Filming the Great Gatsby: A Classic Blunder UPDATE.

         In my blog post of 3/18/12, I mention four reasons why I think film versions of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald are doomed to fail: a stupid plot and weak characters that would embarrass most writers, great American themes that would humble them and a glorious written style that demands an equally glorious visual analog. In the current (May) issue of Town and Country magazine, Francis Ford Coppola adds a fifth reason why the 1974 version starring Robert Redford was so dull, pretentious and completely unmemorable: himself.

         Between filming The Godfather and releasing it, Mr. Coppola needed money and wasn’t sure his mafia movie would succeed. So, he agreed to rewrite (completely) the screenplay for The Great Gatsby. It took him two weeks. It should have taken longer.

The now famous director and screenwriter doesn’t criticize the film, nor does the magazine – although Town and Country does use the wonderfully ambiguous term “resonant” to describe it. In this very short piece, Coppola doesn’t go into detail about anything except what he considers to be his major contribution: adding a dialogue-heavy scene between Gatsby and the woman he idolizes, Daisy Buchanan. I give him credit for realizing something was missing, but dialogue? Okay. As legions of Godfather fans know, Coppola’s dialogue can be pretty good. He didn’t, however, replace it with his own. Instead, he stole it from Fitzgerald’s short stories. I don’t mind stealing, either, but doing it right takes as much time as outright creation and – by his own admission – Coppola was in a rush. So, in his zeal to take the money and run, he overlooks the two biggest reasons why you should never steal dialogue from Fitzgerald’s short stories. First, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” ain’t knocking Gatsby or Tender is the Night off the shelf. Second, the poetic style that made F. Scott Fitzgerald famous is absent in his dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good dialogue, but only because it’s faithful to the empty and superficial people he wrote about.

         So many people are involved in making a movie – any movie – that no one bears complete responsibility for the results. Even the list of major contributors is long. Thus, when someone as obviously talented as Francis Ford Coppola claims sole credit for writing the screenplay - creating the very structure - for an inert mass like the 1974 The Great Gatsby, there’s only one thing we can do. Give it to him.