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Robert Evans, the American film producer, was involved in some of Hollywood's biggest hits of the 1970s: Love Story, The Godfather, Chinatown, and more. His outspoken memoir, 1994's The Kid Stays in the Picture (499 pages, $20), has been reissued by HarperCollins.
Evans, who starred in a few movies before he decided he wasn't much of an actor, became head of production at Paramount Pictures in the 1960s and made the struggling studio an industry powerhouse.
Later, his battles with filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola, and his run-in with the law (over his use of some, um, illegal recreational substances), made headlines around the world, turning him from a behind-the-scenes producer into a capital-C celebrity. There are lots of Hollywood memoirs, but few of them are as spellbinding, not to mention entertainingly written, as this one.
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In Never Saw It Coming (Anchor Canada, 252 pages, $8), by Ontario's Linwood Barclay, a woman who claims...