‘Great Gatsby’: Baz Luhrmann Wonders What Fitzgerald Would Think of Film
As Baz Luhrmann‘s adaptation of The Great Gatsby opens today to mixed reviews (Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers calls it a “crushing disappointment” in a one-star review), the director pondered what Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald might have thought of the movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan, and its star-studded soundtrack curated by Jay-Z.
“I don’t know if he would say, ‘I was really upset you didn’t put the old fashioned music in.’ He might have,” Luhrmann told The Hollywood Reporter. “He might have said, ‘Why did you put that immediate, now music? Why did you use this new thing called 3D? . . . I don’t really know what he would think.”
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Whether or not Fitzgerald liked the movie, Luhrmann said, he felt sure the author wouldn’t mind the attention it has focused on his 1925 novel.
“When he was dying, he was walking around buying copies of his book because he wanted there to be sales registering of The Great Gatsby,” Luhrmann said. “I’m pretty sure he’d be fairly happy that his book is now the number one-selling book in America. I’m pretty sure he’d be OK about that.”