All the Sad Young Men (A Great Gatsby review)

Poster by Sharm Murugiah.

I felt (adapting Gatsby) was a very chancy thing to attempt. A lot of what was in the novel was by suggestion. So much of it was in prose and so much of it was utterly untranslatable, and even if you could translate it, I thought it would be a thankless task and you'd just be some Hollywood hack who fucked up a classic. I felt that I had a lot to lose and very little to gain. That whole book is a mirage. - Robert Towne

Often considered a candidate for the title of "The Great American Novel", and more likely considered by every high school student as "that book in the 20s that's full of assholes", The Great Gatsby went unappreciated upon release, with F. Scott Fitzgerald going to his grave believing his work was a failure. The book got a second wind in 1942, where it proved to be incredibly popular with soldiers, and soon with the rest of the world, including Hollywood.

There have been, to date, four previous film adaptations of Fitzgerald's novel - a 1926 silent version by Herbert Brenon of which only a trailer survives; Elliott Nugent's efforts in 1949 which is difficult to get a hold of; a made-for-TV movie in 2000; and the most well-known, the 1974 adaptation with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, boasting a script by Francis Ford Coppola. By all accounts, none of these really came close to the mark. Robert Towne turned down a handsome offer of $175,000 to adapt Gatsby, plumping instead to write his original screenplay Chinatown for $25,000, because he considered Fitzgerald's kiss with a fist to the Jazz Age unfilmable.

So along came Baz Luhrmann to take his stab at it with his loyal co-writer Craig Pearce. You've got to admire their ambition, at least.