Laying an East Egg
4
Number of times I've read The Great Gatsby.
17
Years since I first read The Great Gatsby.
2
Newport, Rhode Island mansions, Rosecliff and Marble House, were used for Gatsby's mansion in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 Gatsby movie, which I saw yesterday for the first time.
I'd been warned that the movie was a letdown, and for all these years, I feared seeing an inferior movie version of it. When is the movie adaptation of a great book every any good? I now wonder more than ever. Part of the problem is that I've had these great characters in my imagination for almost 20 years -- there are very few real-life actors who can live up to the mental image of great literary characters. Robert Redford can't do it as Gatsby -- I pictured Gatsby as being larger-than-life; he seems sort of desperate in most of the movie. Mia Farrow can't do it as Daisy Buchanan -- I pictured Daisy as being fake but irresistible; Farrow's version is pretty resistible. Was the book-version Nick Carroway really such a vanilla, spineless, eternal third-wheel? (George Wilson? Yes. Nick Carroway -- ehhhhh, c'mon now!)
The best acting in the movie, I think, was from the two supporting women. Karen Black made a pretty good Myrtle Wilson (Tom Buchanan's strumpet), and I really liked Lois Chiles as Jordan Baker, Carroway's sort-of girlfriend. She's hot, rich and dangerous -- if only the movie Carroway had some personality, there may have been at least some mild chemistry between them, as I thought existed in the book. BTW, check out Karen Black's and Lois Chiles' IMDB sites -- neither has been hurting for quantity of acting gigs in the 3+ decades since Gatsby.
While there's little alternative, it's cringe-inducing to see movie characters drop bastardized versions of great Fitzgerald lines into casual conversation. "Can you imagine what this island must have looked like to those Dutch explorers, Gatsby?"
The movie's high-budget-ness is actually its best part. It's fun to see grandiose-scale renditions of Roaring Twenties parties. Just like reading Jurassic Park made you want to see the dinosaurs in movie form, so did the book make me want to see and hear a Gatsby party -- New York's partying crowd getting their bootleg drink on, grooving to the Charleston, slurring rumors about Gatsby. There are, at least, a few things that the medium of film can convey better.
Number of times I've read The Great Gatsby.
17
Years since I first read The Great Gatsby.
2
Newport, Rhode Island mansions, Rosecliff and Marble House, were used for Gatsby's mansion in Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 Gatsby movie, which I saw yesterday for the first time.
I'd been warned that the movie was a letdown, and for all these years, I feared seeing an inferior movie version of it. When is the movie adaptation of a great book every any good? I now wonder more than ever. Part of the problem is that I've had these great characters in my imagination for almost 20 years -- there are very few real-life actors who can live up to the mental image of great literary characters. Robert Redford can't do it as Gatsby -- I pictured Gatsby as being larger-than-life; he seems sort of desperate in most of the movie. Mia Farrow can't do it as Daisy Buchanan -- I pictured Daisy as being fake but irresistible; Farrow's version is pretty resistible. Was the book-version Nick Carroway really such a vanilla, spineless, eternal third-wheel? (George Wilson? Yes. Nick Carroway -- ehhhhh, c'mon now!)
The best acting in the movie, I think, was from the two supporting women. Karen Black made a pretty good Myrtle Wilson (Tom Buchanan's strumpet), and I really liked Lois Chiles as Jordan Baker, Carroway's sort-of girlfriend. She's hot, rich and dangerous -- if only the movie Carroway had some personality, there may have been at least some mild chemistry between them, as I thought existed in the book. BTW, check out Karen Black's and Lois Chiles' IMDB sites -- neither has been hurting for quantity of acting gigs in the 3+ decades since Gatsby.
While there's little alternative, it's cringe-inducing to see movie characters drop bastardized versions of great Fitzgerald lines into casual conversation. "Can you imagine what this island must have looked like to those Dutch explorers, Gatsby?"
The movie's high-budget-ness is actually its best part. It's fun to see grandiose-scale renditions of Roaring Twenties parties. Just like reading Jurassic Park made you want to see the dinosaurs in movie form, so did the book make me want to see and hear a Gatsby party -- New York's partying crowd getting their bootleg drink on, grooving to the Charleston, slurring rumors about Gatsby. There are, at least, a few things that the medium of film can convey better.
posted by Alex at
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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