At the movies
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great 1925 novel, “The Great Gatsby,” has been made into four previous films, including a silent and made-for-TV version. None have been seen as real successes. We’ll see if the version directed by Baz Luhrmann that opened on May 3 grabs the brass ring. Nick Carraway (Tobey McGuire), a young Wall Street broker who moves near Jay Gatsby’s palatial Long Island home as the film opens, tells the story of the people in Gatsby’s circle. Nick’s cousin is the lovely Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a former lover of Gatsby’s (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Isla Fisher, 37, has a supporting role as Myrtle, the mistress of Daisy’s husband. Amitabh Bachchan, a famous actor in Indian movies, plays Meyer Wolfsheim, a Jewish gangster who is Gatsby’s friend and longtime business associate. He’s modeled after gangster Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928) — who is also a major character in HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.” Fitzgerald, as it were, made it up to the Jewish community by making a Jewish film executive, modeled after MGM film production head Irving Thalberg, the hero of his final and unfinished novel, 1941’s “The Last Tycoon.”
Rock ’n’ roll
The 2013 induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was held on April 18. HBO will broadcast ceremony highlights at 9 p.m. May 18 (with many encore showings). Three tribe members were inducted this year: Randy Newman, 69, Geddy Lee, 59 (as a member of the three-man Canadian rock band Rush), and Lou Adler, 79. Newman, who began as a singer-songwriter, has mostly been a film score composer since 1981. He has been nominated for 20 Oscars with two wins, and while he has only had one top 10 hit (“Short People”), his songs (like “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”) have been recorded by the best pop and rock singers of his generation.
Lee, the band’s bassist and lead vocalist, is an icon for devotees of progressive rock. There’s been much grumbling about Rush’s wait to get into the hall. Lee was born Gary Lee Weinrib, the son of two Holocaust survivors. In 2004, j. published a profile of Lee that detailed his parents’ story and how, in 1995, he accompanied his mother on her trip to Germany to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen camp. (Read it at http://tinyurl.com/bsb7cqw.)
Adler has worn many hats. His record company discovered the Mamas and the Papas. He was a mentor to Carole King, 71, who sang a song in his honor at the ceremony. He produced the great 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, which showcased incredibly talented new faces in rock music, including Jimi Hendrix (and all proceeds went to charity). On top of all this, Adler had the great sense (and great mazel) to buy up the rights to the stage version of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and turn it into a movie.
Time 100
The April 29 issue of Time magazine featured the annual list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Here are the tribe members: talent manager Scott “Scooter” Braun, 31; Jared Cohen, 31, political adviser and director of Google Ideas; College Board head David Coleman, 43; actress Lena Dunham, 26; hedge fund manager David Einhorn, 44; former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, 42; veterans’ advocate and former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, 39; Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, 62; fashion designer Michael Kors, 53; Israeli finance minister Yair Lapid, 49; director Steven Spielberg, 66; and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, 43. (A JTA piece on the 100, which included about half of the people mentioned above, erroneously identified as Jewish both Yahoo head Marissa Mayer and Tesla Motors head Elon Musk).
Columnist Nate Bloom, an Oaklander, can be reached at [email protected].