it was nothing more than a glorified shack filled with recording equipment, two booths, a few engineers, the director, and his assistant. They all greeted me and complimented me on the audio of The Kid. They had no idea what they were in for. As far as I knew, they would be hearing Elmer Fudd.

  What happened next is on tape or I’d never get anybody to believe it.

  What they wanted was no mere commercial. They’d scripted out the groundwork for an entire year’s coverage: seventeen sixty-second monologues telling viewers what to expect from ESPN Sunday Night Football. They capsuled the entire football season in one afternoon. The financial offer I’d agreed to had sounded pretty good, but it was really slave labor. There must’ve been someone Up There looking out for me.

  What transpired that afternoon overshadowed reality. No doctor and no therapist could’ve delivered the rounded tones that came out. I thought I was dreaming. It was akin to a mute breaking out with the Gettysburg Address.

  Produced by Wieden+Kennedy, “My Guy,” take one, August 19, 1998.

  Generations of American boys have grown up playing with fully armed, fully posable action figures. When you were a kid and you played war with your friends, you would project yourself onto your action figure, you’d identify with him, you would send him on missions and refer to him as “my guy.” “My guy” is gonna take out the machine-gun nest, “my guy” is gonna blow up the bridge, “my guy” is gonna liberate France.

  This season, when you sit down to watch Sunday Night Football on ESPN, think about that. Because when those two teams walk out onto the field, consciously or unconsciously, you will identify with one of them. Maybe it’s their style, maybe it’s because they’re the underdogs, maybe you just like their helmets. Regardless, you’ll identify with one of those teams. Who’re you pulling for? Who do you identify with?

  Who’s your guy?

  ESPN Sunday Night Football—seventeen weeks, eighteen games.

  Hey pal. Who’s your guy?

  “Vegas Preseason”

  It’s incredible what’s happened to Vegas. Las Vegas used to be this sort of wicked city that was above the law. Then, practically overnight it became a “great place to take the family.”

  A twentieth-century man didn’t need another “great place to take the family.” He needed Vegas. Unfortunately, like almost everything meaningful and interesting, they took it away from us.

  Well, this season, when you sit down to watch ESPN’s Sunday Night Football, think about the value that final game of the weekend has in your life. It is the oasis in a wasteland of responsibility. The last-minute stay of execution. Daddy’s quiet time. It’s like some huge recalibration of the karmic scale, where Vegas is transformed into a sanitized theme park and Sunday night becomes a forum for a nationally televised, prime-time cockfight.

  It almost makes up for Vegas.

  They had scheduled three days for the recording. We finished in one afternoon. When it was over, the director and his hardened assistants stood and applauded! “We booked you for three days and you finished in five hours!”

  He didn’t know how right he was.

  For the next several months, the campaign played on every AM and FM station imaginable, launching a flagship that was the network’s mainstay for a decade. More people stopped me on the street and in restaurants to ask “Are you the guy from Sunday Night Football?” than had ever stopped me for anything I’d ever done before.

  Do you believe in miracles? I do now.

  When I came back home, ESPN wanted to make an exclusive contract with me. Jeff turned them down.

  “Forget film!” he said. “Your voice on radio and TV can cover both your mortgages for the
rest of your life. The crazy thing is, Evans . . . your tongue is the key to your fuck-you money!”

  And, for the next several years, it was.

  23

  Adios to one miserable year. Hello to a better one!

  There I stood, behind the regal gates of Paramount, ensconced in my primo offices of twenty-five years. The primo corner table at the studio commissary kept on constant reserve. Big-time high all the way.

  That was the good news. The bad news? As I got more and more famous with a younger and younger crowd, my peers’ resentments were becoming more painfully evident.

  The studio was kind enough to spend a whopping ten thousand to option a comic how-to manual, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and now it was going into preproduction—with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson. Me? I’m seeing them smiles and embraces, but I’m wondering if they’re all disguising one question:

  Is this guy over-the-hill?

  They’d find out soon enough.

  By now, not only was my memoir, The Kid Stays in the Picture, climbing the bestseller list—but my audio book was achieving cult status. I had recorded it myself, before the strokes, insisting on taking more than a month to portray each of the characters.

  The book and the audio exploded.

  Suddenly, I’m throwing naturals. C’mon, seven, c’mon, eleven, let’s go for it. And I did.

  The book quickly received not only international bestseller status but critical acclaim throughout the world, and was published in a dozen languages. The irreverence of youth responded to my notoriety—to the point where it made me more a celebrity than a producer. I made considerable fees in speaking engagements in less than a year, while producers whose credits generated box-office gold went unrewarded and worse, unrecognized. For good reason: no one knows what a producer is or does, but everyone knew me. This was a double-edged sword if ever there was one.

  The Kid was catching on, attracting the national media and capturing the attention of a younger generation. In Details, John Brodie published an article headlined “The Cult of Bob”: “The current required reading has become The Kid Stays in the Picture, the actor-turned-producer’s sordid and soaring autobiography . . . read by the great man himself. The audio version has caused a minor sensation. As a result, Evans has dethroned L. Ron Hubbard and Anthony Robbins as the maharishi of the moment for the generation who seem to long for a time when the studios made films—not merely theme park rides—and the town’s social life was more akin to Shampoo than The Firm.” Brodie’s lengthy profile in Details was echoed by dozens of concurrent articles and interviews on a global scale. In “The Last Original,” a four-page cover story in the Sunday Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times, Amy Wallace wrote that “Robert Evans has lived nine lives in Hollywood, not all of them charmed. Today he’s a hero to junior moguls and the apparent model for the movie producer in Wag the Dog.”

  In the midst of all this, Bernie Brillstein, an old pal of mine and one of the directors of the Aspen Comedy Festival, invited me to perform at the renowned annual arts event.

  “What the hell can I do there, Bernie? Limp?”

  “Just read from your book, Bob. That’s all you gotta do. You’ll be a refreshing surprise for all the stand-up comics that’ll be there.”

  “Who’s gonna be there?”

  “Jerry Seinfeld, Doc Simon, Ben Stiller, Mike Nichols, Martin Short . . .”

  “Hold it. I’ve heard enough. Are you crazy? I thought you were my pal! It’d be one thing if you were asking me to compete in the Special Olympics. But if you think I’m going to make a fool of myself going toe-to-toe with these guys . . . ? That’s kamikaze time.”

  “Trust my instincts, Bob. Will ya do it?”

  “They may be your instincts, Bernie, but it’s my ass! How many people do I have to make a fool of myself in front of?”

  “About a thousand.”

  “All comics?”

  “Most.”

  “I got it. You want me to be the intermission break between Ben Stiller and Mike Nichols.”

  “Wrong, Evans. I’m pleading with you for the third time! Do you know why? ’Cause I want you to know who you really are!”

  I sat there in total confusion.

  “Bernie, you’ve known me too long. You know just the right button to press. The bigger the dare, the bigger the turn-on. Rev up them engines.”

  To say I was reluctant to fly to Aspen would be an underplay. If you’d told me I would fly back from there a comedy sensation, I’d have thought you were on an acid trip. Thank heavens for the legitimacy of the printed word! No one would have believed what happened if it hadn’t been headlined by the Los Angeles Times and Variety.

  At the appointed hour, I bit the bullet and looked out at the stage.

  I was following Martin Short, who was very tall in talent and very funny in delivery.

  I had no idea what I would say.

  I limped out and looked at the audience. In a moment of panic, or inspiration, I blurted:

  “Ten months ago today I had a . . .”

  . . . and my hand began to shake.

  “I had a . . .”

  I dropped my script and grabbed the podium and then the mike.

  “I had a . . . stro-o-o-o-ke. . . .”

  And with that I fell to the floor, holding the microphone in one hand, the script in the other.

  The dignitaries in the front row jumped up and ran to the stage, yelling, “Emergency! Call nine-one-one!”

  “I can’t breathe . . . ,” I gasped. “Can’t breathe . . .”

  The rush to the stage became general . . .

  . . . and I started calmly reading from my book. From the floor.

  Those around me tried to pick me up, but I brushed them away, rising with microphone in one hand and book in the other. As gracefully as I could, I walked to the plush chair and continued my reading—to a standing ovation.

  Can’t deny that, at my age, being discovered as the new comedy find of the year was like being discovered by Darryl Zanuck all over again.

  Not too long afterward, Neil Simon asked me to dinner at the Palm.

  “Evans, I must tell you, I’ve done a little comedy in my time, but I’ve never seen better comic timing in my entire career. That stroke put us all to shame. How’d you do it? Who worked with you on it?”

  “Truth, Doc? When I walked out onstage, I didn’t know I was going to do that at all. I didn’t know what to do. So I just dropped dead instead of dying.”

  In the middle of the Palm restaurant, the great Neil Simon burst out laughing. “That’s comedy, Kid.”

  I’ve always lived on impulse—impulse good, impulse bad. I’d have to say, this was not only my most lunatic impulsive act, but the one that left me with the fondest memories.

  The press, and the Internet, spread the word of my idiosyncratic performance—big-time. This time good. No, very good. Suddenly I was being booked on public speaking tours; there was talk of a one-man Broadway show called In Bed with Robert Evans. My doctors were against all of it, but that sounded like one helluva dare. Bernie was blowing smoke up my ass, trying to convince me that I could go with the best as a raconteur . . . and I was believing it. Bernie was a better salesman than a doctor and I was looking favorably on taking the dare.

  My public speaking engagements made it very clear to me that walking into a room and limping into one are two different emotions. I could make my way across a floor, but I couldn’t negotiate stairs. It was the one remaining hurdle to camouflage that I couldn’t beat. As much as I practiced, hour after hour, I couldn’t Fred Astaire an entrance or exit, up or down any stairs. Still can’t.

  Though I’d been blessed by the Guy Upstairs, He had left his mark.

  For the first time, I began feeling old. My heavy-duty rehabilitation continued: I had to keep working on my limbs, every day, if I wanted to avoid being a gimp. For the first time I started feeling lonely—very lonely. Solitude and my cerebellum became close buddies. I didn’t li
ke the feeling, but I couldn’t stop it.

  It was like a cancer taking over my personality.

  My vanity overshadowed my pragmatism. I kept making money as a public speaker, but in private . . .

  When the millennium came, I spent the evening ringing in the new year—alone. For ten years I’d been looking forward to that moment. I’d made it . . . on the outside. On the inside, a different emotion prevailed. I started to hate my own self-pity. Though the year had been good to me, I was still a half-assed invalid. Not looked up to, but looked at. I didn’t feel like Evans any more. Lack of agility gave me a lack of confidence; lack of confidence gave me a lack of social graces. They used to come naturally. Now they weren’t coming at all.

  Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent. Hope was fading fast.

  Did I like myself? No. Did I like who I was becoming? No.

  24

  You didn’t return my call, you snob.”

  “You’re calling me a snob?” I burst out laughing. “That’s a helluva compliment coming from the world champ. Thanks for being here, Graydon.”

  “Thanks for not inviting me.”

  For an hour we laughed, talked, reminisced.

  Graydon Carter stood tall in my life—among the tallest. Forget the fact that for more than twenty years he’s been editor in chief of Vanity Fair. Forget the fact that he’s the hottest ticket in our town wherever and whenever he arrives. What’s more important is that during the worst of my trials, when I was looked upon with total disfavor, Woodland was always his first stop when arriving in Flicksville.

  Here’s a guy who needs me zero, and he’s one of the very few in my life who’s gone out of his way to be there for me at my lowest. Here’s a guy who throws the year’s hottest Hollywood party of the year, every year . . . and he’s here at Woodland three hours before it starts.

  Together we walked toward the projection room. I couldn’t help but think how insensitive my behavior’d been. Not only had I failed to send him a thank-you note after he’d come to the hospital three times and been turned away, but since I returned to Woodland I hadn’t even had the courtesy to place a call to let him know I was still breathing . . . well, sort of. Or to RSVP for his Oscar party. And this was one of the most sought-after men in the world, one who had stayed by my side through thin and thin.