LOS ANGELES - Robert Evans has been an actor, a studio executive, a producer, a husband (six times) and a pal to Hollywood rabble-rousers such as Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Roman Polanski.
Now, at 73, he's an animated cartoon.
"Kid Notorious" follows the adventures of "Kid" Evans; his butler, English; his cat, Puss Puss; and his housekeeper-cook, Tollie Mae, as Evans cuts show business deals, romances women and schmoozes Hollywood. The Comedy Central cartoon debuts 10:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday.
The brash Evans narrates in his world-weary, deep voice and writes his own dialogue because he figured no one else could capture his original style.
Evans was head of production at Paramount Pictures from 1966 to '75, when the studio turned out "Love Story," "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown" and the first two editions of "The Godfather."
Any chance his life is being reduced to a joke by "Kid Notorious"?
"Do you know how exciting that is to break barriers?" Evans said. "To be an animated cartoon from the head of a movie studio is a good jump. I don't look at it as a drop at all. I'm enjoying doing this show more than any movie I've ever done. It's irreverent and I love being irreverent."
Evans, whose life was chronicled in last year's documentary "The Kid Stays in the Picture," just hopes he has enough stories to tell.
"All the stories are truthful," he said. "By truthful, I change names to protect the guilty."
In the debut episode called "Hip-Hop to the Godfather," Sharon Stone ticks off Evans when she drops out of his next film to pursue her own Broadway version of "The Vagina Monologues."
After Evans' erratic driving lands him in jail, he meets up with members of two rival street gangs. Inspiration strikes and Evans decides to take his new cellmates to Broadway with an updated version of "The Godfather" featuring a hip-hop cast. He upstages Stone by opening the same night as her show.
"Kid Notorious" is peppered with the kind of expletives and naughty puns that would turn network television censors red. Stone's character gets in her share of jabs at Evans, who doesn't mind poking fun at "Sliver," the 1993 bomb that starred Stone and was produced by Evans.
"I generally do not use vulgarity. I never have," he said. "I may do things that are rather wicked, but I don't use the English language that way. I'd much rather be Rex Harrison than Buddy Hackett. However, what my activities are something else. I really should be in jail."
Evans is an equal opportunity offender when it comes to race and sexuality, but he views the frank references as being a rule breaker.
"The thing that we found about Bob is that if you try to do stories that really happened to Bob, no one would believe him," said co-executive producer Alan Freedland. "The only way to make them believable is to put them in a cartoon. Bob is this James Bond-like Hollywood producer, and he's out there seducing women, taking on world leaders, and he's doing it all while not spilling his cosmopolitan."
Future episodes include Evans losing his Beverly Hills home called Woodland to French President Jacques Chirac in a poker game and making movie deals with Hollywood's A-list.
The butler is voiced by Alan Selka, Evans' real-life butler of 10 years.
"I can assure you that the stories that we're using are in no way an exaggeration of life at Woodland," Selka said. "No way."
Niecy Nash (of Comedy Central's "Reno 911!") is the voice of Tollie Mae, who reminds Evans that most of his demands are "not in my job description."
Typical of Evans, he invited development teams from competing networks to Woodland to hear his pitch for a cartoon. As Selka ushered them through the foyer, they noticed Evans' neighbor Slash, formerly of Guns 'N Roses, eating sausages and lounging on a couch. Slash will voice his own character during the eight-episode season.
"The great thing about working with Robert is you never know what to expect when you go to work every day," said co-executive producer Brett Morgen, who co-directed the documentary about Evans. "Some of the things I would see at the house and the experiences with Bob, it became clear that we had to somehow take this to the next step."
