Evans's first writing credit was on the
1984 film Starman with his partner Raynold Gideon, with whom he first worked on 1979's
A Man, a Woman, and a Bank starring
Donald Sutherland. Their second film, 1986's
Stand by Me, which Evans also produced, was nominated for an
Independent Spirit Award for
Best Feature; his and Gideon's screenplay in particular was nominated for the
Academy Award for
Best Writing (Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium), the
Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay and the
Writers Guild of America Award for
Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. Evans and Gideon went on to write and produce the
1987 film Made in Heaven before writing
Kuffs (1992), which Evans directed and Gideon produced. The film, featuring
Christian Slater, won the Special Jury Prize at the 1992
Festival du Film Policier de Cognac. The pair were given story credit for the
1995 film Cutthroat Island after performing a rewrite of "a completely different version" of the script. After writing 1997's
Jungle 2 Jungle, a remake of the 1994
French film Un indien dans la ville, Evans and Gideon wrote "screenplays and rewrites and all of that kind of stuff" before their next credited film. They struggled to have their subsequent scripts produced as each demanded too high a budget for most studios, including what they regarded as a "great
World War I love story", until they wrote the
2007 film Mr. Brooks, starring
Kevin Costner as the
title character. Fifteen years since
Kuffs, Evans said that, with
Mr. Brooks, directing again "was kind of like riding a bicycle". ==Filmography==