The Great Gatsby (1974) with Mama Junkfood

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
In my younger, in more vulnerable years, my father gave
me some advice that I've been turning over in my
mind ever since. Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he
told me, just remember that you host the Junk Food
Cinema podcast. In consequence, I'm inclined to reserve all my judgments.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
All right, This is Dick Miller.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
If you're listening to Junk Food Cinema, who are these guys?

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Welcome old sports and prepare to get your east eggs
scrambled by Junk Food Cinema, brought to you by doctor
tj Eckelberg dot com, dot gam dot com dot Maybe
drive your own damn cars. This is the weekly Culton
Exploitation filmcast. So good it just has to be fattening
and definitely the podcast that represents everything for which you
have an unaffective scorn that will turn out alright in

(01:35):
the end. I am your host, Brian Salisbury, and this
week Cargill is out scouting real estate in the Valley
of Ashes and cannot attend this particular party, so in
his stead for this very special episode, I am paralyzed
with happiness to welcome back to the show. My mother
from another mother who is indeed by actual mother. It's

(01:56):
Mama junk Food.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
Everyone, Hi, everybody, So good to be here again.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
How are things in West Egg?

Speaker 4 (02:04):
It's too cold there, so I retreated to Florida. So
I'm in my Florida space. So South Egg, Yeah, I'm
in the South Frida Egg.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
That's the South Frida Egg. Is exactly where I would
want to be. And if this podcast is where you
want to be, you can listen to eleven goddamn eleven
years of this horseshit on your favorite podcast. You can
follow us on social media. And if you really like
the show.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I mean you really like the show, I mean you.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Like it as much as I really want a Friday
Egg right now, you can go to Patreon dot com
slash junk Fit Cinema financially support the show. We greatly
appreciate it. I mentioned that this is a special episode,
and it's special and it's personal for a number of reasons.
Back in September, we lost Robert Redford, one of the
greatest actors of all time, and I feel like I

(02:53):
can say that without any hint of hyperbole. And what
I've always loved about Robert Redford is that his his
name is synonymous with both handsomeness and acting talent. He
was somehow a quiet paradigm of both. You just say
the word Redford and people either know that you're talking
about an absolutely devastatingly handsome leading man and also a

(03:16):
legitimately gifted artist in the field of acting. And in
addition to appearing in foundational American cinema like The Sting,
Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, All the President's Men,
Three Days of the Condor, and The Natural, he also
proved to be a phenomenal director with films like Ordinary People,
his directorial debut, for which he won Best Director at

(03:37):
the Academy Awards, A River Runs Through It, and Quiz Show.
But Redford also championed environmental conservation, gave to charity, and
did more for the advancement of independent film than arguably
any other person when he created the Sundance Film Festival,
which became the country's largest festival for independent films. He
also founded the Sundance Institute, Sundance Cinemas, Sundance Catalog, and

(03:59):
the Sundance Chair, all in and around Park City, thirty
miles north of the Sundance Ski area. That he purchased
with the money he made from Butch Cassidy and The
Sundance Kid. Now, while we've covered Robert Redford films on
this podcast, things like Spy Games, Sneakers, Captain America, The
Winter Soldier, we knew a legend such as his would
necessitate further retrospection and celebration. And while we compiled a

(04:22):
list of outstanding Redford movies to cover, one title leapt
out at me for not only his performance but the
movie's significant personal meaning. Guys, I've never been what you
might call an avid reader. Point of fact, when comparing
my reading habits to my viewing habits, one would be
not totally out of bounds to refer to me as, say,
a knuckle dragging illiterate. But few of the few books

(04:46):
that I was forced to read in school less than
a handful made an impact that reverberates into my adulthood. However,
one that definitely sent those shockwaves was f. Scott Fitzgerald's
The Great Gatsby. This book also happened to be a
favorite of my fathers, and he also deeply loved the
nineteen seventy four film adaptation of the Great Gatsby.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
The world was spinning faster than and shining brighter.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
It kingled with excitement, and when.

Speaker 5 (05:15):
All of life was a fantasy, theirs was the richest
fantasy of awe.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Robert Redford is Gatsby, Me and Pharaoh is Daisy in the.

Speaker 6 (05:25):
Great love Story of our time, The Great Gatsby rated PG.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Also A massive fan of the film and a fan
of my dad's is my mother. So I could think
of no better tribute to Robert Redford than to kick
off a mini series on his work with The Great Gatsby.
And I could think of no better tribute to Dad
than to have you mom on to discuss it with me.
So thank you for being here.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Sure, I love it. I love the movie. Your dad
and I love to watch it. And I don't even
know how many times we watched it, but I do
know your dad had a lot of the script memorized
and would say that, you know whatever the actor was
saying at the same time he did. But the quote
that you started off with was one of the two
favorites from that book, and the other one was so

(06:09):
we beat on votes against the current, born back ceaselessly
into the past. He absolutely loved that quote. So I
thought it was pretty telling that you've led off with
the other one that he loved.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
It's one of the only it's the only book. I'll
be real it's the only book in my life that
I have the opening and ending line memorized. And it's
probably because of the quote along screenings that we had
in our living room. I remember, yes, watching this movie
with the two of you. I also remember, Mom, I
don't know if you remember this, that we were all
very excited for that TV movie adaptation that came out

(06:42):
in two thousand with Paul Rudd, emiros Orvino, Yes, and
the bad guy from Die Another Day played Gatsby, which
is fitting because there's a bond girl in the adaptation
we're talking about today.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
So full circle, okay, Okay, I guess I didn't realize that.
So your dad probably mentioned it, but he mentioned so
many connections with this movie and and we had so
many conversations about where f Scott Fitzgerald got his inspiration
from for the book, because your dad always thought it

(07:20):
was when he and Zelda lived in Connecticut, because you
or your dad spent a lot of time in Connecticut
when he was a kid, and at you did too,
and as he got older, we went there every summer.
But there's a lot of people who feel like it
was Fitzgerald's time in Long Island, which I think that
was like twenty two. I think he was in Connecticut

(07:41):
nineteen twenty and then he was in Long Island nineteen
twenty two, so he he kind of experienced both sides
of the Long Island Sound. But that place where he
stayed in Connecticut was in Westport, which was about an
hour from your great ground mother's summer cottage, and your

(08:03):
dad would go over there and you could see across
the sound. Now it's a big, a massive, you know,
body of water when you look at it from that aspect,
But he said he felt like that's where he got
the inspiration, and he Enselda rented a house and they
threw a lot of parties and they were blowing through
a lot of money, and he felt like that's where

(08:26):
it was. So I just thought that was interesting that
your dad had made a connection to, you know, the
area of Connecticut that his grandmother was from, and his father,
you know, spent a lot of time, and he spent
a lot of time, so I think that was another
thing that connected him to the book, and the movie
was the setting. So and I don't know if you remember,

(08:48):
but where they filmed it. A lot of it was
filmed in Newport, Rhode Island, right, And I don't know
if you remember how much how many times we visited
Newport and how many of those mansions we went through,
and your dad would tell us which room of the mansion,
which scene of the movie was shot in. So he
had all these different mansions, like, oh, this is the Breakers,

(09:11):
which was a Vanderbilt mansion. As the kitchen that they
used in the scene with he and Daisy, you know,
when they were kind of spinny hanging out in the kitchen,
it was at the Breakers.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
And then when they were when they were finishistically looking
at those cake pans, like that's one of the stranger
scenes in this movie. Like so much of this movie is,
you know, showcasing the opulence of wealth in the nineteen
twenties and how people live so lavishly, and and that
that's and everything else in that movie, like the way
that it's framed, the way that it's shot totally makes
sense to that that theme. The scene in the kitchen

(09:45):
where she's just like running her hands over all those
ice copper cake pans. I'm like, I don't. I don't
know that that communicates as much wealth as the other
things they've been doing, but sure, why not.

Speaker 4 (09:56):
Yeah, it was. I think there was a lot of
honestly visual interpretation of what they were doing, which was,
you know, not being truthful and honest, and so there's
a lot of things that I think it was just
maybe representative of the bad things they were doing. So

(10:16):
she was over emphasizing touching those peans, and I don't
know if it was supposed to be central or it
was a little odd. That was a little odd part
of the movie.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
But I do remember the trips to those mansions, mom,
because it's the only reason I know that Mark Twain's
next door neighbor was Harriet beecher Stowe to this day,
I remember that because we went to both of those mansions.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah, so that was in Hertford, Connecticut, where Harriet beecher
Stowe in Mark Twain's homes were. We toured a lot
of houses. We went to Louise to a Alcott's house,
you know, we just went to there's a lot of
historic homes that you can tour on the East Coast,
so we spent a lot of time there, but I
think we went to Newport maybe half a dozen times,

(11:00):
and there's I don't know seven or eight of those
big mansions that are owned by the Newport Historical Society,
and they give tours of them, and your dad really
loved to go through, but he would pick out different spots,
like the front of Gatsby's house I believe was Rose Cliff,
which was another mansion. I think that might have been

(11:22):
the Astors that own that one. But the Breakers and
the Marble House were both used extensively, and both of
those were Anderson Cooper's ancestors, the Vanderbilt. So it just
was a very fascinating place to be and it just
kind of made me wonder how in the world they
got those mansions as filming locations and what kind of

(11:46):
cost it was to make the adaptations to them to
make it fit the storyline, because those were built about
the turn of the twentieth century, so it was several
years before the Great Guest happened in the twenties that
they were just humongous, opulent homes, which is what they
were trying to reflect at that time, you know, in

(12:10):
West Egg.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah, and it's it's coming to me as well that
dad was also a big fan of Ernest Hemingway. And
Ernest Timmingway and f Scott Fitzgerald were part of that
what they called the Lost generation of artists post World
War One that had, you know, found a lot of
cynicism into the world, but spent most of their time,
you know, in frivolity, almost as an escape from their

(12:33):
own cynicism, and you know, created a lot of really
impressive art and literature. And it's it's crazy now that
I'm thinking about it. The only other book that I
read in high school that has really stuck with me,
you know, besides something like Fahrenheit four fifty one, is
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. So now I'm
starting to wonder if these books were actually assigned to
me in school, or if I was just reading them

(12:54):
because Dad liked them.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
Yeah, he has all of those books, you know, he
has a collection of them, and I have read a
couple of them since he passed away, just trying to
part of it. It always astounded me because they are
just most of them are just tragic love stories, tragic
and unlike your dad had. I think a good, happy
life and you know, a lot of love surrounding him.

(13:17):
And I don't know why he was so fascinated by
these you know, tragic love stories, But when you think
about the authors, they just just did a great job
and their writing was so easy to get lost in,
and you know read he read those books so fast
and reread them several times. So yeah, Ernest Hemingway was
his other favorite author, and he had a geographical geographical

(13:41):
connection to Himingway too, because he spent a lot of
time in Michigan, where your dad was born, and he
loved Michigan and Key West, Florida, which was another favorite
place of your dad. So your dad connected to places
as well as stories and movies. So I thought he
had a cool, kind of all encompassing interest in things

(14:04):
that he really liked well.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
And I also think, and I put this together while
watching The Great Gatsby again for this recording, is that
in both this particular movie version of The Great Gatsby
and In the Sun Also Rises, one of the things
dad loved to do more than anything was people watch.
And I feel like in both of those stories, the
main character is a bit of an outsider who is

(14:29):
literally on the outside looking in a lot of times,
like in the Sun also Rises, the protagonist is somebody
who just goes to cafes and bullfights and you know,
literally just spends time meeting different people. And then if
you watch this film iteration of The Great Gatsby, Sam
Waterson is Nick. At one point, it's just sitting on
his porch watching the goings on of the crazy parties

(14:49):
at Gatsby's, And I feel like Dad would have identified
with that so hard, Like I'm just gonna make my
food and sit on my porch and watch these lunatics
run around, you know, next door to me, like the
people watch aspect to sort of like you know, outside
looking in and just enjoying the experience of taking in
the surroundings, Like that was very much something Dad was into.
So I kind of understand it from that perspective. But

(15:11):
The Great Gatsby is also a deeply cynical book, Like
it's very much a critique of, you know, the lost
generation of America post World War One. It's it's the
reason that the story is told from the perspective of Nick,
who is neither old money nor new money. He's a
middle class kid from the Midwest. You know, he is
the audience. He is in a lot of ways f

(15:32):
Scott Fitzgerald as well. And you know, he's he has
the most in common with Gatsby in terms of their upbringing.
But Nick is content with who he is, whereas Gatsby
is trying to rewrite his entire history to remake himself
into something that he is not. And you know, the
book is also about sort of the shallowness of wealth
and the danger of the American dream, as you know,

(15:54):
the antithesist of the noblest pursuit, which is love, and
how literally the American dream can interfere with that basic
of human emotion. I mean, even a self made man,
which is somewhat admirable at his Gatsby, he's able to
create his own identity. He can't shake his obsession with
the girl who tossed him aside because he was poor.

(16:15):
So he's literally like living out this revenge fantasy. Almost.
It's not even so much about being in love with
Daisy and getting Daisy back as it is proving to
her that he's worth more than she thought, and.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
He's worthy, he's worthy of her. That's he's trying to
kind of prove his self worth. It's obviously was a
very difficult thing for him to go through when he
came back and she didn't wait for him, and he
brings that up, you know, and they discussed it and
it just devastated him. And obviously he has spent years

(16:54):
building wealth and planning this very incident where he he
gets across the sound from her and he wants her
to notice the light on the dock. I mean, the
whole thing is very calculated. And he brings Nick into
the story because I don't from what I understand from

(17:15):
the book and the movie, he doesn't realize that Nick
is related to her, and then when he finally does,
then that's when Nick gets involved in the story. So
it wasn't he was his neighbor and he rented the
house next door. But it was just very interesting to
me how kind of built that relationship and Gatsby took

(17:37):
advantage of him he did. I think he ends up
feeling like he's a friend, but initially he was just
using him to get to Daisy. So yeah, I Gatsby
wasn't necessarily a warm, fuzzy, great guy, but I think
that you fall in love with the couple and then
you kind of figure out who she really is. So

(17:57):
it's it's just a very flex storyline. But I feel
like you're right the people watching aspect of it. It's
at more of the observations because if you watch Gatsby,
he observes her with her husband Tom, and he observes
her with her daughter, which he didn't know she had
a child. And I think there's a lot of maybe

(18:21):
almost voyeurism, especially on Nick's part, just kind of watching
things going on around him. But he does remind me
a lot of your dad Nick does, because he was
he kind of reserved saying anything until he had something
that meaningful to say that was relevant. So he didn't
just talk, you know, he was very much a thoughtful listener,

(18:46):
and when he talked, it was thoughtful. And I feel
like that was a big part of the character of Nick,
is that he was kind of in awe of Gatsby,
but he also noticed his flaws and you know, didn't
understand a lot of what he was doing. So it's
a very interesting way that they build the characters in
that movie. But I did recently watch there was a

(19:08):
twenty twenty special episode that's I think it's playing right
now in Hulu, and it was Robert Redsford The Life
and Legacy of an American Icon, and that was so
good at kind of explaining Robert Redford up to that
point and kind of how his career has started, you know,
in the theater. And then he got the witch Cassidy

(19:32):
and the Sundance Kid role in film and that really
kind of catapulted him. But he did do I love
the movie Barefoot in the Park that he did with
Jane Fonda as well, and that was something he did
on Broadway and then ended up being cast in the
movie opposite her. So he played a lot of complex
characters that were, you know, pretty interesting and entertaining. But

(19:55):
I feel like in nineteen seventy four he was like,
I don't know, late thirties and me and Farah was
about ten years younger. And in fact, I don't know
if you knew this, but your dad and I were
watching and he goes that me and Pharaoh kind of
looked pregnant in that scene, and she was pregnant yep
when they were filming that movie. So it's just kind
of interesting that, you know, she wore those little nineteen

(20:17):
twenties dresses you know, and they weren't really meant to
hide a lot of you know, they weren't real bulky
or anything. So it was interesting that she had to
film that movie when she was pregnant and was wearing
nineteen twenties attire.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
So yeah, I think definitely one thing I did not
inherit from Dad was not speaking until you have something
meaningful to say. That's really not me.

Speaker 4 (20:39):
You got that from me.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I will just I will just talk off the dome,
whether it's a good idea or not. And I think
eleven years worth of this podcast will service people's exhibit
a to that. But I also just wanted to circle
back to the idea of self worth and Gatsby trying
to prove his self worth, and I think the most bitingly,
the most biting condemnation of his own time is the

(21:02):
fact that Gatsby is a character who, because of Daisy
and because of the way that she threw him over,
now equates self worth with net worth, which is, like
I think, the ultimate indictment of the time in which
he's living in. But much like the way that Gatsby
appears in the movie We're going to wait to talk
more about Robert Redford as we get further into this episode,

(21:24):
because he doesn't actually speak a line of dialogue in
this film for thirty five minutes, so even though he's
the titular character. So before we get into that, I
just want to do a real quick for anyone who
didn't go to eleventh grade and have to read this book.
This is a historical drama set in nineteen twenty five,
no in nineteen twenty two. It was published in nineteen

(21:45):
twenty five. Is set in nineteen twenty two in the
Long Island Sound, and it involves a character by the
name of Nick Carraway, who's sort of our protagonist, who
comes to live in this little cottage on the less
fashionable end of the Island Sound and he moves in
next to this enigmatic tycoon named Jay Gatsby. But Nick
is is moving in there to be closer to a

(22:08):
cousin of his name, Daisy. Daisy is married to a
man named Tom. They're both extremely wealthy, both come from
old money inherited wealth, and Nick also meets a friend
of Daisy's named Jordan, who is a professional golfer, And
it's just sort of about all of the relationships and
we find out, you know, through the course of the story,
that Gatsby used to have a relationship with Daisy and

(22:29):
he is holding on he's literally carrying a torch for her,
not so much carrying a torch as he is looking
at a green light for her. We'll get into all
of that, but it's just about about these relationships and how,
you know, they come together again and and the the
perils of their their their love and et cetera, et cetera,

(22:50):
et cetera. That's that's the basic setup of the movie.
But I want to talk about how much more this
movie means to me, you know, since I was a kid,
because you know, getting older and becoming sort of somebody
who ravenously consumes Hollywood history, I now know that The
Great Gatsby was a Robert Evans project. Baby, that's right.

(23:12):
Robert Evans, who was the head of Paramount from basically
the mid sixties all the way up until pretty much
the nineties, off and on, and you know, produced movies
like Rosemary's Baby and Love Story and The Godfather and etc. Etc. Etc.
And if you haven't read or seen the documentary The
Kid Stays in the Picture, highly recommend it that dude

(23:32):
is insane. Excuse me was insane, and his stories are incredible.
And I also recommend the Paramount plus mini series The
Offer about the making of The Godfather, in which Matthew
Good plays Robert Evans to perfection. Incredible, incredible. But this
was a project he set up. He bought the rights
to the book in nineteen seventy one because he wanted

(23:53):
his wife Ali McGraw to play Daisy, but she was
committed to do this Sam Peckinpah movie called The Getaway,
So they were gonna wait. They're gonna wait till they
were done with The Getaway to do the to do
The Great Gatsby with Ali McGraw playing Daisy. In the meantime, Unfortunately,
Ali McGraw had an affair with her Getaway co star
Steve McQueen. They got divorced, so now he's got no

(24:16):
leading lady for this movie, and Mia Farrow asked if
she could play Daisy. They'd worked together on evans first
big Paramount success, which was Rosemary's Baby. So now he's
trying to put this movie together and he needs someone
to adapt the book, and the first person he goes
to is Truman Capote, and Truman Capote has paid three

(24:37):
hundred thousand dollars to do an adaptation of The Great Gatsby,
and his draft has a storyline in which Nick Caraway
is an overt homosexual and Jordan Baker is a vindictive lesbian,
and you know a lot of the sexual politics that
Truman Capotte was interested in, but not so much that
Robert Evans was interested in for Paramount in the Earth seventies.

(25:01):
So he gets fired but still collects a three hundred
thousand dollars paycheck. Yeah, it's insane to me.

Speaker 4 (25:06):
Yeah, And that's kind of the time frame where Truman
Capote was writing the stories, the novellas or novelettes that
were adding all of his wealthy swans, his friends in
New York City. So he was, you know, doing a
lot of drugs. He was not not in the best

(25:26):
mental health state. So I feel like he was just
trying to put his his ideas and thoughts into the script,
which they were trying to an extent followed the novel.
So yeah, he was those were thrown out. So and
you know, I'm a fan of the nineteen sixties Truman
Capoti in the nineteen fifties when he, you know, in

(25:49):
Full Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's one of my favorite movies.
So I just was so disappointed when I read that
about Truman Capote kind of trying to himself into the movie.
And then he was the CoStim three hundred grand, which
you know back then that was a lot of the budget.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Oh yeah, oh yeah. And everything you're saying is valid,
but there's still a huge part of me that wants
to read that Truman Capodi draft of this script.

Speaker 4 (26:13):
Yeah. Nice.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
And then from there they offered the job to Robert Town. Uh.
And they offered him one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars,
so not quite as much as Truman Compoda got, but
still a huge chunk of change in the early seventies.
And Robert town refuses because he said, I didn't want
to be the unknown Hollywood screenwriter who fucked up a
literary classic. So what did he go off and make instead?

(26:35):
Jacobsru So that gets him an Academy Award for Best
Original Screenplay, makes him one of the most sought after
screenwriters in Hollywood. And it's all because he said no
to The Great Gatsby and did Chinatown instead. So that
if that was the end of the story of the
adaptation of the script, that would be incredible enough. But
mom who ends up writing the adaptation of The Great

(26:57):
Gatsby for this movie, Francis Ford Koppe because he had
just worked with Robert Evans on The Godfather, And so
he he goes and he actually lives in Great Neck,
New York, which is where f Scott Fitzgerald fictionalized that
as west Egg in the novel. So Copla is like, well,
I gotta go live where Gatsby lit or where f
Scott Fitzgerald lived in order to effectively adapt the book.

(27:20):
And what ends up happening is if you listen to Copola,
because he said this many times, he says that the
director didn't pay any attention to his draft and that
the script that he wrote did not get made. So
now I want to read that draft of the screenplay
to see, you know, was anything that Copla wrote actually
you know, maintained for the screen or did the studio
make a lot of changes, because I would not put

(27:42):
it past Robert Evans. Robert Evans was known to make
changes to his movies like it just it's a really
interesting story about just how the script came to be, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
There was quite a journey to get it there. But
and I know that there are a lot of critics
you don't like this film, but you're really liked it.
So I kind of got romanced into it because he
was just so into it, and you know how much
he talked about it and kind of dissected it and
analyzed it and used his favorite quotes from the book

(28:15):
and the movie, and then he talked about areas where
they tweaked the quotes a little bit to make him
fit better into the script. I think one of them
was like the longest day of the year, you know
the quote.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Where what do people plan?

Speaker 4 (28:29):
Yeah, that wasn't part of it is do you ever
wait for the longest day of the year and then
miss it? I always wait for the longest year and
then miss it. And it was like what do people plan?
And it was like she They kind of wanted to
integrate that storyline into what they were going to do,
so your dad said, that's not the quote, and then

(28:49):
he has the book out and he's going through it.
So it was kind of funny.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
I love to see. That is something I got from
dad is obsessive movie watching like watching the degree that
it becomes a little bit, you know, like a mental disorder,
Like I totally get it. It's fine, yeah, but I
will say anytime Daisy Buchanan says, you know what, the
people do this, and people do that, and what just

(29:13):
put the word poor in front of people, and it's
everything you need to understand about Daisy Buchanan. She says,
I don't understand what people do. She's basically saying, I
don't understand what commoners do. She's a very Marie Antoinette
like figure, which is interesting.

Speaker 4 (29:25):
Right, And she literally tells him. She literally tells Jay
Gatsby rich girls don't marry for boys and that was
the reason why she didn't wait for him. So, I
mean there is a lot of class dissection in this movie,
I'm sure. Yeah, And as part of the Roaring twenties
and kind of that era of opulence and you know, excess,

(29:49):
and so it fits right in with the era that
Scott Fitzgerald is trying to kind of exploit and show
how crass and you know, overtly excessive. So he gets
into that. So I think your dad really enjoyed dissecting

(30:10):
the book and the movie and kind of trying to
figure out the hidden nannies and deep guys that he did.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
After these messages, we'll be right back This.

Speaker 7 (30:20):
Wednesday, it's all Redford all night long. First, Redford's the
ultimate mountain man, great hunter. Then he's being hunted down.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
People are trying to kill me.

Speaker 7 (30:33):
Next, Redford's a hotshot lawyer and courtroom casanova. I have Jack,
And finally he's a sheriff, hot on the trail.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
I know where he's going in on the Guinea.

Speaker 7 (30:43):
Spend the night with Robert redfirst this Wednesday, begetting get
eight oh five.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
He started turn to TVs.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
In casting Gatsby. First they went to Warren Beatty. Warren
Beatty didn't I can't remember what the reason was. He
ends up passing on it. Nicholson was kind of brought
on when it was still going to be Alan McGraw's Daisy.
Nicholson didn't want to work with Alan McGraw because he
didn't think she was a very good actress, so he
went his separate ways. And then when it switched over

(31:10):
to Mia Farrow, Robert Redford started campaigning for this movie hard.
He really wanted to play Gatsby, and he actually said
during a twenty fourteen Film Festival panel that he wondered
if the studio, and by the studio, he means Robert
Evans had actually read the book, because evidently Evans' big
resistance to casting Robert Redford was that Robert Redford was blonde?

(31:33):
What and then Redford asked Evans to show him in
the book where Fitzgerald ever mentioned Gatsby's hair color. I'm
Gonna save you sometime, guys. He doesn't ever mention Gatsby's
hair color in the book. No, no, So that was
just a weird thing by Evans. But eventually we get
past that. We cast Robert Redford, and we hired director

(31:54):
Jack Clayton, who also directed an amazing horror film that
will be covered at some point on the show, The Innocence,
which is this very eerie British horror film that I
really really like. And then another movie that dad loved
was actually directed by Jack Clayton, Something Wicked This Way Comes,
which is also an episode of this podcast.

Speaker 4 (32:12):
He definitely liked that movie.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
So we've got the screenplay, we've got the director, we've
got our cast in place. Now we were watching the
movie and the opening of this film. I just have
to say, speaking of Nicholson, the Shining has forever broken
my brain because you cannot show me grand but empty
old spaces with echoey old timey songs playing and not
expect me to assume that that place is haunted.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
Yeah, yeah, and showing the pool yep. You know all
of those things are in the foretelling or foreshadowing. I
guess that is what it's called. Yeah, but yeah, that
is pretty eerie when they go through and there's like
broken isn't there like broken glasses?

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah, the broken glasses. And I'm going to tell you
this right now, the identical twin flappers that we meet
at the party, doesn't They did not help this connection. Now,
I'm sorry, I'm getting shining vibes. And then you show
me twin girls like what what's gonna come? Jita bug
with us, Danny forever.

Speaker 4 (33:18):
Yeah. All they were missing was what was that a
big wheel then around? If somebody had come writing up
on one of those, then I would have said, it's
a copy.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
I think at this time all bikes were big wheels.
I think they were all still that bike with the
giant wheel in front. Oh my god, Oh, this is
this is Crazy, and then we get a short After
a short medley, we hear What'll I Do, which is
a gorgeous song that I think was written by Irving
Berlin originally Yes, Yes, uh, and then adapted by Nelson Riddle,

(33:50):
who did the music for this movie. And then actually
Linda Ronstadt did a version an arrangement of it later
that was a kind of a modest hit for her,
and I think it's an absolutely gorgeous song. It's one
of the things that I have always remembered about this
movie throughout my life is this opening song.

Speaker 4 (34:07):
Yeah, and I you know, your dad and I had
the vinyl the album.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
It was a verysful South.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, and we would listen to it.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
So the soundtrack arguably was more successful than the movie commercially.

Speaker 4 (34:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yeah, And we're introduced to Nick Carraway, who was played
by Sam Waterston in his first big movie like Little Baby,
Law and Order as Nick Carroway.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
Yeah. He was perfectly cast for that role. Oh yeah,
And I did see there was a documentary. I think
it was in twenty twenty because your dad and I
watched it together. But it was a documentary about the
connection of Connecticut and how some people think that f
Scott Fitzgeral was inspired by Westport, Connecticut instead of Long Island,

(34:56):
and he is part of that documentary and just to
watch him get so into He's very into the storyline
and the settings, and you know, it's just cool to
see him get so invested in the story of why
these people think that that's where Scott Fitzgerald was inspired.

(35:17):
So if you ever get a chance to watch that documentary,
it's really I think it's called Gatsby and Connecticut that
it's a really good documentary and he's part of it,
and he's still to this day, which you know, that
was what fifty years over fifty years ago, and he's
still heavily invested in that storyline.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
He's giving me big Anthony Perkins energy in this movie.
He's very weird ish chef gaunt and he lurks in
the shadows like I love it. I also love the
fact that Sam Waterston is actually a graduate of Yale,
which is the same alma mater as Nick Carraway.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
That makes total sense that Sam Waterston would have gone
to Yelle. That dude always seem like a thinking man's actor,
and he's you're right, he's excellent in the I.

Speaker 4 (36:04):
Am so distracted by trying to picture Jack Nicholson as
Jay Gatsby. I can't pake sure at all, because one
thing I think about Jack Nicholson is I do like
a lot of his movies, but he's kind of always
the same character. I mean, if you watch him act
in a movie, you can always see Jack Nicholson, and
then you got somebody like her.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Except well, no, you know what, mom, you're right, because
even as the Joker, he's Jack Nicholson's I.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
Can still see Jack Nicholson. Yeah, And like Robert Redfern
in different movies, is such a different character. And Tom
Hanks is another one. I mean, if you think of
Philadelphia's story and then Forrest Gump, I mean you can't
even see Tom Hanks, you know, it's like he kind
of evolves into the character. But Jack Nicholson, how in

(36:50):
the heck would he have played Jay Gatsby. It would
have been he would have had that grin and he
just would have been Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
He would have made it better Tom, I think than
an for sure.

Speaker 4 (37:01):
Tom definitely, Yeah, the kind of evil guy.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah, I cannot help but be distracted by you mentioned
Tom Hanks and then said the Philadelphia Story. So now
because because it's just philadelph the Philadelphia Story with Tom
Hanks from Philadelphia is a completely different movie, you know
what I mean, Like just carry Grant being like and
I also have aids and it's like, what this is?
This is what is happening. We've changed the entire tune

(37:26):
of this film. I don't understand what's happening.

Speaker 4 (37:30):
Yeah, I was just trying to make a point where
there's the actors who actually, you know, Johnny Depp, I mean,
there's actors who turn into someone else Gary and they
play But yeah, I just, yes, definitely, I just don't
see that with Jack Nicholson. Nicholson always Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
He is nicholsoning all over the place in every role.
You're absolutely right, Yeah, but.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Like somethence got to give. I love that movie and
I love terms of endearment, but I just he's always
pretty close to the same person in every movie, every role.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Constantly juggling charisma with borderline personality disorder. Yeah, that's pretty
much all of Jack Nicholson's roles for sure.

Speaker 4 (38:09):
Yeah, I just can't picture herm as Jay Gatsby.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
And I think I've spent a lot of my youth
even as we would watch this movie together thinking, I
feel like I labored under the misconception that Mia Farrow
turns in a bad performance here, But in reality, I
think the frail, flighty, ephemeral Mia Farrow is perfect for
the role of a completely vapid, like noncommittal, just wayfish

(38:38):
type of a spoiled rich girl. Like She's kind of
perfect for this role, and her performance actually nails it. Now,
I don't like the character of Daisy, but I'm also
not supposed to like the character of Daisy.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
Yeah, right right. And the other thing too, is you
can kind of tell people that haven't read the book,
aren't familiar with the book, and don't appreciate the movie
compared to those who have read the book, understand the book,
and watch the movie. So the character that Mia Farrow played,
she pretty much played it to the book. Ye, And

(39:14):
you know, she was the kind of you know, Daisy
was a very that's my words are leaving me right now.
She was, you know, flighty and kind of flaky, and
you know, there wasn't a lot of substance to her.
She was very shallow, that's a good word. And I

(39:35):
think that you're supposed to not really like her but
kind of understand her and also understand Jay's insatiable need
to prove himself worthy of her. I just feel like
that's a big part of the book when you read it,
and if you're trying to say, oh, she should have
played her, you know, more Demir and more, well, that

(39:58):
wasn't the character. So yeah, I just feel like there
are a lot of people who maybe aren't familiar with
the book, and then you know, sometimes they say, you know,
if you read the book, you're not going to like
the movie. And I'm sure that exists too for this,
But I know your dad absolutely hated the one in
twenty was it twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen?

Speaker 1 (40:16):
Oh my god?

Speaker 4 (40:17):
Oh he hated that one. I do too, and it
was bad Larmine, you know, and I And it's not
that he hated every baz Larman movie because he liked that.
What was the one with Nicole Kidmange? He liked that movie,
Mulan Rouge. But I feel like The Great Gatsby and
especially the Knick storyline, where he was like in an

(40:39):
asanasylum or something, and he kind of dreamed up the
whole thing was so weird that your dad absolutely hated
that version of it. But then he knew it wasn't
true to the book at all, so he didn't like it.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
There were critics that criticized that Robert Redford and Mia
Farrow had no chemistry on screen. I don't with that,
but I do think it's interesting that Miya Pharaoh blames
their lack of on screen chemistry on the fact that
Robert Redford was completely absorbed in the by the Watergate
scandal that was that was kind of happening as they
were shooting, and he was just like all kinds of

(41:15):
obsessed with it. He spent all his free time locked
in his trailer watching the political scandal unfold on television.
And then two years after this, Redford plays Bob Woodward
in All the President's Men Too Much Acclaim. So it's
almost like you can kind of connect the dots from
being obsessed with it while shooting this movie to playing
Bob Woodward a couple of years later.

Speaker 7 (41:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:34):
Well, and if you read the book The Great Gasby,
it's not really that he loves Daisy it's he's obsessed
with her. So I don't know that he really did
have a lot of chemistry with her. I think Daisy
was miserable in her marriage to Tom, so she was
just really ecstatic that someone was paying her attention and

(41:56):
you know, lavishing her with gifts and you know, attention
and all those things that she lacked. She got gifts
from Tom, but they weren't like gifts that were sweet
and sentimental, you know. And I feel like there really
wasn't chemistry between the two characters. It was a kind
of a well what your dad always said, they're just

(42:17):
impossible loves, you know. They write about these things where
people think that they love someone or just want so
badly to be with someone, but it's not the right
person for them, you know. So I don't know that
there was supposed to be a lot of chemistry. I
think it was awkward because they were very young, you know,
had a love story, and then we're apart for a

(42:37):
lot of years, and then you can't just pick up
where you left off, you know. So I do feel
like it was awkward. Well maybe the chemistry, yes, yes,
But the chemistry between them I think was there, but
it wasn't supposed to be like this easy love story.
It was very complex and jaded, you know.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
And I think that's the problem, is that that you're
describing that sort of easy, like big soft romantic film
is exactly what Robert Evans wanted. He wanted another love
story because Love Story was a massive hit, and that's
kind of how he saw the movie unfolding. That's how
the movie was sold in the marketing. In a lot
of ways. Some of the ways that these scenes are constructed,

(43:18):
you can feel the movie sort of pushing for that,
but that's really not what it is. It's two people
who have idealized each other so much that they're not
even they're not even acquainted enough with themselves to be
able to love another person, first of all, and they're
not even really in love with each other. They're in
love with the ideal version of each other. And the
fact that a green light in this movie is what

(43:39):
Gatsby like spends his nights looking at, is him pining
over not Daisy, but this this optimism, this hope for
what his relationship would be with the woman he loves.
And that's why it's a green light that represents his
hope because light is not something you can hold in
your hand. It's across the water. It's unobtainable. It's something
you can't ever.

Speaker 4 (43:58):
Have, which is why just isn't that what the quote says, Yes,
absolutely grasping for something that was just out of his reach, precisely,
and that's what he was doing.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, and then rounding out this cast, I mean, you've
got the great Bruce Dern as Tom Buchanan. I always
put him on the same shelf of counterculture personages as
a Jack Nicholson, a Dennis Hopper, and a Peter Fonda.

Speaker 4 (44:31):
Yeah, I mean he was. He's a great actor, but
he plays that part so kind of self absorbed, and
he almost seems disinterested in Daisy until Gatsby shows an
interest in her. Yeah, and then it's almost like that's

(44:51):
my property. How dare you? You know?

Speaker 1 (44:53):
It's the way a little kid is playing with a
toy and then puts it down, doesn't care about it
until some other kid picks it up. It's exactly what
that is.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
Yeah, And your dad always commented on one of his
what he thought was really eerie was the billboard. So
you're gonna, yeah, what is that area called? I forgot now,
but they would drive through to get to New York City.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
It's the Valley of Ashes, is what they call it,
The Valley of Ashes.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
Yeah, they would drive through there and there was that
you know, gas station and auto repair place, and then
across from that was that billboard and what was the
man's name that was in mechanic.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
J oh oh oh, the mechanic is George Wilson.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
George Wilson, which I remember.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Because that's also the name of Dennis the MENACE's neighbor
that he torments, Mister George Wilson. So I'm like, it's like,
it's it's mister Wilson and Daisy the Menace. It's like, hey,
mister Wilson, I ran over your way.

Speaker 4 (45:55):
Yes, completely different movie, But your dad always said it
was just kind of ear because George Wilson looked at
it like that was God, the eyes of God watching over.
And James said, you know, from that point on when
they would show that scene in the movie, it was
just creepy because you know, those eyes were looking at
everything going by, and it was kind of everyone who

(46:16):
was passing by there. At least the characters from the
movie were not you know, Tom would go to New
York to meet his mistress, and then Daisy and Jay
are writing in the car together to you know, have
their little side fling going on. And then eventually, you
know what happens to Daisy is that, you know, she

(46:39):
runs over the mistress. So it's kind of it's kind
of iconic the way that that billboard was almost its
own character in the movie.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yes, yes, the eyes of a higher power, the idea
that the past, you know, is always with us and
we know we can't necessarily run from it, we also
can't recreate it. And but just going back to Bruce
Stern in this movie, ever since I was a kid, whenever,
like now into adulthood, whenever I want to do an

(47:09):
impression of Bruce Dern, it's the line from this movie
where he says that dog's a bit like it's able
to just be saying that line when his mistress Myrtle
played by Karen Black in this movie, who actually won
the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for this movie,
but then didn't even get a nomination for an Oscar,

(47:30):
which anytime that happens where an actor wins a Golden
Globe for a role but then doesn't even get nominated
for an oscar. It's wild. It's absolutely wild to me.
But she sees that guy peddling dogs on the side
of the road and has that line where she goes,
I'd like one of those police dogs. And the way
she says dog, she choos on that word with so

(47:52):
much Brooklyn that she sounds like Colin Ferrell and the Penguin.
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (47:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have some interest. They had some
interesting accents from this movie because you know Daisy was
when's she from Louisville, Kentucky? She has so yeah, your dad,
we were sitting there one night watching I remember this
Miami Bys, and she came on the screen. He goes,

(48:17):
myrtles on Miami Bys.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
I have this theory where if you look at the seventies, eighties,
and nineties, the seventies represented by Colombo, the eighties represented
by Miami Vice, and the nineties represented by Tales from
the Crypt, every working actor in Hollywood would show up
in one or more of those series, depending on the
time period in which they most worked. Right, it's crazy

(48:43):
the list of guest stars.

Speaker 4 (48:44):
I thought that was so funny. When your Dad said
Myrtles on Miami Vice.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
After these messages, we'll be right back for.

Speaker 7 (48:51):
The first time ever Robert Redford as you've never seen
him before, introducing Robert Redford.

Speaker 6 (48:56):
Surprising questions like shocking answers, so frightening secrets he's never
told my personal life bloopers you won't believe, incredible scenes
you've never seen Robert Redford's and NBC exclusive seventy eight
seven Central.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
She's insane, Like she tells this very wistful story about
how she and Tom met and how much she adores him.
But then he accidentally steps on the dog's tail and
she's ready to like stab him, and then they get
into this huge fight and then, uh, you know, she
and Gatsby share something too, and that they're both lying
about who they are. But Gatsby's kind of lying for
the benefit of someone else, whereas Myrtle is lying to

(49:34):
make herself feel better, like to be to kind of perpetrate.
I guess that is actually more of a similarity than
I thought. Is they're they're both sort of perpetrating, living
this life of opulence, but there's a pain associated with
Gatsby doing it, and Myrtle is just fully embracing this.
Like when she's in that penthouse that that Tom is
paying for and they're throwing that party, She's like, Oh,

(49:55):
these servants, you really do have to stand like, lady,
you live above a gas station, what do you know
about dealing with.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
Well, she definitely was playing a role, and I think
the anger that she showed towards Tom that was almost
out of nowhere was kind of her anger at him
for not letting her live that life all the time.
So she was angry at him for taking her back
to the gas station, you know, and kind of jump

(50:21):
from her there. I think she would do it under
the guise of going into town to see her sister.
Wasn't that how she got to New York? Yes, okay,
so he would kind of send her back. He didn't
take her back, but he would send her back to
her you know, ashy terrible life, and she was angry
at him because of it.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Her husband, George played by Scott Wilson, a very prolific
actor who many people know years later as the Old
Man from The Walking Dead, so he had a fantastic career.
And then, of course we can't forget about Jordan Baker,
the professional golfer, the friend of Daisy's, the you know,
for a time love interest of Nick Caraway played by
Lois Chiles. And as I mentioned before, she is a

(51:04):
bond girl. She played doctor Holly Gooodhead in Moonraker five
years after this movie would come out or seventy seventy nine, No, yeah,
five years alo. I think she's gorgeous in this movie.
That she's wonderful in this movie. She's got this great
sort of come hither voice, but also this wry understanding
of everyone's foibles. And there's a great line where Nick

(51:26):
is talking to Daisy and Daisy's like, I'm gonna have
you marry Jordan, and Nick kind of playfully says, oh,
would Jordan marry a man with no money? And Daisy,
with absolutely no sense of humor at all, goes, of course,
not like that's just absolutely of course, we would never
do that. So it's like she doesn't even realize that
this belief, yes.

Speaker 4 (51:44):
Girls don't marry poor boys.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Yes, that classism is so ingrained in her that she
doesn't even think of it as being insulting. It's just
like that's just a fact of life.

Speaker 4 (51:52):
Yeah, And Moonraker, I, of course I'd like Roger Moore
was my favorite Bond, which gave your dad a lot
of this staying because that's probably his least favorite. But
the movie Moonraker, your dad said that was just so surreal,
and I said, like Goldfinger wasn't. I mean, we'd have
these conversations about how they were just outlandish storylines, Like

(52:14):
none of Sean Connery's storylines are outlandish, But I do
remember seeing her and Moonraker and just thinking she is
beautiful lady and a good actress. I mean, she's a
very good actress. But I think it's funny that your
dad always was a little less excited about Roger Moore's
Jacks Bond.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
I mean, it's hard to argue which is more real
a henchman who throws a razor brimmed hat or a
henchman who has razor metal teeth. Like I understand that
maybe we're comparing apples to apples at some point. I
definitely prefer Sean Connery, but I can't argue that there
aren't ridiculous things in Sean Connery Bond movies, because they're

(52:53):
definitely yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
Yeah, I mean it's supposed to be kind of a
mix between fantasy and action. I mean, because you know,
a lot of things that James Bond did and went
through just aren't really possible. So yeah, it's we obviously
loved the Bond franchise, but yeah, it's just funny that
that particular Bond movie or Dad thought was a little

(53:17):
too far out there, no pun intended.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
So finally we get to the man of the hour,
though to be fair, he doesn't have a line of
dialogue in the film till thirty five minutes, as I
mentioned before. And what's interesting about Robert Redford is he
sort of lived a lost generation youth. You know, his
father was an accountant for Standard Oil. He went to
high school. He was good friends with Natalie Wood because

(53:57):
she went to the same high school. And incidentally, she
was offered the roll of Daisy Buchanan in this movie,
but she refused to submit screen test. She was kind
of disqualified. But you know he was, Uh he got
into some trouble. He lost his baseball scholarship at the
University of Colorado because of drunkenness. Uh So that's a
that feels very Gatsby to me. And he's been two

(54:18):
summers working at Yosemite National Park which is probably where
he learned a lot of his you know, affinity for
conservative or conservation conservation. Uh. And then he decides he
wants to be an artist and spends a year traveling
around Europe, hitchhiking, living in youth hostels, just trying to
become a painter, which again disappearing into Europe, probably having

(54:40):
as many myths and rumors circulation circulating about him as
Gatsby does in this movie, like is he a spy?
Is he an oil man? You know I heard he
killed a man? Is he he grew up in Texas,
that he grew up in Saint Paul. It's no one
really knows Gatsby, And I feel like there's a little
bit of that that uh enigma in the early years
of Robert Redford. But when he realized he wasn't good

(55:03):
at visual art, he comes home, decides to study theatrical
design at the Pratt Institute in New York and also
takes acting classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
And I think the thing that makes him perfect for
this role. And this goes back to what we were
talking about with the Baz Luhrmann version and why it
doesn't work is that Robert Redford can look the part

(55:26):
of a dashing tycoon, but he can also communicate a
disease with an awkwardness that you know he's clearly trying
to hide, but it's very present. There's something vulnerable about
Robert Redford. There's something very relatable about him. Even as
he is like otherworldly handsome, you still like there's something

(55:47):
about him that seems tragic, that seems sad, and you
know he he It indicates that he's disguising something, and
it's underlining that he doesn't really belong in this world.
And I think that's the problem with the Bas Luhrman version,
is that DiCaprio is somebody. I never bought him as

(56:07):
anything other than a billionaire. I don't buy Leonardo DiCaprio
as anything other than a megastar. And when you put
him in a tuxedo and make him a rich boy, like,
that's all I'm going to see. And in fact, my
big problem with Bas Lherman's version, and why I think
he's exactly wrong as the filmmaker to direct The Great Gatsby,
is that the book is all about how the trappings

(56:29):
of wealth are a pitiful facade and not something to
be admired. But Lherman is obsessed with the glitz and
glamour of excess. He's every bit the kind of person
who would show up for those Gatsby parties and admire
Gatsby for being so rich and glamorous and not care
when iota about the man giving the party. He's bas

(56:51):
Lherman is the is the wrong person. He's latching onto
the wrong things in the book, and that's why that
version doesn't work for me at least.

Speaker 4 (56:58):
Yeah. Yeah, I know, your dad absolutely hated it, and
I was kind of in awe of the sets and
the way they filmed it, and I mean, it was
beautiful the way they did it, but your dad was
just so distracted by that Nick storyline. It couldn't even
really get past that part of the movie. So yeah,

(57:19):
I just don't feel like it was true to the book.
I don't feel like it was cast very well. I
just I really didn't enjoy it that much. But I
did love, you know, some of the sets and how
they kind of used the color gold a lot in
the movie, and it was cool how they did it,
but it wasn't It didn't feel like the Great Gaspee.

(57:40):
To me, it felt like a different story that was
based on it, you know, kind of a different version
of it. But yeah, I feel like Robert Redford kind
of he's a smooth, good looking character, but he also
has kind of a rugged kind of edge to him. Sure,
you could kind of always see that poor guy who

(58:04):
was trying too hard to be the smooth, squab rich guy,
you know, and just like that the shirts in the closet.
Do you remember that scene with me and Farah where
he's just throwing the shirts up in the air and
he has hundreds and hundreds of these same shirts and
all these different colors. And then one of the funniest
things to me in the movie is when Brewster makes

(58:25):
a comment about was it a yellow suit?

Speaker 1 (58:27):
It's a pink suit.

Speaker 4 (58:28):
Pink suit driving a yellow car. That was the two
things that loos.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Like easter egg, God damn it.

Speaker 4 (58:37):
It was pretty funny because you know, kind of like
Elvis Presley wore like some pretty severe colors for a man.
You know, he would wear a gold suit or you know,
pink loose wuede shoes and a pink shirt, and you
know a lot of people made those comments with him
but it worked on them, So I think the pink

(58:58):
suit worked for Robert Redford. But it was just so
funny when Bruce Den you know, the character Tom points
that out. I just love Bruce Stern's expression and the
way he said it.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Well, we know Tom is very conservative. He he wastes
no time at that first lunch, launching right into Hey,
it's nice to meet you.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
Nick.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Now here's why the white race is being subsumed, and
it's like, whoa dude, I just sat down, like what.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
He tries to sound intelligent. He's trying to talk, you know,
current day topics, and he's just trying to be relevant
all the time. It is annoying, but yeah, he dives
right into that kind of controversial talk and you can
tell Nick is much more intelligent and very uncomfortable with
the topic of conversation.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
But if Twitter was a person in the twenties, it
would be Tom Buchanan unfortunately.

Speaker 4 (59:48):
Right, But speaking of being.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Exactly speaking of being faithful to the book. Even accidentally,
this version many of the extras in the party scenes,
because there are multiple scenes of parties that Gety's house.
Gatsby is throwing these parties basically to kind of lure
Daisy in and show how what he's peacocking with these
parties essentially, and many of the extras and the party
scenes were recruited from the Naval War College in Newport,

(01:00:14):
Rhode Island, because military officers had to be clean cut,
so their hairstyles kind of worked for what twenties men
would have been wearing. These had to be so clean cut.
But Sam Waterston said that very much like Gatsby's guests
in the movies, these guys would just come and go
as they please, whether the take was done or not.
They would just disappear, and they would leave pieces of
their costumes all over the lawn. Like very much the

(01:00:35):
sort of careless frivolity that typified the nineteen twenties was
alive and well in the seventies, and these extras that
would just you know, show up to these parties and
leave whenever they felt like it.

Speaker 4 (01:00:48):
Yeah, that I didn't. I didn't know that was those
were military people and that were extras. That's interesting that
they would be. They're all over Connecticut, you know, and
all over Rhode Island, and so that makes sense that
they had a you know, a good pool to pick
from to align with the twenties style. But I also

(01:01:10):
thought that they Meyer Wolfshein.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Yes, what was.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
That actor's name, Howard do Silva, Howard da Silva. I
thought he was very well fast too. Oh yeah, and
he's kind of he's kind of clueless on what Gatsby's
doing as well, because he thinks that Nick is some
kind of deal someone that they're making a deal with,
and doesn't really make the connection that it's a neighbor
and a.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Friend right right, right now.

Speaker 4 (01:01:36):
It almost blows the cover.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Yeah, Meyer Wolfshein is a character that's always fascinating me,
but for different reasons when I was young versus now.
So this actor, Howard di Silva playing Meyer Wolfshein, He's
a character is clearly supposed to be a gangster, and
his name is a reference to Meyer Lansky, who helped
form the Mafia Commission along with Lucky Luciano in the
nineteen twenties and as a mafia nerd and a mafia

(01:01:59):
history nerd, I love the that's a reference to that,
but he's also a reference to Gatsby says that Meier
Wolfsheim is the guy who fixed the nineteen nineteen World series,
which is something that did actually happen, and the person
behind it was Arnold Rothstein, who was a gambler and
a bootlegger in New York and managed to fix the
nineteen nineteen World Series and convince eight different players from

(01:02:19):
the Chicago White Sox to take a dive. It's one
of the biggest scandals in baseball, and in fact, those
players' lifetime ban was only just lifted within the last year.
You know, it's crazy how how long that was a
stain on professional baseball. But what I appreciate now about
this character is the actor Howard de Silva, because he

(01:02:41):
was a prolific actor in the forties who got blacklisted
in nineteen fifty one because he was the first he
was the first creative brought in front of the House
on American Activities Committee and Josein McCarthy who said, I'm
gonna plead the fifth I'm not gonna name names, I'm
not even gonna answer any of these questions, and because
of that he got blacklisted. But I also found out

(01:03:03):
that he actually played George Wilson, the gas station attendant,
the tragic cuckholded husband in this movie. In the nineteen
forty six version of the Great Gatsby.

Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
I don't think I've ever seen that version.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
I haven't seen any of the other versions. And what's crazy, mom,
is that Paramount was so focused on trying to make
this movie a success that they actually suppressed the nitrate
prints of the other two versions, the nineteen twenty six
and the nineteen forty nine version, so that they so

(01:03:36):
that this version would kind of like be the only
one that could get circulated. Well because of them doing that,
that decision led to prints of both films being lost,
and a print of the forty nine version was rediscovered
in twenty twelve, but the nineteen twenty six version remains lost.
They don't know where the print of that movie is. So, yeah,
they kind of went overboard with their attempts to market

(01:03:59):
this movie and make it kind of the forefront of adaptations.
But also in this movie, there's a character named Clip
Springer who's just this guest who won't leave, played by
Edward Herman.

Speaker 4 (01:04:11):
Yeah, he just plays and sings and walks around in
a robe and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Clearly taking military grade LSD. Yes, he's on something. He's
you know, he is an actor you probably know from
Lost Boys or Reds or Overboard or if you were
a child of the nineties like I was. He's Richie
Rich's dad in the Richie Rich film with Macaulay Culkin,
that I saw far too many times as a kid. Yes,
so it was fun to see him turn up on this.

(01:04:38):
But also speaking of blast from childhood, Gatsby's father who
turns up for the spoiler alert funeral at the end
of the movie is Robert's Blossom, who is only forty
nine at the time of shooting, but he looks like
he's ninety. And there's a lot of buzz right now
about the Netflix series Monster, in which Charlie Haunham plays
ed Geen Robert's blo. The same year as this Gatsby

(01:05:01):
movie came out, in nineteen seventy four, started a movie
called Deranged for American International Pictures, which is this very grimy,
drive in exploitation film about a serial killer loosely based
on ed Gean. And it's crazy because Thom Savini did
all the makeup for that movie, and Bob Clark, who
directed A Christmas Story and Black Christmas and Porky's, was

(01:05:23):
like an uncredited producer on the movie. But what's really
wild about that is that most people my age know
Roberts Blossom is the old man neighbor from Home Alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Buzz claims is the south Bench shovelslayer, but it is
actually a really sweet old man and has like the
most heartfelt moment at the end of the movie. That's
Roberts Blossom. That's Jay Gatsby's DAAs movie.

Speaker 4 (01:05:45):
I can see it now, but I didn't make the
connection before. So yeah, I just that's a very interesting character.
And he was not in the movie for very long.
Only did really what one scene or was there two scenes?

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
I think he shows up at the house and then
in the funeral is kind of done in voiceover, but
you do see him at the funeral for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:06:06):
Yeah. Yeah, And he's kind of eating a sandwich. And
I always wondered that beginning of the movie they show
a sandwich half eaten and a fly for alling around
on it. Do you remember that?

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Oh yeah, it's it's clear like there's a lot of foreshadowing.
Myrtle says something about she says something about kill me,
Like when they're at the party and Nick and Jordan
have a conversation about how it makes two. It takes
two to make a car accident. Like there's a lot
of foreshadowing for sure throughout the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
After these messages, we'll be right back Special next Sunday
at an earlier hour. The loss is quite a card player, Mister.

Speaker 5 (01:06:47):
He cheats the Sting comes to television non ABC. Paul Newman,
Robert Redfride two great styles in the movie that taught America.
It's not how you'll play the game, it's how you win.
It's not as tough as he thinks either. Westee Next
Sunday at eight seven cent one, mounting on ABC.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
Another thing I think is noteworthy, though, is that this
movie was We're talking about how beautiful this movie is,
and it really is gorgeous. It was shot by Douglas Sulcom,
who shot all of the Indiana Jones movies, shot the
original Italian Job, Jesus Christ, Superstar, Rollerball, and he's one
of the greatest tps of all time in my opinion,
and he does an amazing job here because the moments

(01:07:34):
where Daisy and Gatsby are together and they're having this affair,
or when Nick is pulled into the world of opulence
that isn't really his. Everything's so shimmery and hazy that
it's almost.

Speaker 7 (01:07:45):
Dream like sure.

Speaker 4 (01:07:46):
True. One of the scenes that I don't know why
it resonates with me, is when at the beginning of
the movie, not right after the foreshadowy scenes are done,
and Nick is in the little motor boat steering to
go across the sound to get to his new place,
and his hat flies off, yeah, and he has to

(01:08:06):
fish it out of the water. That it was just
such a telling thing that, you know, something that was
his escapes him and he has to retrieve it. And
I think that's kind of pretty telling about what's going
to happen to him in the movie too, because you
see the character at the beginning of the movie where

(01:08:27):
he's kind of naive and young, and he has to
so quickly kind of experience a lot with that careless
group of people, and then he has to kind of
retrieve himself. So to me, it was just kind of
telling that that was beautifully shocked the way they did
it well.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
And I love that while there is an elegance to
the way that Sulkom shoots the movie, it's never overly indulgent,
like there's still plenty of shadow and harsh angles, and
he really does try to communicate, you know, the way
that the way that old money and new money see
the world versus the way that Nick sees the world,
and the way that you know, this love story is tragic.

(01:09:07):
You know, it's beautiful, but it's also tragic, like he
tries to communicate that visually, and I think that's amazing. Yeah.
I really love the look of this movie. The production
design is incredible. I do think it's also worth noting
that this movie was the subject of the cover story
for the very first issue of People Magazine. Really yep,
it was Mia Farrow on the cover as Daisy clutching

(01:09:29):
a pearl necklace. So it was the very first cover
of People Magazine.

Speaker 4 (01:09:33):
Wow. I didn't know that. So that People Magazine started
in seventy four, correct, So yep, that was the year
the movie was released. Wow. I've been reading it for
years and didn't realize that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
One question I feel like we need to ask as
we sort of view the movie through a modern lens.
This is always really interesting to me because we're talking
about a movie that was made fifty years ago based
on a book that was released fifty years before that.
So we're coming up on the one hundredth we are
officially at the one hundredth anniversary publishing of The Great Gatsby.
So as we look at this now one hundred years later,

(01:10:06):
I have to ask a question. Is Gatsby a stalker?
Because he has a fleeing with an eighteen year old girl,
he goes off to war. He reinvents his entire image
to be her ideal. He keeps extensive scrap books of
all her mentions in the paper. He moves in next

(01:10:27):
door to her. He makes friends with her cousin so
that he can set up a casual rendezvous even though
he knows she's married. He stares at that green light
at the end of the pier every night, which is
I think the East Egg version of watching her through
the window. I just feel like the question needs to
be asked.

Speaker 4 (01:10:44):
Is he a start? Well, I guess there. Today's version
of a stalker is much different because of technology and
access to information. And I don't know, because he really
didn't try to contact her until you know the time
period of this movie. So he was I would say

(01:11:07):
obsessed with her, sure, but I don't know about stalking.
But yeah, you could say it was that, you know,
nineteen twenties version of it because he was watching her
from afar. But a lot of stalkers are more intrusive,
and I feel like he waited a long time. If
he was a true stalker, he was kind of a
slow one. He wasn't as motivated to.

Speaker 1 (01:11:31):
Stock He's playing the long game, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:11:34):
The long game of stalker.

Speaker 1 (01:11:37):
I mean, even if you don't find him to be
problematic when examined through that modern lens, when you take
all of these things together, and the fact that he
doesn't even really know who he is, Like, that's kind
of the brilliant thing about all these stories circulating about
Gatsby is that I don't even think Gatsby knows which
one's true anymore. And the fact that he doesn't know
who he is, Daisy doesn't know who she is beyond

(01:11:59):
just thinking that money equals happiness, It's it's easy to
see why this romance was doomed from the start.

Speaker 4 (01:12:06):
Definitely doomed, and I think he knew it. He just couldn't.
He couldn't help himself, you know, he just had to.
And I really think it was a self worth thing,
I do, because he just really had to prove that
he was worthy because she had, you know, it's emasculating
what she did to him, and I mean, and then

(01:12:26):
she tells him that she clutched the letter he wrote
her until it fell apart in the bathtub and all that,
and I'm like, you know, you really that really didn't help.
I feel like he was just looking for acceptance and
acknowledgment that, you know, she could be with him now.
And I don't really feel like she ever did that.

(01:12:46):
I feel like she was enjoying the attention, but I
don't think she ever planned on leaving Tom. Because of
the nineteen twenties, there was a status associated with being
married to someone, and if he got divorced and you
married new money, then the old money people would kind
of abandon you. So she wasn't willing to give that up.

(01:13:07):
She was willing to accept the new money advantages, you know,
and all the opulence that came with it, because she
really wasn't willing to give up. She was obviously very
focused on status and Tom was old money, and there's
and if you ever read any biographies about the people
from Newport, Rhode Island, the Vanderbilt, a lot of them

(01:13:29):
weren't accepted very well because they were new money and
the Astors were old money, and you know, there was
Vanderbilts that were kind of shunned in the Newport society,
and they were some of the richest people in the world.
But it was new money quote unquote.

Speaker 1 (01:13:42):
So the question becomes before we get into the junk
food pairing here, why cover the Great Gatsby? Isn't it
you know, you know, speaking of identity crisis. Isn't this
a movie that's too flowery for junk food cinema, too
austere and melodramatic to be junk food? Like, doesn't it
violate our core values? And honestly, beyond the deeply personal

(01:14:06):
connections I have to this movie, I'm a sucker for
Robert Evans and his pet projects, I'll admit it. Like
I'm captivated by the first of all, I'm captivated by
the idea that big studio execs and this time dealing
in massive sums of money, would even have arty pet projects.
Like those odd intersections of art and commerce fascinate me.
And I also find it fascinating how relevant the book remains,

(01:14:29):
maybe even more so to this day, Like the idea
of the vapidness of wealth and the lack of accountability
for the rich, and the notion of old money despising
new money suggests that they old money believe that they're
the only ones who should ever be wealthy, and there's
there's the wealth gap that we're still dealing with now.
So I think that's one of the things that I

(01:14:52):
really like find interesting about watching this movie. It's a
book written a hundred years ago, it's a movie made
fifty years ago, but it is still very relevant, definitely.

Speaker 4 (01:15:01):
And I think there's two things. There's wealth and their status. Yes,
And I think that when you have status, usually don't
have a lot of status unless you are wealthy. But
just having or acquiring wealth does not necessarily give you status.
So I think there's two sides to that, and I
feel like f Scott Fitzgerald experienced that himself and Zelda,

(01:15:26):
you know, his wife, who was a little out there.
She was very enamored with acquiring things and spending money
and having parties and all that, and he kind of wasn't.
But I do think that he always felt like he
hadn't really and he died really young. Scott Fitzgerald did.

(01:15:47):
I think he was in his forties and he just
never even felt like he got there in fame or
status or and he just always struggled with that. So
I feel like that some of that was ingrained into
the character of Jay Gatsby as well. Wanted it really bad.
I mean, if you watch What's the movie that we

(01:16:08):
all liked that was it was like a fictional movie,
but it incorporated Midnight in Paris that what it was. Yeah,
and where you actually see Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway
have a conversation and it's just like they're always kind
of insecure, even though they're immensely talented. There's a lot

(01:16:30):
of insecurities that come with, you know, that level of
kind of status and fame.

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
You know, Yeah, well it's that cynicism. If if the
world's gone to hell and nothing matters, then how does
anything I do matter? And therefore have I done anything work? Like?
All of that lost generation thinking is really really interesting.
But I will admit I think the big enticement for
me to want to cover a movie like Great Gatsby
on Junk Food Cinema is that I love this adaptation,

(01:17:00):
and based on critical reception, that's not a popular opinion, no,
it is this film opened to mostly indifferent or bad
reviews and was written off by journalists and critics as
a flop and an embarrassment.

Speaker 4 (01:17:13):
Yeah it was. And your dad was never one to
just like mainstream movies. You know. He liked what he liked,
and he typically it's so funny when you say, how
is this something worthy of Jensen cinema? Your dad tended
to pick movies that people other people didn't necessarily like,
but he you know how he was, he deep dove

(01:17:35):
into everything. If he read a book, he wouldn't just
read through the pages, he would start kind of dissecting
or looking up things he didn't understand. And so I
feel like he felt like this movie was one he
could deep dive into. And that's why I really liked it.
It wasn't because it was so you know, popular and
a box office hit and a mainstream movie. It was

(01:17:58):
because it's way either moved him or caused him to
want to learn more or understand more about the character.
So yeah, that's why he liked it. That your dad's like.
We covered his favorite Christmas movie, The Christmas List, which
you know is kind of a joke for everybody, but

(01:18:18):
your dad really loved that movie. He deep dove into
those characters, and you know that people, you know, be
careful what you wish for because you just might get
it kind of thing. And so I feel like it
is it is worthy of jump food cinema because it
and it pairs nicely with something.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
And if I were to tell you that, whenever we
cover a movie on the show that has a theatrical
and director's cut multiple versions, that I prepare for the
show by watching one version on my TV and the
other on my phone simultaneously, like a lunatic. Would that
would sound maybe a little bit hereditary to you.

Speaker 4 (01:18:53):
Yes, yes, definitely. Well, your dad the first time we
watched it on TV, You're dad had Scott Fitzgerald's book
out and he was flipping through trying to make sure
that it was following. I was like, what are you doing.
I said, I've heard books and watch movies, but I've
never gotten the book out and tried to follow along,

(01:19:14):
and he kept pausing it. You know, it was a
VHS and he kept pausing it and he was looking
in the book and I was like, oh, my goodness, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
That's incredible. But I mean, I was just I was
looking at some of the reviews right of the time.
Roger Ebert said, quote, it would take about the same
time to read Fitzgerald's novel as to view this movie.
And that's what I'd recommend.

Speaker 4 (01:19:35):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
Pauline Kale asserted that the quote dreamy crushes of Fitzgerald's
doomed heroes do not translate well to the screen. Vincent
Cambia of The New York Times wrote in his review
the movie itself is as lifeless as a body that's
been too long at the bottom of a swimming pool.
Oh my goodness, I know like, and Stanley Kaufman of
The New Republic wrote in some this picture is a

(01:19:57):
total failure of every requisite sense ability, A long, slow,
sickening bore, how harsh I see, mom. A normal person
would read those reviews and be like, maybe I should
stay away from this movie. I am ravenously attracted to
failure in cinematic history, especially something Oh yeah, something this big,

(01:20:20):
something this big with this many notable creators attached that
when that failure, when that failure connects with audiences especially
And that's what's crazy is as much as this movie
was panned by critics and didn't make as much money
as they would have liked. Audience response was so favorable

(01:20:40):
that The Times where Vincent Canby said, you know, this
movie is as lifeless as a body been too long
at the bottom of a swimming pool. Two months after
that review comes out, they ran another article by Foster Hirsch,
and the article is called why are they being so
mean to The Great Gatsby because of how well audience
is reacted to the movie, basically suggesting that the criticism

(01:21:03):
was unfair and that kind of lightning fast reclamation of
a controversial piece of cinema is wildly uncommon, and that
fascinates me to no end.

Speaker 4 (01:21:13):
Well, I do think that sometimes critics, and I know
you're a film critic too, but I think sometimes critics
like to tear apart really pretty people. And you know,
Robert Redford. I don't think Mia Farrow was a really
pretty person, but Robert Redford was just a gorgeous human being.

(01:21:34):
And I think that sometimes there's critics who just want
to pick people apart because they are so gorgeous and
so suab and so so. I think Robert Redford got
some thanks because he made several high profile movies pretty
close together, and I think sometimes critics just kind of
get tired of it, and so they Yeah, so I

(01:21:56):
think sometimes they just pick apart a character because of
the actor. But it's I mean, I know that it's
not a movie for everybody. It's not. It's a very
unique characterization of a book that not even everybody likes
that book, but I do. Your dad loved it. I'm
glad that that passed along to you. And I think

(01:22:17):
your brother liked it too. He obviously was a little
younger when your dad was obsessively watching it. But and
that's because the DVDs came out and there was all
these outtakes that he was able to watch on some
of the versions of him, and you know, he could
even deep dive more so. And your brother was, you know,

(01:22:37):
a lot younger, so he was more into video games
and things like that. Been sitting and watching movies with
us for hours.

Speaker 1 (01:22:42):
Sometimes I just want to say, to close this out,
it's this line from Hersh's article that I feel speaks
directly to the Great Gatsby seventy four's appropriateness for this podcast.
And the quote goes like this, For all its rich
verbal texture, Fitzgerald's book is not a high tone classic
of use only to scholars and graduate students. It is

(01:23:04):
wonderfully accessible, an important and serious novel with broad popular appeal. Gatsby,
in short, is best seller material of distinction, just the
sort of property that movies are equipped to handle. So
basically saying, this book isn't just for snobs, and neither
is this movie. So I thought that spoke to the
appropriateness of covering an unjunk food cinema.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
But I do.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
When you.

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):
Are full?

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
And what'll I do?

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
And it is indeed time for our junk food pairing,
And Mom, I will let you go first. What did
you select to pair with the viewing of The Great
Gatsby seventy four?

Speaker 4 (01:23:53):
Well, I selected a treat that we had every time
we went to the East Coast, which was a grinder.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
Oh yeah, yes, because.

Speaker 4 (01:24:01):
I felt like they were grinding on constantly trying to
find whatever their true meaning was or happiness. So it
was their life was constantly a grinder. So we get
those grinder sandwiches, and your dad said it was always
the bread that made them. But we'd go to those
little gas station delis on the East Coast and get

(01:24:22):
the good bread grinders and different meats and cheeses. And
they were just so good. So my pairing is a grinder, an.

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):
East Coast staple that I still dream about to this day.
My jem food pairing, I am going to recommend a
Mary Pickford because if one film ever called for accompanying cocktails,
it's The Great Gatsby, set against the backdrop of Prohibition,
a time in America wherein alcohol was illegal and therefore
people were drinking more than ever. The Great Gatsby is

(01:24:51):
filled with scene after seeing of people indulging in good
times and copious libations. I did some research into the
most popular cocktails of nineteen twenty two this movie is set,
and the Mary Pickford jumped out at me. Mary Pickford
is A Mary Pickford is a prohibitionaric cocktail made with
white rum, fresh pineapple juice, grenadine, and Marishino liqueur. It

(01:25:13):
served shaken and chilled, often with a Maraschino cherry. Why
this cocktail? Why did I pick this one? Not a sidecar?
Not a French seventy five. The drink is named for
silent movie actress Mary Pickford, who, despite fostering an image
of fragility and innocence, was a formidable business woman and
a philanthropist to boot and in nineteen eighteen she began

(01:25:34):
dating early movie star Douglas Fairbanks while she was married
to another man. Yes, and they married in nineteen twenty
became the first Hollywood power couple, and their celebrity dinners
were the toast of the town, very much like the
parties at Gatsby's mansion, and they would boast guests such
as Charlie Chaplin, Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Helen Keller, H. G. Wells,

(01:25:55):
Sir Arthur Conan, Doyle, Amelia Earhart and Yes, f Scott
fan it's.

Speaker 4 (01:26:00):
Gerald, Yes, Yes. And one of my favorite books, speaking
of books, is a historical fiction writer, Melanie Benjamin, and
she writes a book, The Girls in the Picture, and
it's about Mary Pickford and her best friend who was
a silent film movie director, and they were formidable women

(01:26:23):
in an era where women were usually not given much power.
And it goes on to talk about performing United artists
with was that Charlie Chaplin and Banks Junior? And yeah,
so it's it was just an interesting book. So yeah,
I like the choice of that cocktail, but it does

(01:26:44):
sound like a girl's cocktail.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
So I feel like we've entered some kind of body
swap comedy where you brought a sandwich to the table
and I brought a cocktail that seems backwards for us.

Speaker 4 (01:26:55):
Well it's like it they go well together.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
Maybe so absolutely absolutely and paring well, Mom, thank you
so much for this dad level deep dive into the
Great Gatsby seventy four. I'm so glad we got to
cover it. I'm so glad we're gonna be doing a
little mini series on the films of Robert Redford, and
I couldn't be happier that this was the first movie
in that mini series.

Speaker 4 (01:27:16):
Well, and thank you, because you know, any chance I
get to talk about your dad, I just love to
do it. So thanks for letting me do this. Thanks
for helping me remember a movie that has a lot
of memories for both of us and for our whole family.
So thank you, Brian, and hey, Jenkian's thanks for listening.
And don't forget the Patreon and subscribing. Mama Jentcy' is

(01:27:38):
a subscriber, and I encourage you to as well.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
I don't even have to do the business at the
end of the show, because she did it better than
I ever could. Like it's it's just over, you know.
Listen to my mom and do what she says.

Speaker 4 (01:27:50):
Guy, I do what Mama says.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
So I'm going to wrap up this episode with, of course,
the incredible closing line from The Great Gats to Be
by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And so we beat on boats
against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past, which
I think is why I can't stop watching reruns of
Double There, But I'm not sure

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