The Great Gatsby

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JackFavell
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by JackFavell »

That's right! Yes, that's right out of Fitzgerald. It occurs to me he could have worked on the script...

nope I looked it up -

Vera Caspary (novel)

Jay Dratler (screenplay) and
Samuel Hoffenstein (screenplay) and
Elizabeth Reinhardt (screenplay) (as Betty Reinhardt)

Ring Lardner Jr. (uncredited)
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MissGoddess
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by MissGoddess »

I have the book and no doubt caspary was influenced, at least as far as characters go. Preminger moved in those circles, too. Shelby Carpenter is my favorite Vincent Price character, along with "Mark Cardigan" (I love the name) in His Kind of Woman. Such phonies, both, yet charming and self-aware. :D
"There's only one thing that can kill the movies, and that's education."
-- Will Rogers
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JackFavell
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by JackFavell »

I love Mark Cardigan! And Shelby. and The Baron of Arizona, but that's not the same.
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MissGoddess
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by MissGoddess »

oh, yes! the baron is great!

As for Gatsby movie versions, though none of the players (except Sam Waterston) I admire, it's the '74 version that I probably like the best for its tone. There is admittedly something vacant about the main characte. The closest we ever seem to get to seeing anything real from him is via his desire for Daisy. She's his weak spot and raison d'etre.

Alan Ladd seemed more believable as a man in love than Redford, but he also seemed more flesh-and-blood. I am not sure Gatsby is supposed to be that well defined. Maybe he was supposed to be 90% illusion, like so many "self made men" of that era and that was what Fitz was trying to say? I don't know. I don't pretend to really understand Fitzgerald's works, though I enjoyed reading them all. I thought his power with capturing mood and ambiance in words was his greatest charm, and that's almost impossible to capture on film without a really artistic person at the helm.
"There's only one thing that can kill the movies, and that's education."
-- Will Rogers
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JackFavell
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by JackFavell »

Wow, I think you are right, Miss G. maybe Gatsby is not meant to be delineated well, though Ladd certainly does a great job. Everything and everybody swirls around him, but he is not really much of anything, because he's erased himself. He's an image with no substance. His forcing the issue with Daisy is the catalyst for a lot of bad stuff happening, but it isn't like he is strong enough to take her. He and Daisy remember their past as being greater than it really was, they each were seen through a fog and the reality can't compare. He IS the mist of mistaken memory, if he had not died (uselessly), I can only picture him drifting off like a ghost, or just fading away without Daisy's love to propel something real happening.
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MissGoddess
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by MissGoddess »

you said it as well as Fitzgerald could!

Fitzgerald interestingly tells the story from the point of view of an outsider, which distances us even more from who Gatsby really was. It's as if Gatsby was quicksilver, and if you moved in too close, he'd vanish. All of which sounds achingly romantic in the author's beautiful words, but in a living man it is a tragedy.
"There's only one thing that can kill the movies, and that's education."
-- Will Rogers
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Rita Hayworth
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by Rita Hayworth »

Miss Goddess ... I love your new avatar ... so freaking cute!
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MissGoddess
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by MissGoddess »

thank you! and little felix thanks you. :D
"There's only one thing that can kill the movies, and that's education."
-- Will Rogers
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charliechaplinfan
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by charliechaplinfan »

Felix is super cute April.

Trying to understand Gatsby is like trying to grasp fresh air, we only have what Carraway manages to surmise and the closest we get is from his father but that's only the early Gatsby. What exactly had he been doing? The picture of Cody? Is there some hidden message there?

I think Fitz is good at presenting these society people as humans but by showing us that they can be detestable, for me it's a question of who is the most detestable, I don't think there is an answer. Perhaps it's Tom who beats up his mistress for making a remark about Daisy and flaunting his affairs in Daisy's face. Or maybe it's Daisy for being too weakwilled with Gatsby and remaining with a brute like Tom and killing a woman and showing as much remorse as the rest of us might feel for carelessly killing a spider. Jordan although a secondary character is shown to be self absorbed. All the party goers, I wonder if they are all as bad as Tom and Daisy? Is that what Fitz is trying to say, that the burden of money can make monsters of some people. Of course I can see Tom and Daisy being transplanted into our aristocracy and them behaving the same. It's such a well written book, not very long but gets so much across and seems to capture more than any other work just what the Jazz Age was, it goes hand in hand with the mid twenties silents of the idle rich, Fitzgerald was in tune with the Jazz age and the pace early on and from him it branched out to other novels and countless Hollywood movies.

I've never seen Alan Ladd's Gatsby, I bet it was good. I've always pictured Redford as Gatsby but since reading it again I don't see him, perhaps facially Leonardo Di Caprio is right but he's too old now, he should have played him 10 years before, he'd have been facially perfect then.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
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JackFavell
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by JackFavell »

His writing is a dream. I love opening one of his books and starting to read, his first sentences are so gracious and beautifully, perfectly worded. Such ugliness portrayed though,once you get into the meat of his stories. Not even ugliness, more like.... deadly callowness. I think most modern novels owe a great debt to Fitz.
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charliechaplinfan
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by charliechaplinfan »

I read all of his work when I was quite young, including his short stories, I can't seem to remember too much detail about the stories but I remember liking Tender is the Night and The Last Tycoon, I so wished he'd finished it, I wasn't that clued up about Hollywood then so I couldn't see the parellels but I'd like to reread it see how it feels today.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
feaito

Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by feaito »

Ali, Have you seen the movie version of "The Last Tycoon"?
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charliechaplinfan
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Re: The Great Gatsby

Post by charliechaplinfan »

No, I've never seen it, Robert De Niro rings a bell though, which makes me wonder why I've never watched it, De Niro and Fitzgerald with a hint of Irving Thalberg thrown in.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
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