Gatsby: the Prequel

I just watched the first few episodes of Season Six of Entourage, which features the premiere of Vinnie Chase’s new movie, The Great Gatsby, directed by Martin Scorsese.  I am unclear whether Vinnie is playing Gatsby or Nick Carraway.  (I sure as hell can’t see him as Gatsby.)

In fact I can’t really see anyone as Gatsby.  The book has already been made into at least two unsuccessful films, and I doubt the wisdom of re-making it yet another time.  The book is so dependent on such ephemeral elements as mood, symbolism, style, and Nick’s voice, that I can’t envision it turned successfully into as concrete a medium as film.  Yeah, you can film the plot, which is what the film adaptations have done, but the plot is the least interesting thing about the book.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t make a movie out of Gatsby.  You just have to start earlier in the story than Fitzgerald does.

At the beginning of the novel, Jay Gatsby is a mysterious millionaire with an obscure background and a crush on a woman from across the bay.  We learn during the course of the narrative that Jay Gatsby is in fact Jimmie Gatz, a semi-retired bootlegger.

See, now that’s where you start your movie.   The Rise of Jimmie Gatz is about an ambitious gangster who machine-guns his way to success, all because his girl rejected him.  You can have tommy guns, explosions, chases, and— hey!— Martin Scorsese-style ultraviolence!   Preferably with axes, baseball bats, and saws!   Jimmy Gatz wades in blood up to his spats, all to get the girl, only to find that she’s married to some useless blowhard.  (See, that’s irony!  Audiences will get from this that crime doesn’t pay!)

You could prequel a lot of the classics this way.   Becoming Scarlet could tell of the deathless love between Hester Prynne and the Reverend Dimmesdale.  (I’m totally seeing Katie Holmes and Michael Sera here.)  Before the Screw Turns could feature the twisted relationship between Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, with perverted sex, black magic, suicide, and human sacrifice.  Angle of the Blade tells the story of Izaak Walton’s disillusionment with the endless bloody fighting in the English Civil War, until and at the end he’s standing like Conan on a heap of corpses, and then he throws away his sword in disgust and goes fishing.  Becoming Satan is the prequel to Paradise Lost, featuring Lucifer’s rebellion against our heavenly father.  (Blood!  Slaughter!  Demons fried by lightning!)  Dante and Beatrice tells the story of, well, Dante and Beatrice, with lots of sex, nudity, and lush violins, until she dies of a disease that only makes her more beautiful, and Dante staggers off alone into a dark wood.

I think we can make a fortune at this!  Someone put in a call to Miramax!