Kenneth L. Freyer: Please introduce yourself.
Candace Grissom: My name is Dr. Candace Grissom, and I was born and raised in Cullman, AL. In August, I finished a three-year contract as a full-time Instructor of English at Motlow State Community College in Smyrna, TN. This summer, I relocated with my family to Cincinnati, OH, where recently I began teaching at Xavier University. In 2012, I received my PhD in English with specialties in American Literature and Film Studies from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. Additionally, I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of the South in Sewanee, TN, and a JD in Law from Samford University in Birmingham, AL.
KLF: Tell us about Fitzgerald and Hemingway on Film.
CG: Fitzgerald and Hemingway on Film is a comprehensive critical analysis of over two dozen adaptations of both authors’ works. In the book, I present the theory that visual and printed literature, especially from the twentieth century forward, is born from a cycle of celebrity culture. In this cycle, which I describe as a being like an ouroboros, authors are constantly creating new material and reconstructing their personal images based on reflections gained from audiences’ receptions to both their literary works and their cinematic adaptations. Sometimes, the result is positive, and reinforces a sense of identity for the author, thus cementing their image in the marketplace of ideas. At other times, the celebrity ouroboros can become destructive, if the author allows himself to become so trapped in living up to his public image that he loses his natural senses of creativity and originality.
KLF: Why the focus on Fitzgerald and Hemingway, specifically?
CG: With regard to Fitzgerald, the project was truly a labor of love. I’ve always adored Fitzgerald’s wit and style of storytelling, not to mention his uncanny assessments of human nature. The first author’s biography that I ever read was Matthew Bruccoli’s Some Sort of Epic Grandeur, when I was fourteen. Already fascinated by The Great Gatsby, reading Fitzgerald’s biography made me see the author as a sort of tragic hero, and I became intrigued by the mystery of why his literary star rose and fell so quickly during his earlier life, even though the quality and depth of his work continued to increase steadily until the time of his death.
Years later, when I was in graduate school, I found the answer to the mystery while studying Hemingway, who was what people today might refer to as a “frenemy” of Fitzgerald’s. Hemingway’s early stories and novels as well as the work he produced during the final years of his career, some of which were published posthumously, reveal a very different, much more sensitive, feminist-leaning man than the artificial, pop culture icon that America embraced as Papa Hemingway, father of all things masculine. Thus, I also became interested in why this famous American author, who originated the New Woman liberated female archetype with his favorable characterization of Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises, and who ended his career with two other groundbreaking works, the highly introspective and semiautobiographical novel, Islands in the Stream, and the controversial chronicle of an androgynous love triangle in his last novel, The Garden of Eden, allowed himself to be stereotyped during his career as a writer primarily for men and men’s interests alone, when he clearly had so many other avenues of intellectual exploration.
After reading Hemingway’s autobiography, A Moveable Feast, I began to realize that the public image of Hemingway was very different from the actual man whose life and writing I was studying. From that realization, I developed the theory that Papa Hemingway was himself a character, carefully crafted by the author and his publicity team as perhaps one of the very first “branded” celebrities of American literary culture, who grew and changed in response to public interests. In contrast, I also came to the conclusion that the reason why Fitzgerald’s time in the celebrity author spotlight was shorter in duration was because he remained, until the end of his life, the same romantic egotist that he was in the 1920s, which put him out of favor and style as the Great Depression set in. Since Fitzgerald was less able or willing to change who he was in order to create a sustainable author’s brand, he was devoured by the ouroboros of his own celebrity. Hemingway, in contrast, was often described as “a man who sold vitality all his life.” He continuously redrafted his public image according to the tastes of society as they received his later novels and film adaptations, thus allowing the celebrity ouroboros to recycle and reform the young, sensitive soldier he had been early in his career to the hardened man’s man that has persisted for decades as the mythological icon of Ernest “Papa” Hemingway. Showing the differences between these two authors and the ways that public reputation, especially through film adaptations, affected their lives and works, thus became the focus of my book.
KLF: What does a filmmaker need to do to make a literature-to-film adaptation successful?
CG: Most simply, he or she should pay attention to the intentions that the original author had when drafting the characters. Audience members who take the time both to read a novel and then to view that novel’s film adaptation usually do so because they are emotionally invested in the characters that the author has created. Regardless of whether the adaptation is modernized or altered in some other artistic manners that involve language or setting, the audience still has to feel as if they “know” and relate to the characters in the same ways that they did originally. This is what I think audiences are actually talking about when they say that they are disappointed that a film adaptation “wasn’t like the book.” To betray that emotional investment is to lose the engagement of an audience with the characters, and also with the original author, whose actual and public personas are often reflected in those characters. Although I go into a great deal more detail about the specifics of this mutually interdependent relationship among original authors, filmmakers, actors, and audiences in my book, what it really comes down to in the end is whether audiences can recognize the emotions being portrayed on screen as being the same ones they felt when they read about the characters whom they came to love on the printed page. If this connection happens, an adaptation will be successful.
KLF: Alternatively, what should a filmmaker avoid when making a literature-to-film adaptation?
CG: Filmmakers should avoid redirecting the characters created by the original author in ways that make their stories unrecognizable for audiences who appreciated the original work. In the same vein, actors should avoid overpowering characters with their own personalities. Instead, both should focus on what they can bring from their own lives and experiences to add to themes and emotions already present in the work. In short, filmmakers and actors should find what they can do to make the ouroboros of celebrity culture circle back around to regenerate and revive the original story for a new audience, instead of reinventing a new story completely.
KLF: Do you think literature-to-film adaptations can be as valuable a contribution artistically as original scripts?
CG: Oh, absolutely! Especially with classic literature, an adaptation can do so much to make an original story come alive for a new generation. Take for example, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby, and what the choice to cast Leonardo DiCaprio and his real-life best friend, Tobey Maguire, in the roles of Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway did for the film, culturally speaking. Most young people today, unless they are assigned to do so for school, don’t read American literary classics or view iconic American films. However, they are very familiar with celebrity culture and gossip. Thus, good casting can create a sort of cultural shorthand for understanding character in a film adaptation. Even audience members who had never heard of Gatsby might be familiar with the relationship dynamics of the friendship between DiCaprio and Maguire, and therefore be able to relate to the characters they portray on screen, whereas otherwise they might have seemed too historically remote.
The same might be said for the choice to have Jay-Z as the executive producer of the film’s soundtrack. Since rap and hip hop have traditionally been musical genres that discuss the highs and lows of economic excess and deprivation, new audiences are drawn into understanding the culture clash between the haves and have nots of the 1920s through the translation of this theme in music that is more familiar to them in the film. Last, to go back to what I said earlier about authors and original intent, I firmly believe that Fitzgerald would be absolutely thrilled with the Luhrmann adaptation. Fitzgerald prided himself on being an author who wrote for those who “read while on the run and run while they read.” If that doesn’t sound like an author who would have been interested in translating his work for the iPhone generation, I don’t know what would!
KLF: Do you think there are other motives behind the Great Gatsby being adapted to the screen so often, other than during times when “public anxiety about money has reached fever pitch,” as you stated in your book?
CG: Yes, I do. The biggest reason is that Americans want and need to be reminded periodically of what the so-called American Dream is really all about. I think that one of the reasons why Gatsby has endured so long as a novel is that Jay Gatsby is a prime example of how the American Dream is actually a romantic illusion. However, it’s also an example of something, ironically, that Fitzgerald’s rival Ernest Hemingway once said, “As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.”
With each passing generation, Americans grow more cynical and disillusioned with the possibility that through hard work, ingenuity, and determination, any man can become successful. Regardless, we all WANT to believe in the comforting illusion that the American Dream provides for us. That is the reason why so many people, I believe, return to Gatsby, generation after generation. We all want to believe that we can outsmart the system, and win at creating the ultimate American life as we each individually perceive it to be, even though we know, in the back of our collective consciousness, that the system will beat us. Thus, for any American who has ever viewed himself or herself as an underdog who will not be defeated, Jay Gatsby and his eternal, irrepressible optimism provide an avatar.
KLF: You mentioned Baz Luhrmann went to great lengths to incorporate parts of Fitzgerald’s life into Luhrmann’s adaptation of the Great Gatsby. Why?
CG: I believe Baz Luhrmann is a great director who truly “gets” the concept of the celebrity ouroboros of film adaptation. Consider, for example, his choice to have Nick Carraway address the audience from inside a psychiatric hospital where he is receiving treatment for alcoholism. It’s a brilliant choice for two reasons. First, it reflects Fitzgerald’s real life experiences with depression and alcoholic excess that he chronicled in his groundbreaking series of “Crack-Up” essays for Esquire, as well as his wife Zelda’s lifelong struggles with mental illness, which ultimately required permanent institutionalization. Second, it demonstrates a real connection between life in the Roaring Twenties, which was an age of great destructive excess, and today’s modern era, in which the rates that people are requiring psychiatric treatment for depression and anxiety are at an all-time high. For better or worse, Fitzgerald was a modern man with modern problems, and his problems were reflected in the characters that he created. Luhrmann’s adaptation works so well because he is able to revisit, reincorporate, and reinterpret the parts of Fitzgerald’s life that were the genesis for the story in ways that today’s audiences can relate to. As a result, Luhrmann has created a Gatsby that completes the series of circular connections among original author, filmmakers, actors, and audience.
KLF: Which Great Gatsby adaptation is your favorite, and what makes it so?
CG: That’s a difficult question, because I believe that both Jack Clayton’s 1974 film, with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, and the 2013 adaptation by Baz Luhrmann, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, each have their merits. The biggest difference between the two, I feel, is that each film focuses on half of the novel’s last line. Clayton’s film is, to quote Fitzgerald, “borne back ceaselessly into the past,” with its soft colors and filters – it’s like watching the novel through the haze of a fondly remembered dream. In some ways, that reflects Fitzgerald’s original story. Gatsby was very much a man who lived in dreams rather than reality. In contrast, Luhrmann’s Gatsby adaptation reflects the upwardly mobile, striving spirit of the novel’s characters, who were, to quote Fitzgerald once again, “boats against the current,” of what was considered proper and moral in American society of that era. Thus, I think both of those adaptations were thematically successful, in ways that the overly moralizing 1949 film adaptation by director Elliot Nugent was not.
However, I would have to cast my tie-breaking vote in favor of the Luhrmann film for two main reasons: Tobey Maguire’s portrayal of Nick Carraway, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of Jay Gatsby. Maguire is consistently able to portray characters with an overall sense of internal sadness with great gravity and believability, not only through dialogue but also through excellent use of nonverbal expression. Nick Carraway is a profoundly sad and contemplative character, making Maguire’s natural acting style a great fit. Also, DiCaprio was born to play Gatsby. Watch his portrayal of Jack Dawson in Titanic and then watch his Gatsby again. They’re essentially the same character, only a couple of decades older and wiser. DiCaprio’s acting style has a perfect balance of vulnerability and optimism that forms the core of who Jay Gatsby is, and he makes the most of that correlation in his performance.
Last, from a purely arbitrary and personal standpoint, I remember rereading The Great Gatsby during my first year of college in the late 1990s, and since it was one of my favorite novels, sort of “dream-casting” the actors whom I would most like to see in a new adaptation. I kid you not, DiCaprio and Maguire were my first picks for the roles that they ultimately played. Perhaps in my next career move, I should become a casting director. 🙂
KLF: Is there anything from your book that, looking back, you would have liked to explore more?
CG: Like many other scholars, I made attempts to locate a copy of the “lost” 1926 silent film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, but to no avail. In hindsight, I wish I knew more about that film, and also more about what Fitzgerald thought of it, since it was the only adaptation produced during his lifetime.
KLF: What is next for you?
CG: At the present time, I am working on another collection of film adaptation criticism that focuses on the works of Stephen King. I’ve presented at the annual PCAS Convention based on chapters that discuss The Shining and the new IT adaptation. Oh, and like every other English professor in America, I have a novel in progress. Fingers crossed on that one.
Author Biography
Kenneth L. Freyer is a film student graduating from the University of North Carolina
Wilmington. He has made many films, short and feature films, and focuses on cinematography and editing techniques, making sure to be very detailed in his form. Kenneth is an avid movie watcher, viewing films to learn from their cinematography and editing techniques, examining as much as he can in the process.
