What Nick loves about Gatsby, it's clear, is his hope, his aspiration, his true love of Daisy. Maguire as Nick wanders from scene to scene with vapid wonder in his smile.

He's bowled over by the excess and the excitement of New York, and particularly by Gatsby's amazing parties. Specifically, Nick in Luhrman's film is a wide-eyed innocent. But the thing that is most wrong is Nick. There are many, many things wrong with Luhrmann's clumsy, ADD Gatsby. What is surprising, perhaps, is how much eliminating Nick's queerness matters. But Hollywood is cowardly almost by definition. You could argue that it's a cowardly choice, and I'd probably agree with you. Even in 2013, gay content is controversial, and gay characters can be hard for a lot of people to accept, in various senses. It's not a shock that the film decided to erase the hints of gayness. In one telling passage while at the party, he notes that he 'was simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.' In the next sentence, he says Myrtle pulls her chair over and 'her warm breath poured over me.' A couple paragraphs later he's sneering at her 'artificial laughter.' In the book, he recognizes her appeal, but seems unmoved or even disgusted by it. He seems visibly affected by the sensuality of Myrtle Wilson, Tom's mistress. Film Nick is first attracted to Gatsby's parties by a glimpse of a lovely flapper flitting through the bushes. In the film, he still goes to the party, but ends up canoodling and maybe probably having sex not with a man, but with a woman. But while McKee may still be gay, film-Nick (Toby Maguire) is adamantly not. McKee, a photographer, is very interested to learn that writer Nick is also an artist.

But once it's been pointed out, it's difficult to see it as anything but post-coital.īaz Luhrman's recently film version of Gatsby makes a nod to this incident: Mr. Many people skim over that scene-as I did more than once. In the passage, as you can see, Fitzgerald makes a flamboyant phallic pun ('Keep your hands off the lever' indeed), and then shows us McKee and Nick virtually in bed together. But the quote above is about Daisy's cousin, the narrator Nick Carraway. well, the great Jay Gatsby, poor boy made nouveau riche, and his efforts to win the aristocratic Daisy Buchanan away from her boorish aristocratic husband Tom. I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.į, Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is usually thought of as the story of. McKee with dignity, 'I didn't know I was touching it.' 'All right,' I agreed, 'I'll be glad to.' 'Where?' 'Anywhere.' 'Keep your hands off the lever,' snapped the elevator boy. 'Come to lunch someday,' suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.

Nick of great gatsby