Talking to Brett Morgen, whose The Kid Stays in the Picture is getting more media attention than most documentaries do, is interesting because he sounds a lot like the subject of his film: the producer Robert Evans, who ruled Paramount Pictures from 1966 to 1974, crashed in the ’80s, and then wrote a scary, funny memoir. He’s speaking over the phone from Austin, where The Kid is converting another room of arthouse liberals into worshippers of power, money, and looks.

Morgen won’t apologize to those who object that his movie, which he directed with Nanette Burstein, is too pro-Evans. "We didn’t want to deconstruct his life. The film is Bob Evans. If you want an ‘objective’ documentary, go somewhere else.

"Originally I wrote it like Citizen Kane, with a reporter coming to the house trying to find out ‘the secret of Bob Evans.’ " Morgen rewrote the film to let Evans tell his own story — a dangerous decision in more ways than one. "How are you going to make an audience sit and listen to a voiceover for 90 minutes? I thought we had a 10 percent chance that the film would work. Everyone told me I had to interview third parties. But I resisted that temptation, because I thought that would turn it into an E! True Hollywood Story."

As the film’s narrator and its subject, Evans was well placed to try to control the film. So how did Morgen hold out? "The only way to deal with Bob is to be strong. He respects power and authority. I said to him: ‘You remember when you were acting in The Sun Also Rises, and [producer] Darryl F. Zanuck said, "The kid stays in the picture," and you decided you wanted to be the guy who gets to say that? Guess what, it’s my film and you’re just an actor, and I’m the one who gets to say that the kid can stay in the picture.’ "

Evans was reluctant to let the film delve into his cocaine use, or into the murder of Roy Radin, an entrepreneur who was involved in the financing of Evans’s production The Cotton Club, but Morgen insisted. "Now he won’t watch the first two-thirds of the film. He’ll only watch the last third. We were screening it at his house, and he called the projectionist from another room and said, ‘What part are you up to?’ The projectionist said, ‘We’re just beginning the drug section.’ And Bob went in to watch the rest."

What about Evans’s claim that as producer of The Godfather and Chinatown he has as much right to be called the author of those works as their directors? "I didn’t cross-examine him about it. I understand what he means. I’m as proud of producing The Kid Stays in the Picture as I am of directing it. And I know how he feels [about not getting due credit], because now that the movie’s out, people are calling it ‘the Robert Evans film’ or ‘Robert Evans’s film’!"

And what has Morgen learned about filmmaking from Evans? "Go for the unexpected. Don’t be safe. If you’re safe, your work will be mediocre. If you go for the unexpected, you have a chance of touching magic. That’s the essence of Bob. Once I said to him, ‘Bob, why in the world did you hire Robert Altman to direct Popeye? I mean, the guy was a fringe filmmaker, particularly in 1980, and you were doing a big Walt Disney–Paramount co-production Christmas franchise.’ And he said to me, ‘I was looking for the unexpected. I didn’t know if it was going to work or not, but I knew we’d get something irreverent, and that’s what I wanted.’ I think that’s a really important lesson to take from this film and from Bob."

The Kid Stays in the Picture opens this Friday at the Kendall Square. Read Chris Fujiwara’s review here.