The Great Gatsby - Remake in the Works

[Mrs Chaddsley_Corbett]

Gemma Ward is an Australian Ex fashion Model, just shows how far an Aussie "Sheila" can go with the right Finger-Wave set and a Big White Plume!

[video=youtube;TazDjfA6HdA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazDjfA6HdA[/video]

 

[3PcSuit]

The chance of this movie being any good is practically nil. It was obvious when they announced they were using 1929 Duesenberg and Packard cars, the costumes confirm it.

The story is of a specific time and place, a wealthy suburb of New York City in the summer of 1922. Change the date more than a year or so either way and the story makes no sense.

The rest of your post aside, as you have a legitimate point, just using a car anachronistic by 7 years is no reason to get your panties up in a bunch!


Have you ever considered the practical implications of obtaining 90-y.o. automobiles?


I think shooting it digitally, 3D no less makes no sense at all for a period movie. I'll still hold out for the reviews though. It's kinda hard to believe someone would turn "Gatsby" into a $130 million stinker. . .

 

[Stanley Doble]

3Pc (may I call you by your first name? Thanks) they went all the way to America for some VERY expensive vintage cars, then paid to insure and ship them to Australia for filming and will no doubt pay to ship them back.

For a fraction of the cost they could have rented authentic cars locally. I am a vintage car guy and follow several vintage car forums, believe me the Aussies are very vintage car minded and have lots of restored cars of all makes and models, including obscure and one of a kind cars that no longer exist anywhere else in the world.

In other words it would have been CHEAPER and easier to get the details right. Obviously, he did not care to. The director has his own interpretation of the story. What are the chances of him coming up with a better story off the top of his head than the one Fitzgerald gave him?

Reminds me of the old story about the film version of Hamlet mounted by Morris Fineberg, Produced by Morris Fineberg, Directed by Morris Fineberg, Additional Dialog by Morris Fineberg.

Fitzgerald does not name specific makes and models, he describes cars and the impression they leave. So it is not a matter of finding an exact car, but one that fits the description. The right car could be any make provided it is the right age color and style.

Think about it. Could the Gatsby story be set in 2011? It would be impossible. People don't think that way, don't act that way anymore. The story is of a specific place and time.

I have to say, one detail can spoil a movie. The magic of a movie is based on illusion. Break the illusion and you break the spell, you are no longer held in the grip of a thrilling story. You are watching some people in funny clothes acting silly.

The director doesn't get it. He doesn't understand the story. He thinks he is making another run of the mill movie and that is what he is going to end up with, if he is lucky. He is throwing away the best part of the story.

He probably thinks it is good enough for the boobs who go to the movies these days. They have no idea what they are watching and don't care, so ham it up and give them the kind of show they are used to. It doesn't matter if the movie stinks. By the time they see the show and find it out you have their money. The important thing is the publicity and the advertising campaign.

He may be right. The people who follow this forum, and who actually read books, are such a small minority as to not be worth worrying about. Too bad, he had the chance to create a gem and settled for a rhinestone or possibly a glass doorknob.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Maybe the director thinks he is making a 30s gangster picture. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In 1929, Gatsby wouldn't have lasted a week as a bootlegger.

No kidding. When Prohibition came in rum running and bootlegging were a kind of light hearted game for swashbuckling characters. As time went on, those early bootleggers got bumped off and the business consolidated in the hands of vicious sociopaths and killers.

Sort of like the difference between a Miami Vice cocaine cowboy with a Ferrari and a Cigarette boat and a 2011 crack house.

 

[Mojito]

From what I saw in an early interview, Baz was looking for parallels with the worldwide pre-GFC environment and decided the story worked as an analogy for the time we live in. While there are certain elements that work as parallels, the story is actually *very* specifically set in a time and place, and can't be shoe-horned into a contemporary parable. Better to let Fitzgerald tell the story, and the audience can identify which elements they can relate personally to their own lives or to the world they live in without using Fitzgerald's work to make a comment on our lives in the early 21st century.

 

[Mojito]

And if the photos I've seen of costuming are correct, one of the things that is going to drive me around the twist is the wearing of bandeaux as sort of Alice headbands.

That kills any question of costuming for me.

 

[Stanley Doble]

OK let's try it. Poor boy on the make manages to swing an appointment as an Army officer. Using his new found status, he crashes a level of society new to him; where all the young ladies are crazy about a man in uniform.

He starts a romance but has to break it off when he is sent to Iran. But they agree to marry when the war is over.

Two years later, the war having ended, he is attending Oxford when he is shocked to find on her Facebook page that she has married a wealthy playboy.

So, he returns to the US where he makes some quick cash with a Meth lab and sets out to take the love of his life away from her husband.

No I didn't think so either.

 

[3PcSuit]

You say it as a joke, Stan, but I don't see that much of a strecth (except maybe the Meth Lab) modernizing stories.


Let's not forget classics like "Forbidden Planet" were based on Shakespearian plays. There's nothing new under the sun.

As for this notion that people in the '20s behaved totally different than today, that is totally absurd. People were born back then, lived, and died. They ate food, had sex, committed crimes, and broke rules just like people today do.

Sure circumstances weren't identical, but people had their vices just as we do now.



The difference was that there wasn't a video camera in every pocket like there is today. Watch "One Hour Photo." Do people WANT to remember the bad things along with the good, or solely the bad?

Rose colored glasses my friend.




I find it interesting that almost everyone, including myself, ahs a nitpick that Joe Q. Public probably wouldn't. Even the 3D digital, unless it's really bad, the average memeber of an audience couldn't spot. They might "sense" something doesn't look quite right, but wouldn't be able to place it.

I remember this one girl who did nothing but nitpick it was either costume or set production design, and it was, frankly insecure and annoying of her. A lot of it wasn't even CORRECT, as far as I know. It was that she didn't like it and put a spin with some pseudofactiods as to why it was "wrong."

I see a lot of the same here. I see a lot of it on IMDB. A lot of "bloopers" that I don't consider bloopers at all, a lot of unfounded opinion.






I think, getting back to practicalities, since it is impossible to be 100% period accurate in making a movie (even a movie less than 10 years old sometimes will have flaws let alone almost 90!), that some of you don't understand the challenges to filmmaking. Because it is easy to WATCH one, do you think it is somehow easy to make one?

I get really irked people talking about continuity errors. Besides really glaring omissions, how is cutting from a shot say when someone is holding a cigarette in their hand, to another where they've placed it down WRONG?

Even in real life, things don't always appear the same to different people from different vantagepoints. And the splitsecond that was trimmed out by an editor probably masked far more glaring problems.



Even taking polaroids of every outfit, costume, setting, it's easy for this kind of stuff to slip by. It's easy, not having been alive in an era (even people here do it) to have all kinds of assumptions that are incorrect, and yet very difficult to know this, again due to a lack of firsthand knowledge.

What we have are mostly B&W ads and photos and film from then that in itself is stylized and not representative of the era. An ad for clothes is going to glamorize them to sell more clothes, not display problems, unflattering angles of said clothign.


Do some on here really think, for instance, that everyone in the '20s dressed and looked like a model, had perfectly tailored clothes? Someone here said someone's vest wasn't tailored right. SO, how is that an error? People in the '20s were human, came in all shapes and sizes, and made mistakes (yes tailors too!)



Many many many films have slightly modified dates from books.. "The LIttle Princess" in '95 changed the date of the book to WWI, errr The Great War, because it was originally set in a war whose name I can't remember (maybe the Boer?) that 95% of Joe Q Public wouldn't hve the faintest idea of.

I bet today one wouldn't even have a movie set in WWI, they'd set it in WWII.






About the car, maybe they didn't make the best choice, but perhaps they aren't car, clothgni enthusiasts, so some slack should be given. I wouldn't know where to source vintage, early 20s cars from AUstralia either!

Was Patton a dismal failure because they didn't have the correct tanks (borrowing current at that time one s from the Spanish Military)? It was probably due to a problme attaining correct modles. Should they say forget it beca;use o this one sange and ship everyone home and cancel the movie?




THere are movie conventions that are, as a RULE, incorrect: I've never seen any movie other than "2001" that didn't have sound in space. Movies always ignore the delay in hearing an explosion after seeing it. When people die in movies, it haappens quickly (not too quickly to preclude a lengthy speach form a dying character though). People don't soil themselves when they die, like in real life. Knife wounds are instantly fatal. People don't roll around for hours. People are always accomplished artists. Villains give speeches telling protagonists how much time they have to defuse a bomb and then leave, giving htem enough time to espace and either defuse the bomb or get to safety. Cars always explode in crashes or at the very least catch on fire. People can fire guns as many times as they want without reloading (unless the villain is nowhere to be found, hiding). People can do increadible death-defying stunts and suucceed at them, especially with automobiles jumping bridges. . .

 

[rue]

Ahem.... I really kinda like this thread and don't want it shut down, so how about we all get along [huh]

 

[Mojito]

Do some on here really think, for instance, that everyone in the '20s dressed and looked like a model, had perfectly tailored clothes?

I think we're all perfectly well aware of that. I know I am. Goodness knows, I've devoted enough time/resources to research both the clothing and social history of the 1920s.

 

[Stanley Doble]

They certainly could take the Gatsby story and update it. It is nothing but the old "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again" story with the old twisteroo at the end. H. L. Mencken dismissed the whole book as "an anecdote".

And if they did that, I wouldn't say a word against them. They might even make a halfway decent movie but it wouldn't be Gatsby.

 

[Stanley Doble]

This conversation reminds me of the potato salad story. It seems one woman brought her special potato salad to a church picnic and it made a hit. Everyone thought it was great. One woman even asked for the recipe. The conversation went like this.

I'd love to have the recipe for that potato salad everyone is crazy about.

Sure, you start with 2 pounds of new potatoes

You don't need new potatoes for potato salad. (writes down "potatoes")

Some Mayonnaise

Salad dressing (writes down "Salad Dressing")

Chop up some green onions

I don't like onions

Some chopped green olives

You don't put olives in potato salad

A teaspoon full of salt

Salt is bad for you.

Sprinkle with fresh ground black pepper

Everyone uses paprika (writes down paprika)

And garnish with sliced hard boiled eggs

Eggs give you cholesterol

And that's it.

(Looks at paper) I don't know what everyone is raving about. It's exactly the same as my potato salad.

 

[3PcSuit]

Exactly Stan.


Even if the movie were objectively 100% accurate, someone would come out of the woodworks and say "That's not the way I remember the '20s!

Ever see movie "goofs" where people are harping on a filmmaker because a song came out a couple of months after a movie supposedly takes place. Come on, get a life! As I've already pointed out, movies, by convention, intentionally get dozens of things wrong, every time.


Some of these "goofs" are nitpicking to the point of my critiquing a theatrical play for having all the actors face towards the audience, and noone down-stages the leads. Is it realistic? Of course not. But then how many of us would pay to see a play about the backs of people's heads?

 

[Stanley Doble]

Here is the point of the story. Jay Gatsby starts out as a poor kid from the sticks named Jimmy Gatz who has a dream. His dream is to better himself, be a better person, rich and successful surrounded by beautiful and expensive things, and the most high class and refined people. He pursues that dream and never gives up. He never quite catches up to it. In the end it kills him.

It turns out the high class and refined people are not all they are cracked up to be in the magazines and newspaper society pages. Gatsby isn't what everyone thinks either. But deep down inside he has that spark of nobility, that instinct toward beauty chivalry and romance. That is what redeems him. That is what Nick is talking about when he says Gatsby is worth more than the rest of them put together.

The end.

You leave that out and Mencken is right, all you have is an anecdote. Now, is this new production going to mess up the Fitzgerald story or make it better? No doubt the director thinks he is making it better but I have my doubts. I doubt he even understands the story.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I couldn't care less if he uses a 1922 car or a 1929 car as long as he puts the story over. But I can see why he would use a 1929 Duesenberg. It looks like the kind of car a big bootlegger would have. If you are making a twenties gangster picture you have to have the right car.

If the director thinks he is making a twenties gangster picture you know what we are going to get. You have seen The Untouchables. You may even have seen Public Enemy and other gangster pictures from the thirties.

That is not Gatsby. Gatsby is a tragedy. It is not a romance or an action picture. If the director can't tell the difference he is sunk. He will end up with yet another, run of the mill action picture to add to the stack of 5000 or so we already have.

He could have had a movie to add to the much shorter stack that includes Gone With The Wind, Casablanca and East of Eden. But not if he throws away the Fitzgerald story and gets ideas of his own.

 

[3PcSuit]

It turns out the high class and refined people are not all they are cracked up to be in the magazines and newspaper society pages. Gatsby isn't what everyone thinks either. But deep down inside he has that spark of nobility, that instinct toward beauty chivalry and romance. That is what redeems him. That is what Nick is talking about when he says Gatsby is worth more than the rest of them put together.

I haven't read "Gatsby" in so long I'd forgotten this specific, but it is interesting if you take this piece of the story and apply it to some of the critiques of the movie. . .


I think applying a decision about a car to the director's interpretation of the movie is taking it way too far. I mean, you're seeing publicity photos and damning the whole movie?

For one, that's the *art director* who screwed that one up, not the director (unless it's Stanley Kubrick, the director is not going to check every detail in every department, or even be so bold as to demand everything his way, he is going to delegate responsibility so he can sleep at night, at least for a couple hours ;-) ). Damning the whole movie for the failures of the costume department or art department is silly.

"2010" is a good movie, even though there is sound in space, and they get artificial gravity wrong.





I'm worried the movie is going to be hideous, with gimmicky 3D effects. I'll still go see it, and withhold final judgement until I see the finished product, but from what I've seen I probably won't pay a cent to do so.

I've stopped watching a lot of dramatic television because it just looks *bad* now. Imagery is, after all what separates film from radio, and camera and lighting are a big part of that. I won't damn a movie for looking bad (or for having an anachronistic car, outfit for that matter), but certainly a movie that looks like __it is leaving the gate at a disadvantage, at least to me.



It's entirely up to the makers of a movie if they want to honor the original source or of they want to deviate from it. I was reading the "bloopers" section for "S1m0ne" today, and some genius was calling a "blooper" the fact that they used flashbulbs the entire movie. Hmm. . . does the brilliant person who wrote that comment really think someone actually screwed up and though flashbulbs were still udsed by the press?

Some people have to be hit over the head occasionially to bring them back down to Earth. Hate to stereotype, but a lot of them are engineers. Don't know how to laugh at a joke, like to talk about how implausible a situation it is, or how that it is an unsound circumstance. I bet there are plenty of comedies filled with IMDB critiques as to how a situation in a movie is "unsound."




I'm going to say that I could see "Gatsby" remade with a modern twist. I personally don't think that needs to be done, but I do agree with filmmakers' general perception that audience members do need to be beaten over the head with certain ideas because of ignorance. So don't be so hard on them, look to your left and to your right in your theatre and maybe you'll have an opportunity to thank the rodeo bullrider with the IQ of 79 and the blank stare on his face for the dumming down or stereotyping that goes on on the silver screen. If anything, this is a continuation of the '20s style of filmmaking, bad guys wearing black, riding the black horses, looking ugly, and the good guys being clean-shaven, having beautiful physiques, riding white horses

 

[Marc Chevalier]

... some of you don't understand the challenges to filmmaking. Because it is easy to WATCH one, do you think it is somehow easy to make one?

Really? Then how would you explain why two big budget Hollywood films set in the '20s (and beyond!) -- "The Cotton Club" and "The Aviator"-- did a far, far, FAR better job with costuming, sets, cars, etc. than this version of "The Great Gatsby" is doing?

Clearly, then, it can be achieved. In a period-intensive movie like "Gatsby", it should be -- and for my admission ticket, I expect it to be.

Do some on here really think, for instance, that everyone in the '20s dressed and looked like a model, had perfectly tailored clothes? Someone here said someone's vest wasn't tailored right. SO, how is that an error? People in the '20s were human, came in all shapes and sizes, and made mistakes (yes tailors too!)

I'm speechless. Do you really think that such wealthy Long Islanders as Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby --two principal characters (not extras) with lots of screen time-- would NOT have dressed expensively and well? (And yes: in that era, "expensive clothes" and "well-cut, well-made clothes" tended to be synonymous -- far more so than they are today.) Do you think that Myrtle would have dressed in a hodgepodge, Halloween-esque fashion not even conceived of by women of her station?

 

[Stanley Doble]

Marc is right. A lot of men took trouble over their wardrobes and their "look". From golf clothes, to polo, to business, to evening attire there was a correct costume and style for every occasion.

Tom Buchanan was one who had the money and the leisure to take that trouble. Gatsby's whole raison d'etre was to duplicate that look and the lifestyle that went with it. Look at the scene where he shows off the content of his closets and dressers to Daisy, throwing dozens of bright colored shirts on the bed. He brags how he has a man in London buy his clothes in the latest styles every season, and Daisy cries over his beautiful.... shirts.

 

[Stanley Doble]

I feel strongly that the The Great Gatsby is not just another funny old yarn. It means something to me. If it could properly be put on the screen, and if others could feel what I feel when I read it, you would have one of the great screen classics of all time. It would be very difficult, maybe impossible to do this. I have seen 3 screen adaptations and none of them comes within a mile of it. It is as if I read a classic by one of the great writers of all time, and they read a comic book.

 

[Stanley Doble]

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 the book. 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.