HOLLYWOOD — Only Robert Evans could walk into a room full of journalists, tell a vulgar, unprintable story as if it were a joke, miss the fact that nobody laughed and act as if he's the most charming man on the planet.
Of course, we are talking about a Hollywood legend of sorts, whose next stop is — TV cartoon character. Really.
"Kid Notorious," which casts the producer (who provides the voice) as a James Bond-esque superhero of sorts, debuts on Comedy Central Oct. 22. And only Evans could see this as some sort of huge accomplishment.
"I've made Hollywood history. . . . You name me one other man in the history of Hollywood who started back in Adolf Zucker's days, that started running a studio and ended up with his own animated cartoon. Name one. You can't. Do you know how exciting that is, to break barriers."
Evans anticipates that, when his obituary is eventually written, "the first paragraph will be, I'm an animated cartoon, and the second paragraph will say that I was arrested for cocaine in 1980. Then they will talk about my credits. But to be an animated cartoon from the head of a movie studio is a good jump. I've done everything in this business."
If the animated Evans is anything like the real thing, it may not be the biggest thing on TV, but it will certainly have the biggest ego. There's a certain charm to the guy, but he also comes off more than a bit like a lecherous old man.
And talking about "Kid Notorious" to the people behind it is a little bit like talking to Alice about Wonderland.
"The thing that we found about Bob is that if you try to do stories that really happened to Bob, nobody would believe it," said executive producer Alan Cohen. "The only way to make them believable is to put them in a cartoon."
"So we tried to find nuggets of his life to expand upon," added executive producer Alan Freedland. "Bob is this James Bond-like Hollywood producer, and he's out there seducing women, he's out there taking on world leaders, and he's doing it all while not spilling his cosmopolitan drink."
"Kid Notorious" will feature Evans "reviving 'The Godfather' on Broadway with an all-hip hop cast, losing his treasured home to the French in a poker game and making movie deals with Hollywood's A-list, while saving the world from mass destruction."
It's all part of a continuing campaign to craft the legend of Evans.
"With the documentary (the biographical 'The Kid Stays in the Picture'), I think we were very consciously constructing the legend of Robert Evans," Brett Morgen said. "And one of the great things about the cartoon show is, I think we're getting much closer to the heart of who the man is."
Or at least who he wants people to think he is. When Evans and his partners were trying to sell "Kid Notorious," they invited various executives from various TV networks to Woodland to talk about the project, overlapping the meetings and entertaining them in his own unique style.
"When I first walked in, Slash was there, sitting on the couch, eating sausages," said Lauren Corrao, Comedy Central's senior vice president of original programming. "And there was this beautiful, 6-foot woman in a red terrycloth robe, barefoot, who kept beckoning Evans every five minutes. Even the Wall Street Journal was there, having lunch with Evans on the lawn.
"What they did in this carefully orchestrated pitch was give us laypeople a glimpse into Evans' glamorous and seductive world. And that's what 'Kid Notorious' will do for its viewers."
The animated cast of "Kid" includes Evans' English butler, English, who's based on his real English butler, Alan Selka. And Selka testifies to the truthfulness of the outrageousness of his employer's life. "When he came, he was so, so English that he wore white gloves for breakfast when he served," Evans said. "That ain't my style. So I said to myself, 'I want to see how good this Englishman is. I want to see what he can do.'
"Let me say that he saw more in one month working for me than he saw in his 15 years before."
Selka said that, shortly after going to work for Evans, he was carrying caviar and chilled vodka to his boss. "As I walked into the bedroom, due to a double-take, I lost my balance somehow. And, for the first time in my career, I dropped the tray," Selka said. "Now, exactly what the circumstances were, discretion will not allow me to say. But I can assure you that the stories that we're using are in no way an exaggeration of life at Woodland."
For his part, Evans said that "Kid Notorious" and "The Kid Stays in the Picture" are both "Disney versions" of his life. And the folks at Comedy Central believe it. "Robert Evans is a renegade. He's a charming man who never plays by the rules," Corrao said. "He saved Paramount in the '70s and now, immortalized as a cartoon character, he'll be called on to save the world. In either case, he really always gets the girl."
E-MAIL: pierce@desnews.com