Day 304: Zelda Fitzgerald

51VO2NsQq-LEver since I watched Woody Allen’s brilliant, magical movie Midnight in Paris, I’ve been fascinated by Zelda Fitzgerald, storied wife of F. Scott.

Zelda lived hard and fast, and died a crazy lady in an asylum. I kid you not.

Hers is a fascinating, tragic tale that made me sad – yet I couldn’t put the book down. This was a page turner.

Zelda was the woman behind the man for some of her husband’s most celebrated works, acting as his critic, editor, and idea-person. But F. Scott wasn’t keen on broadcasting that fact. So Zelda’s role in her husband’s success has been understated.

Nancy Milford’s biography sets the record straight, as well as reveals the inner thoughts (as well as manic outer actions) of a woman that helped define the Jazz Age.

If you’d like to read about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s muse (and demon), let your fingers do the walking over to Amazon to buy Zelda.

Day 282: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Beethoven190Good-bye Beethoven.

Hello F. Scott.

This leg of my three-year journey through the works of the world’s greatest composers, authors, filmmakers, musicians, and actors is a three-week assessment of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel The Great Gatsby.

According to its entry on Wikipedia:

The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald’s magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.

Fitzgerald, inspired by the parties he had attended while visiting Long Island’s north shore, began planning the novel in 1923 desiring to produce, in his words, “something new—something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned.” Progress was slow with Fitzgerald completing his first draft following a move to the French Riviera in 1924. His editor, Maxwell Perkins, felt the book was too vague and convinced the author to revise over the next winter. Fitzgerald was ambivalent about the book’s title, at various times wishing to re-title the novel Trimalchio in West Egg.

And that’s where my journey begins – with Trimalchio: An Early Version of The Great Gatsby.

Over the course of the next 24 days, I’ll read Trimalchio, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s novel that became the basis for a bunch of film versions…and then watch all four said movies (a 1925 silent adaptation is a lost film):

1949 – starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field and Shelley Winters
1974 – starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow and Sam Waterston
2000 – starring Paul Rudd, Mira Sorvino and Toby Stephens
2013 – starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire

And then compare and contrast them (as my college professors asked me to do on exams).

I’m not sure how I’ll keep the blog, though.

It’s one thing to listen to a CD every day and write about it. It’s another thing to read a book and…what? Do I write how many pages I read? What I’m thinking as I read it?

I’ll figure it out.

I’m a big boy.

Day 193: Midnight in Paris

61WHnlZzQHLMidnight in Paris is a perfect movie, one I’ve watched dozens of times since it was released in 2011.

It is my second-favorite film by Woody Allen, second only to Annie Hall.

The Academy-Award winning script (Best Original Screenplay) is tight, witty, clever, and intelligent.

The casting is exceptional, although at first I couldn’t see Owen Wilson as Woody Allen, the stammering, gesturing writer looking for inspiration. He eventually grew on me.

Even the soundtrack is outstanding – so much so that I bought it as soon as it became available.

Midnight in Paris combines everything I love in a movie – including the kind of magic that could transport someone back in time…in this case, Paris in the 1920s, the city filled with ex-pats like Ernest Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Cole Porter. Other characters making an appearance are Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, Matisse, Gauguin, Degas, and others.

The cast is remarkable:

Owen Wilson … Gil
Rachel McAdams … Inez
Kurt Fuller … John
Mimi Kennedy … Helen
Michael Sheen … Paul
Alison Pill … Zelda Fitzgerald
Tom Hiddleston … F. Scott Fitzgerald
Marion Cotillard … Adriana
Corey Stoll … Ernest Hemingway
Kathy Bates … Gertrude Stein
Adrien Brody … Salvador Dalí
Tom Cordier … Man Ray
Léa Seydoux … Gabrielle

Standout performances were turned in by Tom Hiddleston as Scott Fitzgerald, Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald, Corey Stoll as Hemingway (possibly the greatest performance in the film), Adrien Brody as Dali (the second best performance), and Marion Cotillard as Adriana, one of the sexiest woman ever to Continue reading