The odd man out

Just days before the Academy Awards, Charlie Evans Jr. has finally stopped looking for the hoped-for Oscar ticket and the tux has been put away.

But he’s still hanging onto his big Hollywood role: The Producer Who Wouldn’t Go Away.

In an unusually public airing of grievances in a town that prefers its nasty disputes be settled off camera, Evans is talking nonstop about how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decision will keep him offstage should “The Aviator,” with 11 nominations, collect the best picture statuette Sunday night.

One of four producers listed on screen for the Howard Hughes biopic, Evans recently lost his last bid -- the academy arbitration committee’s ruling -- to receive an Oscar should the movie win. Others left out in the cold by the arbitration process --”Million Dollar Baby” screenwriter Paul Haggis and another “Aviator” producer, Sandy Climan -- have kept a low profile. But not Evans. He’s pointing fingers at some Hollywood heavyweights who’d like nothing more than to put this acrimonious flap behind them.

The heavyweights in question are Michael Mann (“Collateral”), who set up the project, and Graham King (“Traffic”), whose Initial Entertainment Group financed it and oversaw the production. Both received the academy stamp of approval. That decision, Evans says, was the latest chapter in a David-and-Goliath tale in which the little guy is given less credence than industry veterans.

Evans’ battle began with a 2001 suit he filed in Los Angeles Superior Court to secure his producing credit on the movie. In the suit, Evans argued that he brought star Leonardo DiCaprio to the project, which he then introduced to Mann.

“Mann always fancies himself a ‘creator’ rather than a link in the chain,” said Evans.

Convinced he’s been made a scapegoat for the academy’s decision, Mann says Evans was given a producer credit only to sidestep time-consuming litigation that would have stymied the project.

“[Evans’] recitation of history, to me, is like taking facts and putting them in a Cuisinart,” said Mann. “Evans is on the poster. He’s on the film. No good deed goes unpunished, it seems.”

DiCaprio declined to comment.

Look past the charges and countercharges and “The Aviator” provides a window into the circuitous course movies take to the Oscars, the challenges of determining who does what, and the value of peer recognition.

That the producers’ feud even exists traces to 1999 when a record-number five people trekked onstage to accept the honors for “Shakespeare in Love.” Amid widespread concern that the “producer” credit was being diluted, the academy limited the number of producers who could claim credit for a film.

“Our cap of three has drawn virtually no opposition,” said Bruce Davis, executive director of the group.

Three of the best picture nominees Sunday --”Million Dollar Baby,” “Ray” and “The Aviator” -- had four producers apiece. For the most part, filmmakers decide collectively who will be eligible for academy recognition, as “Ray’s” producing team recently did.

In the five years since the new guidelines, only three movies have been submitted for arbitration -- the first installment of “Lord of the Rings” and, this year, “Million Dollar Baby” and “The Aviator.”

After having spent $200,000 and a year of his time, Evans got the credit on the film. But the academy has its own process for weighing a producer’s contribution to an Oscar-nominated film. Evans’ arbitration presentation included transcripts of phone conversations, correspondence, and FedEx receipts documenting his work. During a 90-minute session late last month, the executive committee of the producers branch examined his evidence and came away unconvinced. Sources involved in the arbitration said that while Evans clearly put work into a Hughes project, they concluded that “The Aviator” had a different genesis.

Though Davis refuses to discuss specifics of the confidential arbitration, he acknowledges that the amorphous nature of the producer title makes decision-making tricky. In the absence of something concrete such as a screenplay, he says, each case takes on a “Rashomon”-like quality, serving up a multitude of perspectives.

The “Aviator” contretemps played out at last month’s Golden Globe Awards at which the film was voted best dramatic film. Evans had to do an end-run around a backstage security guard who, he claims, had been instructed to keep him away from the group photo. In one shot, the camera caught him and King facing off as Mann looked on. In another, Evans was looking in one direction and the rest in another, reinforcing his position as “odd man out.”

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” Mann later said.

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Tangled beginnings

This is how Evans’ history with the Hughes project began. Evans, the son of “Tootsie” producer Charles Evans and the nephew of former Paramount production chief Robert Evans, began a Hughes archive in 1993. Three years later, he optioned “Howard Hughes: the Untold Story” by Peter Harry Brown & Pat H. Broeske. He also commissioned screenplay drafts from Dean Ollins and Jack Fincher while the project was at New Regency.

In addition, the 42-year-old producer compiled a 17-minute DVD of newsreel footage for the filmmakers that mirrors the time frame of the movie. It starts on the set of Hughes’ “Hell’s Angels” in 1928 and ends about 20 years later, with the launch of the Spruce Goose from Long Beach harbor and Senate subcommittee hearings investigating alleged war profiteering.

Evans said he received a commitment from DiCaprio to star as Hughes providing the actor could select his own director. Kevin Spacey, who was supposed to direct, was removed from the New Regency project and a meeting was set up with Mann, DiCaprio’s choice. In December 1998, Evans and his producing partner Ron Cogan met with DiCaprio, his manager Rick Yorn, and Mann.

Sitting in the Melrose Avenue office, Evans says: “[Mann] and Yorn told me repeatedly over the course of a year that I’d have a producing credit,” he said. “When my attorney called ... Mann denied my claim -- my greenlight to file suit.” Yorn declined comment.

Mann says that although he attended a meeting with Evans, he and DiCaprio had talked about collaborating since the mid-1990s when the actor screen-tested for his James Dean project. In 1998, the actor approached him about directing a Howard Hughes movie -- an idea, he and his former producing partner Climan ultimately took to New Line, which financed John Logan’s “Aviator” screenplay.

“Aviator” hit a wall at New Line with the departure of production chief Mike DeLuca, a major advocate of the film. Fearful that the movie was too expensive, the company sold the rights back to Mann’s Forward Pass Productions. Pressure was also mounting competitively -- there were seven other Hughes projects in various states of development.

“Had ours faltered [because of pending legal action], it wouldn’t have been made,” said a source close to the project who would only speak on the condition of anonymity. “We were told to give the kid a credit, some money, and never talk to him again. Settling before it went to trial was our big mistake.”

Mann, meanwhile, was questioning his commitment to direct. In the wake of “The Insider,” the tale of tobacco industry informant Jeffrey Wigand, and “Ali,” his portrait of the heavyweight champ -- he had overdosed on bio-pictures.

In January 2002, he and DiCaprio sent a script to Martin Scorsese, and Mann set up meetings with potential financiers. King, co-executive producer of Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” agreed to put up the money, selling the North American rights to Miramax Films and Warner Bros. Mann reconnected with “Aviator” in post-production when Scorsese asked him to weigh in on the movie.

King, a British producer who started out buying foreign rights for movies, says the infighting has approached “nightmare status” and that it’s time to put it to rest.

“The academy has spoken,” King said by phone from London, where “Aviator” walked off with four prizes, including best picture, at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. “I turned down a producer credit on ‘Traffic,’ which won four Oscars, because I wasn’t there on a day-to-day basis. On ‘Aviator,’ though, I was there from the start, and if the film went over budget, the risk was all mine.”

Mann says that they talked about giving Evans a less prestigious producing credit. But he denies he reneged on promises.

“There were no representations made to this man that weren’t fulfilled,” Mann said. “Evans is on the poster. He’s on the film.”

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Strike 2, you’re out

The Producers Guild would spend weeks investigating “The Aviator” dispute before arriving at the same conclusion later reached by the academy. Despite the absence of numerical limits, only King and Mann were certified to accept the honors for “Aviator,” which the guild voted its best picture.

“It was very cut-and-dried,” PGA executive director Vance Van Petten said. “We talked to people involved and got a smattering of good testimony and evidence. Gradually, the truth emerged.”

The academy’s decisions are based on participation in five areas: development, pre-production, production, post-production, and marketing. Determinations are made case by case, but involvement in only one area is generally insufficient, insiders say.

Davis suggests that he and the rest of the committee were sympathetic to Evans’ plight. “Producers work so hard on so many projects that don’t get made,” he said. “To work on one that is admired and Oscar-nominated is the culmination of a career.”

Before “Aviator,” Evans’ only project to reach the screen was “The Brave” -- Johnny Depp’s 1997 directorial debut about a homeless father that was distributed internationally but never in the U.S. Though the “Aviator” credit will open doors for years to come, Evans says, he wanted the validation an Oscar brings.

Still, life goes on. A few weeks ago, a daughter, Charle, was born to Evans and his second wife, Kristina. And he plans to shoot “Addiction, Inc.,” a movie about tobacco scientist Victor de Noble. He describes the project as a cross between “The Firm” and “Serpico.”

Driving to work the day after the Oscar decision, however, Evans received a sudden jolt.

“And who will get to collect the best picture statuette,” the radio announcer intoned, teasing the upcoming newscast.

“I felt like he was speaking personally to me,” Evans said. “This is an emotionally charged time. I’ve loved this project deeply for 12 years -- and it has yet to love me back.”