The story is this; Nathan and I were at the Louvre, seeing art and what have you, and came upon the Mona Lisa room (or La Jaconde as the perverse French need to unnecessarily translate even works of art would have it). Now I’m sure the Mona Lisa is like, I don’t know, symmetrical or something, and there’s all kinds of scholarship that’s either about how it should or shouldn’t be The Most Important Art Work In The World, or how it’s just the cheap celebrity of being stolen so many times, but ultimately, like most of you who have seen it, it’s just kind of small. The only cool thing is that they now forbid photos of it, which is cool because it gives us something to do. Here, for example, is how far we got before the guard stoped us from taking a photo:

Just looking at this makes you subject to arrest.

Apparently the line to see it is now two hours long, an amount of time that is proportional to the amount of self-delusion required to say waiting two hours is what proves that it is The Most Important Piece of Art in the Whole Wide World. Speaking of self-delusion, it is possible, though durst we never suggest it, that The Great Gatsby really isn’t the masterpiece we’ve all been hammered to believe. There are some good bits of writing, sure, but as with seeing the bad Tarantino films, seeing The Great Gatsby makes one wonder: was there ever really a good Tarantino film? Likewise, Mr. Luhrman’s opus seems to ask us, is this the Twilight of the Jazz Age?

I say knowing that for the most part that Mr. Scott Fitzgerald can tune a sentence while Ms. Meyer cannot complete one, and, in the unlikely event that she does, seems so proud that she simply repeats it six times. Let’s be fair, however, that Daisy/Belle is ever so slightly a cunt, a fact of which Mr. Scott Fitzgerald was no doubt aware, and one which Ms. Meyer was not. As such, the film/story falls rather depressingly into the Magic Pixie Girl genre, with our audience on various sides of the debate.

Let me say, it’s been years since I’ve read the damned thing, probably about thirty eight. And as such, I don’t know what the Hell I’m talking about. But there are a couple of lines I know are from the book, which are simply out and out clunkers. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, which apparently see everything, have not aged well, perhaps asking us if they could use a bit of antioxidant serum. Which itself would be a good billboard. The same can be said of I just remembered; today’s my birthday. Groan. The only line that seems to hold up is ‘I haven’t mentioned the pool all summer. I sure hope that I don’t get shot and fall into it. I might die of irony!’ One of those lines was invented. And if you guessed ‘I don’t know what the Hell I’m talking about’, you guessed correctly.

In the film’s defense, its vaguely fun. Mr. Lurhman wisely adapted this as hyperbole, and it’s really the best choice, with people running around and being all larger than life. With this type of material, giant flowing curtains, and oversized nightclubs and flopping shirts kind of work. In fact it only seems to fall apart when it gets all novelly, with people sitting about in drawing rooms and discussing things that matter. With words that must be read.

It’s apartments, mall, and movie theater all in one. Did I mention it has a PF Chang’s? Did I mention that I live there forever?

Afterwards, I felt like there was a limit to such exacting worshipfulness, and that someone, God forbid, should just fucking well adapt it, instead of revering it to the point of delusion. What is it, Twilight? The story of an idiot building up the illusion of wealth to win a semi-bitchy girl is a classic, and Mr. DiCaprio is especially game. It admittedly, and I would say this, works better as a comedy. Instead of copying the book, or not copying it and getting criticized, why not be true to the story? If one of, perhaps the strongest, themes of the book is the obsessive pursuit of the impossible, and the tragic destruction involved in same, maybe there’s a more modern time period ready for such a treatment, and a business to which such delusional personalities would be attracted.

1997. And plumbing supply redistribution warehousing.