He’s Still in the Picture

“Graydon wanted to call it a ‘Bob-umentary,’” said producer Robert Evans, with his characteristic dark diction. Evans was talking about the movie chronicling his life, titled “The Kid Stays in the Picture” after his 1994 memoir of that name. And the Graydon in question would be Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, who produced the movie, which will be released in June.

“You’ve never seen anything like it,” the 71-year-old Evans promised. “It’s not a documentary. It’s a performance piece.”

Over lunch on a recent afternoon, Evans told stories from his life as he paced the floor, not touching his poached salmon salad, which had been served on a table in the screening room of his Beverly Hills home.

Behind him, quilted on a pillow, was the credo “Rejection leads to obsession.”

The pool, into which a clothed Ali MacGraw famously jumped shortly before becoming his third wife, could be glimpsed through the glass doors.

Evans avoided indexing his memoir, he said, “so people couldn’t buy the book and look for their names.” Still, the book, and Evans’ six-hour narration of it on audio tapes, got quite the response. “Roman Polanski called six months ago from Paris: ‘I’m listening to your tape and laughing so hard I crashed into a tree.’”

Evans also recounted how he went from millionaire to having only $37 to his name.

“That’s been my life,” he added by way of explanation. “Money never mattered.” But with the book, the tapes, and now the movie, things have improved a bit, he acknowledged.

And now there’s another project in the works: a second installment of his autobiography.

The new book, originally titled “Seduction,” was renamed “The Fat Lady Sang,” and begins with Evans’ stroke in 1998 as he toasted director Wes Craven at his house.

Again, he’s picked up the “comeback” theme.

“I’ve been counted out [many times],” he said, adding that he went from “royalty to infamy” in his career. “I’ve been used and abused.”

Certainly, there has been plenty of drama on the stage that is Evans’ life.

He was discovered poolside by actress Norma Shearer in the 1950s at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and went from hotel guest to actor to a head of Paramount Pictures, where he green-lighted such movies as “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Love Story,” “Harold and Maude,” and “The Godfather” in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a producer, he made “Chinatown” and “Marathon Man,” among others.

Then, in the 1980s, came a fall from grace when he was linked through a business partner to the notorious “Cotton Club” murder case, involving the 1983 slaying of New York impresario Roy Radin. Evans was never indicted.

“It goes beyond any fictional drama,” he said of his life.

“People didn’t think I had the [guts] to fight back.” But, he said, “I haven’t been afraid of anything.”

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Fleiss a Would-Be Auction Hero

Heidi Fleiss is once more teetering on the edge of the fund-raising auction block, this time for the Junior League of Pasadena. According to Fleiss, the plan is to offer dinner with her and boyfriend Tom Sizemore to the highest bidder. But league president Carrie Rabkin says the couple’s involvement in the April 13 fund-raiser is still pending. “We have no ... paperwork from her,” Rabkin said Thursday. “At this point, I don’t see her as being an auction item.”

Accounts differ about how Fleiss connected with the Junior League. Rabkin says Fleiss called the league to offer herself as an auction item. Fleiss says the league contacted her, and promised paperwork that never arrived. This is the second time recently that the former Hollywood madam has been considered as an auction prize. In February, a Los Angeles-area Catholic high school announced (prematurely) that dinner with Fleiss and Sizemore would be a top auction prize at its fund-raiser. The school’s principal nixed the plan days later, after it raised concerns among parents as well as officials at the Los Angeles Archdiocese. (The school must remain unnamed to protect the innocent.)

“I can’t believe this,” says Fleiss. “I didn’t know I was in such demand! I guess it was the rejection that created a bit of a buzz.”

At a separate fund-raiser on Saturday, a brush with royalty will be the prize. Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has donated an auction item for the John Wayne Cancer Institute Auxiliary’s Odyssey Ball: an opportunity for eight people to join her for tea at the Regent Beverly Wilshire hotel.

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Hurley Delivers a Son

Actress Elizabeth Hurley gave birth to a baby boy midday on Thursday, according to the Reuters news service. She named him Damian Charles.