I've always thought that a problem with film adaptations of Gatsby is that filmmakers want to BE Gatsby, to see themselves as glamorous and loved, to impresses every one with their great parties, so they all ignore the bits where Fitzgerald says "No, you really don't want to be Gatsby. It will end badly"

The more you bring up the sci-fi version that hasn't happened, the more I want to see it actually

I am a reviewer and to be honest I find the tone of your negative reviews often rather vain, showing off how you can rip someone to shreds. Having said that, I also find your reviews often make lots of valid points, capturing quite a bit of nuance and insight. Thanks a thousand times for that. Too often "reviews" simply go over the plot and then give a totally parochial pov as if their personal reaction were the voice of god. Yours are nothing like that but genuine deep dives, explaining precisely what your opinions are and why you've reached that conclusion. Bravo. I feel watching/listening to your reviews open my own perceptions.

A while back I ran across the idea of The Great Gatsby being adapted by the Muppets in the same way they did A Christmas Carol and Treasure Island. I can't help but think it could work--the inherent ridiculousness of the Muppets would definitely counteract the urge to be overly-reverent of the book, at least.

Jesus, Steve, you really ought to have found a niche in narrating for audiobooks. I was aware of The Great Gatsby before, but now I actually want to read it thanks to your narration of that passage.

Since it's public domain now, I'm imploring you Steve to write "Gatsby 2000". Hell, make it a patreon goal!

Steve don’t underestimate your audience. Even if a lot of us haven’t seen “Shane” we know the reference.

I'd actually love to see a sci-fi adaptation of The Great Gatsby fr fr

I like Luhrmann's attempt because I've always seen Gatsby as an archetype of the absurdly rich in the 1920s. The novel has always come across as an allegory for class war, and Gatsby is a complicated character because we pity him but at the same time disdain his lack of character growth.

I'm that cracking up nerd. Thanks for that shout out.

I've heard it said that great literature doesn't make for great movies because great literature tends to be internal. Pot boilers make for great movies. Elmore Leonard, James Ellroy, Stephen King, etc. can yield more satisfying movies 'cause stuff actually happens outside of the characters' heads.

"The book is always better than the movie." Two words to disprove that statement: Starship troopers 🎤

A lot of them feel like they were filmed specifically for English literature classes, especially with the obvious symbolism and obsession with putting the big quotes on the screen.

Oh no. Moulin Rouge is one of my favourite films, but that's mainly because I went into the cinema cold, without having seen a Baz Lurhman film before, and not really knowing what the story of the film was (back in the day, I saw two films a week in the cinema because tickets didn't cost a limb). The style just hit me in the face and I absolutely loved it, and Ewan McGregor was incandescent in his role. I'm not as hot on other Lurhman films, although Elvis has some amazing spots, but I think that has more to do with Austin Butler's performance than anything else. That said, I never really connected with the Lurhman Gatsby, and I did think most of the characters were insufferable, but I also thought that was the point (Babylon also had the same vibe about the 20s, although that was a much harder movie to watch). I have never read the book so I don't know if that was indeed the point, but I'll trust you when you say it wasn't. However I do think the insufferable rich people take is a valid interpretation, if not Fitzgerald's intention.

I loved how you got the lip-sync absolutely right, saying the lines at the same moment as Sam Waterston and Robert Redford!

On this subject, two novels leap to my mind: Dune and The Manchurian Candidate. I get some kicks out of the 1984 movie of Dune, and I have endless respect for what Villeneuve is doing, but Dune may always be appreciated best as a book. It might work well as a miniseries -- although from what I've seen of how one miniseries treated the Guild navigators, that of course could also go very wrong. More of a revelation to me has been The Manchurian Candidate. I've loved the 1962 movie for a long time, so much that I finally bought the novel, and while the novel is good, I am startled by how the movie takes its raw materials and turns it into something remarkably fluid and moving. Some great books don't necessarily "need" a movie. But when a book can somehow inspire a movie which is very much its own vision and its own self, I can be happy.

May have to revisit. I recall hating the shallowness of the story and all of the characters in it. No one has any real problems, but insist on being self-interestedly insufferable anyway. However well written, and with whatever intent, I have great difficulty enjoying a story without a single character I would want to meet.

"Come back, Shane!" Some film geeks remember that line, yet most of us don't remember that after that somewhat immortal moment, it's ruined. As the final THE END shows on the screen, the kid cries out, "Good-bye, Shane!" He's not torn and wistful, he's already realized Shane can't come back.

As a fan of Gatsby for most of my life, I was SO happy to see this video come up today. I, for the most part, agree with you about the various adaptations as I have seen all of the same ones. I do hold onto my opinion that Gatsby 2013 is the best of the adaptations outside of the fact that the soundtrack feels out of place with the setting of the film. Excellent takes, Steve

Steve's condemnation of the directing style of Baz Luhrmann is exactly why I like Baz's films Which makes this a fantastic review because regardless of me agreeing with reviewer it cuts exactly to what is or isn't in the film without giving the story away Well done Steve!

When you're talking about not needing the words of Nick seeing the party, the camera sees the party... I suddenly thought, maybe there's a version that could be made... that leaves out Nick. Requires big changes... but I think it could be done.

One of my favorite essayist talking about one of my favorite books. What a treat for me this morning.

I adore the costuming in the Redford one, those Ralph Lauren fits are so fun.

We need an unglamorous French adaptation.

I love Steve's reviews.

If there's no good film versions of a book, maybe the book is the problem. I personally loathe The Great Gatsby, I find the characters insufferable and the romance tedious, and if Luhrmann's film (which I haven't seen) couldn't make me care about them I feel that may not have been entirely his fault. I think you make a good point about the book's reputation versus the book itself, though, and I think its reputation is indeed perhaps a large of the problem here. Parenthetically, the 1926 Broadway version was recently rediscovered and the script will be published later this month. So if you can't see the 1926 film any more, you can at least read the thing it was based on.

43 mins of pure steve? hell YES

It's funny, I thought that the almost cartoonish tone of the 2013 version was done on purpose to highlight that distant image that we currently have of 1920 as a decade full of eccentricities and excesses and how well it ended.

We were subjected to the 1974 film in high school. Our very young teacher meant well, but it went right over everyone's heads.

Very interesting subject! 🌟 My favourite book, “A Confederacy of Dunces,” is also considered to be unfilmable. And so it remains in so-called “development hell.”

Steve, have you read Maureen Corrigan's So We Read On? It's a great study of why Gatsby endures. One of things Corrigan's book made me realize is that so many Gatsby movies focus on the hopeful romance between the characters and of the jazz age. In my opinion, films haven't explored the noir, inescapable hopelessness of the illusioned anti-hero. Going to be thinking about this for a while. Thanks for this video!

I don’t have time to be doing this today, but now I’m trying to imagine my version of the ideal Gatsby movie. Like how you mentioned you thought you remembered the Baz bits falling away after you’re first introduced to Gatsby. Slowly shedding the bombastic over-the-top everything as you start to see the slow, almost horrific melodrama creep in. Moving along with Nick going from “wow, glamorous rich people!” To realizing “oh god, this is actually horribly tragic”, with slower paced scenes, going from showiness to actual solid drama. Maybe not QUITE Baz-levels in those early bits, but something more like a light touch of that Wes Anderson almost-cartoonish-yet-deeply-unsettling style. Ditching the pure v/o “narrating as the PoV character is writing” to just showing Nick… talking to someone. Don’t just plop voiceover or text-over on top of fluff shots- use the framing to actually convey the mood. Have the prose you want to keep be there just because that’s how Nick himself IS- he just talks like a poetry major. Closing with Nick saying the iconic end lines, as though he’s still telling the story he started in the beginning, framing shots in a way that it looks like he’s still talking to another person. But the camera pans out in silence to show he’s completely alone. The audience gets left to just sit with it, quietly. By that ending scene, the shots look much less theatrical and much more “grounded”, “realistic.” Maybe let it be a bit less period piece, and a little more anachronism stew. You could even drag it up into the 80s or early 90s; any other era that feels like it’s a 5-minutes-before-disaster decadence. Maybe the thing that prompted Nick into trauma-dumping this story onto Someone is a neon green version of The Eye on a rainy night. Use more quiet shots, more whispering. Make the shouting moments actually unsettling. I dunno, I really like when the adaptations make a point of showing Nick just trying to live his life, and narcissist Gatsby barging his way in, and Nick just getting utterly traumatized by the whole fiasco-inside-a-fiasco. Maybe I just want The Great Gatsby in an almost film noir style. … I really don’t have time to be thinking about how to glue these pieces together, and now I just want to re-read Gatsby again. Thanks, Steve 😩

Steve, would you say the eloquences that Fitzgerald reaches toward but can't quite reach are like a green light across a bay that represents an orgastic future that year by year recedes before us?

I'd totally buy an audiobook version of Gatsby with Steve reading. Or any of a dozen other classics. He's got a good solid baritone timbre, perfect for audiobooks. Bravo!

I can’t really disagree with your assessments of Baz Luhrmann (and also I haven’t seen his Gatsby), but it’s also why I love Moulin Rouge.

It’s not often I see a video essay that I haven’t seen before in some form or another, this is one of those times. Thanks Steve!

I've never read the book or seen any of the adaptations myself, but that bit you read with Gatsby believing his dream must be so close yet not understanding it was already behind him in the past was wonderful.

Concept: A movie. The Great Great Gatsby. It's a movie about someone trying to adapt The Great Gatsby to film.

I really do appreciate how you always tie your work to the themes of your critical subjects. The holism adds real substance to your takes.

Speaking as someone who has never read The Great Gatsby, certainly not at school (In the UK school system it does get some attention, but typically at more advanced levels which not everyone gets to. Shakespeare tends to get more attention overall, with the most common piece of American literature at lower levels being Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men), and therefore someone who hasn't developed that reverence to the novel, I do wonder what would happen if you gave Gatsby to a team of people who have that same kind of background, reading it for the first time in preparation for an adaptation. I feel you'd find yourself ridded of that reverence that you've mentioned hinders the more recent adaptations. It makes me wonder if there's any other works of fiction you could do the same thing with.

The only Baz Luhrmann film I've seen is his _Romeo + Juliet_ -- and I think that film is one of the best Shakespeare adaptations that's made it to the big screen, largely *because* of the 'sledgehammer-to-the-face' approach. I'd love to see your take on R+J someday.

8:15 heh, Shane

This review should be a blueprint on how to critique novels to cinema adaptations, it has a great view into the direction process and the actors involved. I've never read or watched the great Gatsby, but with this review I've learned a few more things. Especially with the direction and writing of the Luhrmann film.

Even after reading the book, I still love Luhrmann's version. I've actually grew to appreciate his movies after rewatching them (Moulin Rouge went from a 5 to a 9).

Like diplomacy, great filmmaking "is the art of the possible." They said forever they could never make a successful film adaptation of Lord of the Rings or Dune. It took passion and clear vision from filmmakers who truly cared enough to make it happen. That's why I love the medium of cinema and all its magic.

Such a good analysis on why this book has never quite worked on the big screen. I love the book as well, and have been disappointed by the various versions. I have an affection for the 2000 one, but it's not groundbreaking or anything, and it doesn't really add anything. I'm glad you singled out Bruce Dern in the '74 version, because his performance is so good that I can't picture Tom Buchanan any other way when I read the book now. Truly one of the best adaptations of a single literary character onto the screen, even if it's only in a so-so movie.

Regarding Luhrmann, I love his Romeo and Juliet, the bombast, oversaturation, and overwroughtness of it all really fits it in my opinion (and his writer was doing him a lot of favors for that one. Strictly ballroom was ok, cannot stand Moulin Rouge, Australia, Gatsby, or Elvis though...

In my younger and more formative years, it was universally acknowledged that including the number "2000" in the title of something would instantly code it as "futuristic." I don't know if I've ever realized until now how completely incomprehensible that is to anyone born in this century.

Loved the Allan Ladd /Shane reference.

Chuckled at the Shane reference. Totally agree on Moulin Rouge. Did a marathon watch of all the Oscar nominees that year. That’s two hours I’ll never get back.

When I was reading 'The Great Gatsby' back in High School, I've always said, If I was going to do a movie adaptation of the book, it would be done entirely and literally in Nick's POV. It would kinda be like found footage but less shaky or a third person shooter except with no guns. There would be no narration (Not counting the unseen Nick talking), and it would entirely be visual, letting the image on the sceen speak for itself.

"The Great Gatsby" is my favorite American novel. "The Count of Monte Cristo" will always be my favorite book, but "Gatsby" is a very close second. The 1974 Robert Redford movie is...OK. Baz Luhrmann's 2013 adaptation is something I enjoy, because I am a fan of Baz Luhrmann's movies and how they break reality while not breaking reality and talking to the audience. However, I honestly don't think they can ever film a movie in a way that does the book justice. It needs to be brief and evocative. You need to cast the leads well, and they need to UNDERSTAND the character. Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom are hard to do justice if you don't really get them. Tom is supposed to be a man who thinks he's intellectual, but is really simple--a true nepo baby, only not insufferable as so many are portrayed today. Nick likes him because he's affable, and humors him when he's around for his cousin. Daisy comes off as airheaded and sweet, but is really very intelligent, observant, deceptive and jealous, and that's not an easy thing to play well. Nick is a good man with good intentions; however, he's easily awestruck by the glamour all around Tom, Daisy, and Jay Gatsby. Now, I will say Redford plays Gatsby exactly how he should be played. He's at heart a decent man who has been in love with the girl he met in the past. He has held onto that image solipsistically in his mind, and all of his work since coming home from The Great War has been aimed at capturing her. He can't see that Daisy Buchanan is no longer that girl who stole his heart all those long years ago. And in the end that naivete is what gets him killed. His sacrifice saves Nick, making him cast off his blinders and see Tom and Daisy for the wretched people they really are. That's the entire point of the book. And none of the movies have ever really done well getting that point across. Everyone goes and is like Nick at the beginning - struck to awe by the excess of the Jazz Age. Very few come out of the movie changed the way Nick is at the end.

Haven't seen the Luhrman version since it came out, but i do remember thinking that he did the valley of ashes and the eyes of Dr Eckleburg better than any other.

thinking of adaptation, i have a ticket to see the great gatsby on broadway, and im looking forward to seeing how theyve adapted it

I used to consider GATSBY unfilmable because the genius is more in the prose than the actual story. My opinion has changed recently, as I think most adaptations, including the new musical, make a couple fatal errors in translation: 1) they truly believe Daisy and Gatsby are Romeo and Juliet level starcrossed lovers and 2) they think Gatsby is the most important character. I would approach GATSBY as a story about Nick Carroway, who comes to New York to seek his fortune, is horrified by what he finds, and returns to the “simple” middle west. He has an actual arc, unlike Gatsby who is incapable of change. I’d even argue that Nick’s relationship with Jordan is more compelling than Gatsby and Daisy. Don’t give us needless flashbacks of the latter but actually adapt more of the former! The 2013 film ignores the Nick/Jordan relationship entirely. But Nick dumping Jordan is an important choice! Gatsby was never going to fit into the East Egg world but Nick could easily have done so. Without Gatsby, Nick probably would have remained friends with the Buchanans and perhaps married Jordan, who Daisy wants to set him up with from the start. Gatsby helps Nick realize that they are a “rotten crowd.”

This is all very interesting! Kinda reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, enthralling book but ever adaptation never really fully gets a lot of what the book is saying, except for maybe the Netflix series, which grasps the themes but changes the story wildly

I should probably try again to actually read the book. My first try a few years ago failed. Only seen the 2013 movie (mostly because I'm a fan of the actors for the 3 main characters). Didn't think too much of it. It's always interesting for me to get more insight into things I overlook or only know superficially, but have at least some interest in (being "into movies" in this case). So thanks for your detailed thoughts on the matter.

As a counterpoint that supports one of your points is the screen adaptation of Ready Player One. The movie is faithful to the basic theme of the book, but it tells a very different story. And for good reasons; the story of the book is well suited to its medium and likewise, the story of the movie is well suited to *its* medium. The movie is also written for a different generation than the book. The book is very much written for an audience of 80's gamer geeks. The movie is for 90s or 00s video gamer geeks. And they both work. If I hadn't already read the book I probably would have *loved* the movie and my only "criticism" of the movie is that I liked the book better. It's a good movie and a good adaptation, largely because it didn't try to recreate the book on screen.

Ok, I snickered a little at the Shane joke

It's me. I am the one film nerd. It was less cracking up and more of a sensible chuckle, but i still liked the bit a great deal.

Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet was good, but I agree that the rest of his stuff I’ve seen was not great

This is why Batman The Animated Series was so good. They took elements from the source material, but they weren't bound by it, and they would make changes that worked better in their type of media.

Where did that fit in against the Bill Kurtis Era of A&E?

It is of a post great war period that cannot be replicated by contemporary actors. Same goes for "Easy rider".

Loved the Shane reference!

It is weird to me that they’ve had such a hard time making a movie of it, because The Great Gatsby is such a visual book. Maybe the key is to eliminate the character of Nick. He’s superfluous when we can see what’s happening. I would love to hear what you think of the movie Poor Things.

I was always under the impression that the original novel was also pretty heavy handed with the symbolism. Though, admittedly, it's been years since I read it, and I had a teacher pushing it on me.

I think the reason these movies aren't hitting is because they're not cutting through the American myths that enough stuff and enough status can get us something real worth feeling and living for. We find all the excess cool and worth working for. It's hard for us to see the inner workings of Gatsby - that he thought his parties would bring him back his Daisy. And how it finally broke Nick to see that nothing could. That Nick was struggling with money made him our everyman, and shines a mirror to our "vain imaginings".

How dare you suggest that Paul Rudd was not yet a movie star in the year 2000, when he had already graced our screens with his powerhouse performance in the universally-beloved character-driven arthouse film, "Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers."

I kind of want to hear your take on other Luhrmann films. I ironically love and unironically like Romeo + Juliet for its unapologetic MTV-ification of Shakespeare. I heard somewhere (possibly from you) that the bard would have loved pro wrestling and R + J puts you in that thought space. It actually makes me think of theater itself, where a revival can’t change the words on the page so it changes literally everything else. The over saturated, bombastic visuals and needle drops sit on top of the play as this whole other beast. It’s an intriguing artifact of early Millennium culture.

I believe the book almost always feels better because reading is a collaborative art between author and audience. For example everyone knows what Poe’s House of Usher looks like even though he only tells you there’s a crack in the foundation of it while throwing in a bit of Roderick’s study. He knew we would build our own house from that. So even if the film version is noticeably better than what each of us imagined, it isn’t OUR House of Usher. Also, short stories leave a lot more to flesh out while novels usually have too much to include. And we all know how possessive fans can get over canon. You have to take each version on its own terms. Best example: The Princess Bride which I loved past words and so only went to because the screenplay was by the book’s author (William Goldman). Of course I noticed some changes, but could see why even as they passed (the zoo of death worked largely because of narration). Plus it wasn’t until afterwards I realized they left out a side bit on Princess Norma which was superfluous to the plot. Funny, but unnecessary even if it would not make the film drag (which is a big if.) I expect Gatsby is short enough for someone to do it justice in film some day. My problem with it is there’s no truly likable character to root for. At least there wasn’t when I had to read it for 11th grade English. Everyone seemed like a self absorbed pile of nothing. Nor could I grasp the glamour they were supposed to have. They were either the celebrities of their day without any notable talent for being old money, a successful bootlegger and/or the low class gold digger seen through the eyes of a young, if not green country boy. Or at least, this is how I remember them coming across some 56 years ago. I’ll have to give it another try.

26:43 The Weeping Angels continued to stalk Carrie Mulligan until at least 2013 apparently.

Thanks!

A film adaptation having too much reverence for the source material is definitely an issue I sometimes have with many adaptations. They forget to be an actual film/story that can stand alone on its own merits.

The Great Gatsby takes on new meaning when read as a Star Trek prequel.

Actually, my favorite version of Gatsby was the Great Books episode which I wish was out on DVD or streaming. Wasn't there another adaptation called G?

I'm willing to buy that a decent film could be made of Gatsby, but I think it's also worth pressing the point that not every great work wants or needs to be adapted. The world does not require a film of Finnegans Wake, a novelization of Tetris, or a video game of La Dolce Vita. And if you were so ambitious or pretentious as to want to try making a movie that does some version of what Finnegans Wake does in a visual medium, it would need to be so radically its own thing that it would make no sense to call it an "adaptation." A cinematic Gatsby is certainly not so ridiculous as those extreme examples, but I'd still rather see a director try to capture the themes and spirit of Gatsby in an original story fitted to its medium, taking as much inspiration as necessary, but without the inevitable restrictions or potential for disappointed expectations of calling it a direct adaptation of the book. The West Side Story treatment, so to speak.

Ugh, thanks for reminding me about the fall of A&E. I'm a huge fan of A Nero Wolfe Mystery.

I think that Steve misheard, and that he were actually told, "The Great Gatsby (like most books) is inflammable."

Patiently awaiting Mamet’s Gatsby.

The Shawshank Redemption & Fight Club are two rare examples where I actually preferred the film adaptation over the source material. Not that I didn't like the source material. I just thought the films were better for the changes that they made to the story.

Before I started watching this, I was afraid/hoping it was a late Silly Day joke video based on the old premise that the book Dune was impossible to film. Which has (I think, anyway) been handily disproven. Anyway, great unexpected film history and analysis!

Steve understand why movies are often not as good, and very definitely different - it is that they are very different mediums, and usually the book is much too long Look at the successful ones, either the book is a short story, or could easily have been a short story, or a really good writer who did the screenplay managed to leave out 90% of the book and still left a very good story in the movie - not always the original story ... Gatsby is filmable... it just needs a really good screenwriter

Can't wait to hear this... Since I know there have been a couple of movies made😂

I would love to listen to you read a book!

Baz Luhrmann knocked it out of the park with his adaptation. I will die on this hill. The bling and excess was very much the point-we, like Nick, are meant to work and engage to hear the frail humanity whispering underneath the shouted artifice. Gatsby's neuroses being dialed up to eleven (the clock scene) I always read as an act-Jay trying desperately to show his "vulnerable" side to Daisy (and Nick!) even while he's really just imitating the unstable genius of a Howard Hughes or WR Hearst. The movie attempts to peel the onion while clouding the vision of his audience (and audience surrogates) as we get through each layer. Anyway, all that said, if you're looking to crowdfund _Gatsby 2000_ I'm in for 10%.

You know you've messed up pretty badly when the best thing about your film is the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio...

Wait a minute... Gatsby is public domain now! Somebody, please, make Gatsby 2000!

Well, Mr Shives, you are a brilliant critic. You may not like the comparison, but how I miss Pauline Kael.

Gatsby is one of those books that has been forever ruined for me by being forced to read it. For many others I've been able to un-flip that switch in my brain, but for whatever reason I can't with Gatsby. I'm over 40, a lot of the story resonates with me, and I delight in listening to others discuss it, but just seeing that cover gets my blood pressure up. I've tried twice since the 2013 adaptation came out to re-read it and just couldn't do it. I can only ever appreciate it secondhand.

I’m sure he’d rather pull his toenails out but it would be interesting to hear Steve’s opinion on the new Broadway musical adaptation!

I hated _Moulin Rouge_ and threw my shoe at the screen when Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman began singing their love medley. (And I liked him singing in _Down With Love_ .) But I hated The Great Gatsby in high school and unto this very day. This money is respect for an opinion I disagree with. Well done.

I'm not Baz Luhrman fan, but I did enjoy 'Elvis'.

To your point that the Book Is Better Than The Movie, I would contest that The Best Book Movies are the ones that let themselves escape the limitation of Adaptation and treat the project as its own story that must be told from square one. Pace in point; How To Train Your Dragon is WILDLY different than the books they're based on. That didn't make the movie bad, the movie is damn great, but it *is a completely different beast from the books and the comparison isn't useful.* The books are full of gross out humor targeted at tween boys, the movie tells a story about coming into your own, disability, relationship building, and gave us Astrid so the cast wasn't a sausage fest from top to bottom while still getting the *feel* right. Its not about faithfulness or nailing That One Scene, its about Getting The Vibe right while telling a screen-friendly story.

Most of the commenters have already discussed the points I agree with or have made points I'm considering. (Are you really surprised more than one film nerd enjoyed your "Shane" reference?) However, you got me thinking about narration in cinema. I'm thinking of the noir films specifically "The Maltese Falcon" & "Double Indemnity"; also, "The Trial" (1962). But my favorite narration in a movie is "To Kill a Mockingbird ". Maybe some books can't be made into movies and viceversa. Like you said, they are two different forms of "entertainment". They feed different parts of our soul. A&E should be renamed. IMO there isn't anything artistic or entertaining about that channel anymore. Remember when they had a Christmas marathon of different productions of "The Nutcracker" ballets?

Remember when A&E showed ballet and opera? Sooo long ago. There is great value in making the arts accessible, in some form, to the public of a large country, big chunks of whom have no access to performances due to location, lack of transportation, or other conditions, physical, financial, emotional, etc. But, unfortunately the majority of the audience reacts as I did as a brat kid .... "what's this shit doing on the TV?" and thus such social services must be subsidized, and this hellhole dystopia just ain't gonna do that.

I have always found Fitggerald to be like Melville, well regarded as a novelist but massively more talented but unacknowledged at writing short stories.

How about adaptations in all but name. Like season 2 of Californication were Hank meets Lew Ashby?

I think the problem is that the film HAS to show Nick Caraway, but the truth is we’re supposed to BE him. The interiority of Nick is what draws the reader into the story. I think that’s why people so often connect with this book as teenagers. When you’re a kid, you’re used to Nick’s POV as the default setting of your life: You’re always on the outside looking in. There’s always so much that you don’t know or don’t understand. Because Nick is not only a stranger to Long Island, but also to the world of the frivolously wealthy, he’s seeing everything the way we do when we’re young. It goes along with being invited to your first parties where no adults are present. You see your friends and classmates in a new way and realize that people have different faces that they show in different settings. You feel very naive. That’s Nick. And when you read “Gatsby” at that age, you slip right into his skin in a way that feels different from other books. I never identified with Holden Caulfield, for example, even as a teenager. Filming “Gatsby” requires the audience to witness everything from outside of Nick’s character and he can feel pretty pointless for that reason. It’s like Jonathan Harker. After the opening sequence, he doesn’t really need to be there. Mina’s the protagonist, after all. All you need are her and Van Helsing!

Shane! Come back, Shane!