The Great Gatsby - Remake in the Works

[Stanley Doble]

I'm not damning the movie. The decision to spend a fortune to locate, rent and ship 2 cars for props, and get them totally wrong, made me suspicious of the movie. The comments on this board re the costumes and actors confirm the suspicion. But I won't condemn it without seeing it. The farthest I will go is to say the prospects are not looking good.

At this point it looks like they will turn out some kind of a movie. It may even be entertaining. But it won't have what the book has.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

The habitues of this board should understand Gatsby if anyone would. He might as well be your patron saint. Maybe not enough people have read it. That is understandable. If they read it and understood it, and if they had the historical background to get all the nuances,maybe they would feel as I do.

I feel I understand it. The early part of this century gave birth to a lot of real-life Gatsbys ... minus the romance with Daisy. In fact, I'm writing a book about one of them: James Oviatt, the son of a Mormon blacksmith who aspired to, and at moments achieved, the Gatsby-esque life. His story has a tragic, essentially self-destructive ending.

 

[Stanley Doble]

What is more I will damn a movie for one flaw, a gaffe lasting one second, if it is important enough.

Example. In the movie Titanic there is a scene where Leonardo and what's her name are running away from a sailor. They dive into an elevator and make their escape. As the elevator starts down she gives the sailor the finger.

That one gesture was enough to ruin the movie for me. I was no longer watching two young people in love, on their way to a tragic end. I was watching a couple of modern day actors farting around.

Here is why. That gesture did not exist in 1912 and if it did a well brought up young lady would never have heard of it. She would have thumbed her nose. Do you know what that means? She would have touched the end of her thumb to the tip of her nose with the fingers spread. If she wanted to be particularly devilish she would have put out her tongue at the same time.

That one gesture broke the spell like having a fire alarm go off in your ear during a beautiful dream.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I feel I understand it. The early part of this century gave birth to a lot of real-life Gatsbys ... minus the romance with Daisy. In fact, I'm writing a book about one of them: James Oviatt, the son of a Mormon blacksmith who aspired to, and at moments achieved, the Gatsby-esque life. His story has a tragic, essentially self-destructive ending.

This is eerie. Gatsby's fate is the same. At the end of the book his life is already falling apart. He could have saved himself but he would not abandon Daisy. Even when Wilson held a gun on him he might have escaped with his life if he told him who was really driving the car.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

This is eerie. Gatsby's story is essentially the same. At the end of the book his life is already falling apart. He could have saved himself even then but he would not abandon Daisy. Even when Wilson held a gun on him he might have escaped with his life if he told him who was really driving the car.

Oviatt's story hints at what could have happened to Gatsby, had he lived into his eighties. James Oviatt raised himself up to the world of the wealthy: he hobnobbed with them, traveled with them, invested with them, played golf with them ... yet never quite belonged in their circle. Oviatt found this out in the Crash of '29, when those same wealthy banker pals turned their backs on his financial woes. He survived the Depression and thrived beyond it, but with a newfound bitterness.

Seeing the world of the 1920s --his chosen, favored world-- evaporate in the '30s, Oviatt became ardently anti-Roosevelt, anti-Semitic, and anti-Communist. By the 1950s and '60s, he was not-so-secretly hosting and funding ultra Right wing paramilitary groups and militias. Could Gatsby have turned out the same way?

 

[Flat Foot Floey]

Well at least he didn't work for Hugo Boss.



Sorry for my bad joke, Marc. Couldn't resist

 

[Stanley Doble]

If Gatsby had lived he would probably have gone to prison. After his death the police found stolen bonds in his house. This explains the mysterious phone calls, and why Wolfshiem would not go to the funeral. His money was already running out (he had cut out the parties, dismissed the servants and replaced them with sinister looking friends of Wolfshiem). The bond deal would have recouped his fortunes at least temporarily but was highly risky. How close the police were to tracing the bonds, there is no way to say. And then there was the hit and run charge.

The best outcome I could see would have been if Daisy had left Tom at once, the bond deal went through and they booked passage on a liner for Rio one jump ahead of the cops. This would have changed the story from tragedy to farce.

He would never have left without Daisy. As soon as the police traced the car he would have been arrested. Wilson knew the car, he had filled it with gas for Buchanan. That is how he came to hunt down Buchanan. Buchanan ratted out Gatsby - then the Buchanans packed their bags and skipped town without even phoning Gatsby to warn him.

If Wilson had reported his suspicions to the police instead of gunning for Buchanan they would have arrested Gatsby for manslaughter and when they searched the house they would have found the bonds. His only safety was in flight. Yet he stayed waiting for Daisy.

 

[Stanley Doble]

It wouldn't have helped if Oviatt had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Look at Jock Whitney. His birth and upbringing did not stop him from embezzling from his friends and it did not stop them from having him arrested, or the judge from giving him just as stiff a sentence as if he had been born poor.

Oviatt's banker pals were probably in worse trouble than he was. As long as they kept up a front and nobody looked at the books too close they had a chance to pull through. But when the ship is sinking and there aren't enough life jackets it's every man for himself.

It's likely that many of those bankers came from the same kind of background that Oviatt did anyway. In those days the self made man was a lot more common than today.

 

[3PcSuit]

That one gesture was enough to ruin the movie for me ["one second of screen time"]. I was no longer watching two young people in love, on their way to a tragic end. I was watching a couple of modern day actors farting around.

Save for the fact the gesture DID exist in 1912 (low and behold, even 1866. . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Hoss_Radbourn_finger.jpg), what if she gave him the evil eye, the Italian "up yours" gesture instead. . . would even 50% of the audience know what the hell was going on? Ultimately movies are a product, made to serve audiences, even uncultured audiences.

Instead of damning a movie as a whole because one department screwed up and someone else didn't catch it in the grueling 16+ hour days, best to evaluate it as a whole.

I was watching "Young Frankenstein" last night, and, less than 40 years later, I realized probabaly less than 20% of the audience understands the "Chatanooga Choochoo reference" as Dr. Frankenstein pulled in to the Transylvania Station. I probably wouldn't include a reference like that today unless I made it more obvious with the song itself, or them singing it.

Yet you are expecting a movie made at a time where probably less than 1% of the participants are still alive, to be 100% period-accurate to an audience with almost no expectations from having lived in that time. They probably have a very vague impression. Here too a lot of people have impressions about the past that are plain wrong. People were people back then, not gods. That includes women, too. Women were flipping the bird at each other at least as far back as the time of the Roman empire. Sure, maybe the cultured ones didn't do it in good company - just like politicians don't like getting caught with male escorts in airport restrooms.




Formal attire and wardrobes were more important [for men] all those years ago. . . that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that not everyone was a tailor and they didn't all have perfectly fitting clothing, the physiques of models, actors, actresses. There were UGLY people back then too, and people who wore clothes that didn't fit perfectly, even the rich.

Dare I say it, there were people walking around with bottoms missing from their vests, clothes that they'd grown too big/small for. I forget who said it, but talking about a vest being too loose/tight is not only subjective in an extreme, but nitpicking that would make me want to pull my hair out if it were my movie (no not for making a mistake - more a matter of WATCHING a movie and being an expert versus shooting a movie and actually being an expert).


Anyway, I think people whose hobbies are other than 1920s fashion should be given a *bit* of a break. Maybe they do another era, like the Victorian period, very well. Being a costume designer or in charge of obtaining vintage automobiles not having lived in the times, with only B&W photographs to look at is probably very challenging. There is an awful lot of erroneous information on here about people's perceptions of a time. I bet at least a third of them are wrong. Looking at and idolizing a certain period of time is never going to be an objective way of evaluating something.

Who knows what is available in classic cars in Australia in the timeframe that the film is shooting, maybe doing stunts in them? Again, unless it is your line of work, wouldn't be nearly as quick to judge. What if they want to flip the cars, attach them to a camera car, have them in the rain, have them in the ocean.

I recall there is a rather nasty car crash in "Gatsby," a fatal one. . .

 

[rue]

He would never have left without Daisy.

That's the part I don't get. Daisy was such an idiot I can't understand why he fell in love with her in the first place. Love is most definitely blind.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

There were UGLY people back then too, and people who wore clothes that didn't fit perfectly, even the rich.

Well, my beef is not primarily with the costumes being ill-fitting, though I don't understand why Tom Buchanan's straining vest couldn't have been let out -- it's not a difficult alteration. No, my biggest problem is with these costumes being tailored in a manner that wasn't seen in the early 1920s (or any other year of that decade, in fact).


Why wasn't Sandy Powell, the costume designer for "The Aviator", hired? Who knows. It's a pity, because she's had MUCH more experience with the '20s than "Gatsby"s Catherine Martin has.


Sandy Powell: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0694309/

vs. Catherine Martin: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0552039/

 

[Stanley Doble]

"That's the part I don't get. Daisy was such an idiot I can't understand why he fell in love with her in the first place. Love is most definitely blind. "

Who knows the secrets of the human heart? Was Gatsby in love with a flesh and blood Daisy or his Platonic ideal of what she stood for in his mind? Did he see her as she was or as he wished she was? Did he die for one who couldn't stay true or did he die protecting the most beautiful most desirable woman in the world?

 

[lolly_loisides]

Why wasn't Sandy Powell, the costume designer for "The Aviator", hired? Who knows. It's a pity, because she's had MUCH more experience with the '20s than "Gatsby"s Catherine Martin has.


Sandy Powell: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0694309/

vs. Catherine Martin: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0552039/

That's easy. Sandy Powell isn't married to Baz Lurhmann. Who said nepotism was dead?

 

[Marc Chevalier]

That's easy. Sandy Powell isn't married to Baz Lurhmann. Who said nepotism was dead?

Well, that goes far in answering that. What say you, 3PcSuit?

 

[Stanley Doble]

"There were UGLY people back then too, and people who wore clothes that didn't fit perfectly, even the rich."

That's not The Great Gatsby. That's the Keystone Cops.

If you want to see ugly people dressed in ugly ill fitting clothes you are spoiled for choice. They make 100 movies like that every year. Or just take a stroll around Walmart.

I can't figure out why you even look at this board if well dressed people good taste talent skill and artistry annoy you so much. Aren't they pretty much the whole point of this web site?

 

[Mojito]

There has to be a happy medium - somewhere between absolutely 100% accuracy of a given cross section of society in the specific time frame in 1922 when the story is set, and the other polarity of "cheap costume party" with chook feather boas, 1960s style fringed dresses and men wearing braces with no vest or jacket. The question is, where does the compromise become so great it spoils our enjoyment of the movie and our suspension of disbelief?

Contrary to what has been suggested, I will accept some compromises. I've worked in my research with film advisers and those who recreate costuming for documentaries, so I do have a grasp on the issues they face (one colleague was nearly thrown off a set by James Cameron because he interupted a "Titanic" documentary shot for which he was an adviser - he picked the wrong moment to point out an error in the uniform of a deck officer...he regarded the incident with amusement later, and remains good friends with Cameron). To use an example, I enjoyed the costuming in the movie "Titanic" tremendously - I might have nitpicked the odd item (Rose wandering around on deck in the day without a hat, for example) but by and large I thought it very good, with many original vintage outfits. One matter of deliberate compromise, however, was in make-up. Women of that class would not have been as "made up" as the women were depicted in the movie - the beautiful shades of lipstick, for example, were not period accurate but were very much indicative of the 90s when the movie was made. However, I was willing to accept this - the effect of minimally made-up women would have been far too disconcerting for an audience that has for generations been accustomed to obvious use of make up.

With the stills I've seen so far, I've commented favourably on Myrtle's hairstyle, as the curly bouffant bob with a scarf as a bandeau was a popular style of the time, even if we don't associate it as much with the 1920s today. I'd further say that the colour combination in one of Daisy's dresses is very much an accurate reflection of the era as well...and even though it's a snugger fit, some very petite framed women did wear closer fitting attire (and even gowns with a natural waistline).

However, I stand by my criticisms regarding, for example, Myrtle's costuming. Fitzgerald is quite specific in what type of clothing he has Myrtle wearing when we first see her, and then later when she changes into an afternoon dress. This is part of his character statement about her (I provided a few textual citations earlier in this thread), and they've been discarded in favour of a glib, caricaturish outfit that looks more 80s. Looking at some of the crowd scenes, I'm more nervous than ever about the "costume party" effect, given what people are wearing. I'd argue that a more effective way to evoke the era is to layer it with accuracy where possible, including costume details. Compromise if you must to get the message across (e.g. with the Titanic's make up), but why make changes for the sake of it? There's a wonderful diversity in women's clothing in 1922 - from the lingering, softer lines of Art Nouveau to the harder edges of Art Deco, from the bold palette of the Ballets Russes that continued to influence the use of colour to the pastel shades and ribbonwork of designers like the Boué Soeurs, the rich use of Orientalist influeces, a few bold women in New York starting to shorten their hems more significantly and the others who adhered to French fashions with a longer hem...any character statement you want to make can be made with the designs extant at the time. Why gratuitously change the way bandeaux were worn? Why turn them into Alice headbands? What purpose does it serve, other than to make a movie set in the 1920s look like it was set in 2011? This will ultimately date the movie far more than sticking to the original fashions would.

 

[rue]

Who knows the secrets of the human heart? Was Gatsby in love with a flesh and blood Daisy or his Platonic ideal of what she stood for in his mind? Did he see her as she was or as he wished she was? Did he die for a flibbertigibbet or did he die protecting the most beautiful most desirable woman in the world?

I say he was in love with what he wanted her to be, but in reality she was a flibbertigibbet and he died for a woman he really didn't know that never loved him at all.

 

[rue]

Well said Mojito.

 

[lolly_loisides]

"What purpose does it serve, other than to make a movie set in the 1920s look like it was set in 2011? This will ultimately date the movie far more than sticking to the original fashions would." Mojito

Yes, that quote deserves it's own thread. There are so many period movies (especially from the 50's set in the 20's) with terrible costuming that end up looking at best terribly dated and at worst absurd.

 

[Mojito]

Gatsby - whether consciously or not - seems to have realised that Daisy and the green light stood for something far more intangible than what she literally was:

"Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one."