The Great Gatsby

Before seeing this latest and much touted version of one of my favorite novels, I was prepared, almost looking forward to being underwhelmed. I’ve shared my dichotomy…my contradiction before. Clients pay me a pretty fair wage to challenge their views and ideas…to deliberately, through agreed upon processes, pry them out of their comfort zones and test what they believe to be their immutable beliefs. Yet in my personal life I often fight change tooth and nail when my current beliefs are comfortable. And my first reaction to a Gatsby remake was “Why? Why would we need another? What else could be interpreted or reinterpreted or conveyed in a worthwhile way?”

Was there something about the green light or the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckelberg that we’d overlooked to date? What was there gonna be for those of us who love the novel and still believe that Mia Farrow’s frailty conveyed the perfect Daisy ennui and treacle spritzed moneyed impertinence of the time? I’m not a literary or film critic and I’m not an intellectual. I just know what I like. And I loved this latest interpretation of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. I loved it.

I liked Redford and Farrow’s Gatsby and Daisy. But DiCaprio and Mulligan played the parts more viscerally and that alone would have me liking this Gatsby better than the last one. Their guarded wounds ultimately lost some of the restraint that Redford and Farrow never surrendered. And Nick Carraway’s conflicts and Tom Buchannan’s misogyny and cowardice are clearer. But there’s another twist that’s even more impressive and to me, dangerously tricky…

…it’s the Jay-Z—Baz Luhrmann collaboration. What the hell is Jay-Z doing messing with this thing? Let me just tell you that their collaboration is the dash of bitters and the swizzle stick that makes this Gatsby cocktail perfect. It’s as if Mr. Z. et al pushed it right up to the line of being overly kitschy and  Moulin Rouge-ish and then backed off a couple of f-stops. Too much of it and all that is sublime about The Great Gatsby would have been over-egged and tarted up. Who cares, other than the man himself, if the Jay-Z Gatsby soundtrack is a commercial flop? I swear…if another ounce of hip-hop ethnic urbanity had been added, it woulda been toxic. But they hit it. Just right. And it isn’t just visual and auditory window dressing. It’s the perfect siren come-on for hedonistic recklessness. Shut up.

So what didn’t I like about it? I waited and watched all of the credits to see where they’d filmed the  movie. Much of the Redford-Farrow version was filmed in Newport, Rhode Island and I’m always interested in the properties and houses used to stage these movies. I’ve absolutely no issue with the fact that much of this move was filmed in Australia. What I regret is that technology allows for so many of the scenes to be shrouded in digital imagery versus authentic shots of things like bodies of water at sunset. I know it’s less expensive and I realize that technology is stunningly efficient in these matters. But I don’t give a damn. It looks digital and I don’t like it. And finally, a few less “Old Sports” from Gatsby woulda been fine. I realize the book is peppered with the phrase but there’s more tedium in hearing versus reading it.

Oh, and one more thing. We live in a louche world so I’m not surprised that the Gatsby merchandising this time around is louche as well. Party at Gatsby’s t-shirts? Party as a verb should carry a ten-year mandatory with no parole. But even party as a noun in this instance is just sad. The Gatsby party attendees were pawns and poseurs to no less degree than Gatsby himself. Five gets ten that most of the rubes who buy the shirt haven’t read the book. Kinda reeks a bit of the Che image craze.

I wonder if seeing Gatsby through Aussie eyes had anything to do with how this interpretation turned out.

Onward Old Sport

ADG II 

Pitching a Project and Visiting Scott

My client pitch the other week was a bit surrealistic. I’m used to doing pitches after flying to the Northeast or driving to Philly or South Jersey…you know…ground zero for Biotech/Pharma/Diagnostics/Device companies. I only do strategy work with organizations seeking access to the healthcare economy. Scary ain’t it?

Living inside the Beltway and not being in politics is I suspect, kinda like living in Hollywood and not being in the movie business. One thing’s for sure, there aren’t many Biotech/Pharma/Diagnostics/Device companies around here. There’s plenty of work around here for healthcare strategists but its policy, advocacy and political stuff. I’ve done that work in a previous life and as I mentioned in another story; I got to the point where I couldn’t shower enough to get the smarm off. The arrogance, puffery and ego manifest in people whose power base is grounded in throwing your money around…the Federal tax dollars that you pony-up to run the place…is nauseating. And the ocean of sycophant cohorts is even more dry-heave inducing. So let me just get off of that little rant and say that I won’t declare healthcare policy work off the table forever. But for now, me-no-likey the option.

Oh shit. That’s right; this was supposed to be about a product pitch. My meds are slow to kick-in this morning. Shut up. Sit tight. We’ll get there. Ok, so there are a few Biotech companies here in the area and I was asked to pitch for a project at one a few weeks ago. It felt weird to leave my home and be amidst potential clients within an hour. Kinda nice actually. But don’t start rootin’ for me to get work that would mitigate my travel. There ain’t enough of it around here and the sessions I do are almost always held at offsite meetings anyway.

But what to wear? I have clients who allow jeans on campus every day and I have no remaining clients that require men to wear ties. I try to adhere to the conventional wisdom of “not wearing a home jersey to an away game” but I’m not wearing jeans to a pitch meeting and especially not to a pitch with a client organization that’s never done any work…z-e-r-o work with my little shop. I like jeans...a lot...but not when interacting with potential new clients. And I don’t mind dressing slightly better than my clients. Actually, given the societal hygiene holiday that we seem to be on, just washing your ass and donning something clean puts you to the right of the  proverbial bell curve. Sorry…bad visual…bad comment. Shut up.

And it’s hot on pitch day…Africa hot and prematurely so. I’m generally not a fan of the proverbial black shirt buttoned to the neck kinda look. My biggest issue with it manifests when the coat is off. The previously squared away neck, all buttoned up, gives way to at least for me with my little bird arms, a nerdy display that begs unleashing said top button. But I’m not gonna take my coat off so I go with it.

Flusser three/two open patch pockets and peak lapels. My standard house model for years and it all seems to work for me. It’s important to me every day but especially on pitch days…If I don’t feel right about what I have on, I’m not gonna be as “right” as I could be.

I’d say that this Flusser tropical weight suit is cooler than any cotton or linen options I coulda contrived. It breaths. Poplin doesn’t and linen is deceivingly oppressive…especially some of that bulletproof Irish linen of which I have a few trousers. That stuff lasts forever but it’s freakin’ hot. And seersucker was out of the question…too casual and too Southern. Y’all.

I finished this rig off with my now completely destroyed last week, Edward Green suede monks.

Rarely do I know the outcome of a pitch before I leave said dog-pony show but on this occasion I did. I’ll be doing a one-day thing for my now—new client next month and I hope to leverage that into a nice little annuity for 2012. So now I can swing by and see Scott.

I became aware of F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was in high school. Still uninterested in anything academically rigorous, I trudged compliantly through The Great Gatsby during twelfth grade English class and I wrote the proverbial Gatsby Symbolism paper at some point. But I think that I became more intrigued with the idea of F. Scott Fitzgerald than any of his literary output. Tweed sportcoats and neckties to class at Princeton…courting a gal in Montgomery Alabama…literary Paris. Hell, pondering these things while sitting in Florence South Carolina made them even more seductive.

Fitzgerald’s short stories were fodder for me during undergrad but I was more focused on acting out some of Scott’s debauchery than digging much deeper into his words. I resumed my interest in Fitzgerald’s work and life several years ago and predictably for me, began an erudite flurry of again reading his work and wondering about him. Fitzgerald and Hemingway…Fitzgerald and Maxwell Perkins…all of the typical stuff one would want to sponge-up amidst such a curious burst.

Babylon Revisited is probably my favorite Fitzgerald short story but I haven’t re-read it since becoming a father and I probably won’t. As much as my recent go-again with Gatsby was for some unexplained reason, superb, I don’t want to feel, with my now highly tuned parental heart, the hurt of either father or daughter manifest in Babylon… "Daddy, I want to come and live with you," she said suddenly. His heart leaped; he had wanted it to come like this. "Aren't you perfectly happy?" "Yes, but I love you better than anybody. And you love me better than anybody, don't you, now that mummy's dead?" "Of course I do. But you won't always like me best, honey. You'll grow up and meet somebody your own age and go marry him and forget you ever had a daddy." "Yes, that's true," she agreed tranquilly.” Please. Just shoot my mawkish ass now.

Tender is the Night became my runner up to Gatsby. George Frazier IV told me a story that I’d already read in Charles Fountain’s biography of his father. Frazier IV was badly injured in a car accident along with actor William Holden’s son in Switzerland. Head injuries and the associated slow recovery of verbal and motor skills demanded that teen-aged Frazier IV remain in Switzerland for several months. George Frazier read to his son, Frazier IV, daily. 

Here’s an email excerpt from Frazier IV, owner of the oldest pair of Belgian shoes I've ever seen and besides that; just one of the coolest, nicest people I've ever met… “I am, of course, a huge fan of F. Scott: as I probably mentioned, my father read me Tender is the Night when I was laid up in a Swiss rest home, so the book had a disproportionate influence on me. I later decided The Great Gatsby was as close to a perfect American novel as I was likely to read.” I suppose it's no surprise that after leaving the Swiss rest home, Frazier IV enrolled at Yale and ended up with an English degree.

I’d known for years that Scott was buried in Rockville Maryland but I’d never visited his gravesite. Which quite frankly, is unusual for me since I’ve always sought out historical sites and graves and landmarks reflective of people and events. I remember as a really little kid; just being riveted by the fact that I was standing on the very spot where some Revolutionary or Civil War General had stood. Ten years ago, I spent almost an entire day traipsing through Kensal Green cemetery in London, looking for the grave of Vanity Fair artist Sir Leslie M. Ward aka “Spy”…and yes, with the help of a gravedigger, I found it.

So why I didn’t visit Scott sooner, I don’t know. But after my pitch the other week, I set out to do so. He, Zelda and Scottie are buried at St. Mary’s which is now amidst a frenetically busy amalgam of Rockville urban sprawl. 

There’s not much peaceful about this little final-resting-place what with the buzz of traffic just over the fence. But I’m sure it wasn’t like that when Scott stood in 1931 at this very spot, just in from Paris, as they lowered his father in the ground.

So I visited for a while and would have been, under other circumstances, satiated. But Scott’s body had lain elsewhere for the first thirty-five years post mortem. He was a Catholic in bad standing at the time of his death thus interment at St. Mary’s wasn’t an option so they buried him in Rockville Cemetery.

 I needed to see where they’d first buried him…where for the first thirty-five years; whoever in the world might have loved or revered him would have stood and pondered the man. Zelda was first buried there as well.

Scott died in Hollywood. His poorly staged body was shipped to Baltimore and was then handled by Pumphrey Funeral Home in Bethesda. I’d driven by Pumphrey Funeral Home a zillion times en route to pick up LFG…not knowing that it hosted the paltry few people who still respected Scott enough to show up and pay their respects. Maxwell Perkins attended. Gerald and Sarah Murphy were there. All total, less than thirty people congregated at Pumphreys on Wisconsin Avenue for the Episcopalian led finale. I’m just restating well known stories here and my Dorothy Parker mention won’t be new to any Scott devotee. Parker whispered aloud when viewing Scott’s body, a Gatsby line… “The poor son of a bitch.”

My GPS led me to Rockville Cemetery but not to Scott’s original gravesite. I had on my iPhone a small, grainy photograph of the original site that I’d found online but that was all the help I was gonna get. The sleepy old place had no markers directing one to the original site and nobody was around for me to ask.

So I began a somewhat focused slog through the graves using the grainy photo as best I could. Surely when I found the unique gravestone with the skull and crossbones, I’d be standing near the right spot. And I did. And I was.

Who visited during the thirty-five years? Fitzgerald’s reputation and legacy was, for at least half that time, spotty at best. Did Scottie come back during the eight years before she would return to bury her mother? I visited my dad’s grave at least once a year for the first eight years post mortem. I never go anymore.

So my pitch day was a rich one…co-mingled with focused dialogue regarding my potential value to a client and right-brained, visually fueled considerations of Scott...The poor son of a bitch.

Onward. Hoping to avoid any F. Scott…Babylon Revisited chapters in my journey.

ADG II

Cricket Sportswear

These iconographic images of Cricket Sportswear having stopping power.

 Jaunty…obtuse…fetching…curious…I see all of that.

 But there’s an undeniable Doctor T. J. Eckleburgian presence therein.

 God...God?

"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic-their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose….We were all irritable now with the fading ale and, aware of it, we drove for a while in silence. Then as Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's faded eyes came into sight down the road I remembered Gatsby's caution about gasoline." 

Onward. Just in from Athens Georgia. And pretty much Gatsby’d out.

ADG, II

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Lead Soldiers and Shirts

Eleanor Lanahan, from her book, Scottie: The Daughter of…The Life of Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan Smith …

“It wasn't till 1959, when I was eleven, that I even vaguely realized that I was the granddaughter of somebody famous. A photographer from Life magazine spent the morning photographing my brothers, my sister and me playing with memorabilia in the attic: Zelda’s ostrich feather fans, Scott’s lead soldier collection…I was not curious about my grandparents. Being related to F. Scott Fitzgerald held about as much excitement for me as being related to an old master print or a marble bust in a museum.”

 I re-read The Great Gatsby last week and enjoyed it more than ever. And I never tire of reading proverbial shirts scene. It never seems to become hackneyed...

“Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher — shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such — such beautiful shirts before.” “

So here’s to Scott Fitzgerald. And to little lead soldiers. And of course, shirts.

Onward.

ADG II