Ready or Not, Here comes Gatsby

"The making of a blockbuster is the newest art form of the 20th century."

--Robert Evans

Two hundred pounds of beef, 400 lbs. of fish, some 100,000 lbs. of real-life Newport socialites hung with $1 million worth of Cartier carats, and a mound of butter carved into the shape of a lamb by an 80-year-old nun? A Scarlett O'Hara-style search for a movie heroine and screen tests for 75 antique automobiles? Five 40-ft. glass and steel panels removed from a New York showroom in order to put a $100,000 Rolls-Royce on display? Great Scott!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the creation. Right before your eyes, Paramount Pictures will attempt, using a rare blend of ancient skills and modern moxie, to manufacture a blockbuster hit. The blockbuster has, for the last dozen years or so, been cherished as the Miracle Aid cure for an ailing film industry and, for the moment at least, Paramount is rapidly becoming known as blockbuster-broker No. 1. In the way that one picture often constitutes a Hollywood trend, two can make a reputation, and Paramount's current supremacy is based on a pair of recent box office-boggling successes: Love Story (which netted more than $84 million) and The Godfather ($145 million).

Now the folks who made "What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?" and "Make him an offer he can't refuse" into household catch phrases have another entry in the giant sweepstakes: a new film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's luminous classic The Great Gatsby. If selling can make it so, Paramount intends for the movie to be bigger than either of its predecessors. "After Love Story and The Godfather," says Paramount President Frank Yablans, "I think of Gatsby as the Triple Crown."

Lost Love. Robert Evans, the studio's production chief, proclaims Gatsby "the most talked-about film since Gone With the Wind. "Evans' former wife Ali MacGraw started a bit of the talk. Scheduled to star as Daisy in the film, she lost the part when she left Evans for Steve McQueen. Still, since the film does not open until late March, it is most often talked about simply as "the most talked about," rather like the celebrity who was always called "famous." Famous for what? "Famous for being famous."

The unreleased film, which stars Robert Redford as the brooding Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy, his lost love, has generated enough audience anticipation to have already earned an unheard-of $18.6 million in advance bookings--nearly three times its $6.4 million cost. Since the industry rule of thumb is that a movie must bring in 2 1/2 times its cost to break even, Gatsby, if not yet quite a Triple Crown winner, is already in the black. And since the film will open almost simultaneously in 370 theaters round the country, Yablans can say that even if the film itself flops, "by the time the word gets out, we will have played to so many" that a good profit is secure.

One thing Paramount can count on to pull crowds into the theaters is the enduring nostalgia for the '20s and the deep affection that Americans feel for Fitzgerald. It is comforting in a somewhat diminished era of inflation and fuel shortages to savor the Jazz Age as Fitzgerald saw it, racing "along under its own power, served by great filling stations full of money." Though no longer the cult figure he was for a time in the '50s, Fitzgerald remains an ineffably romantic figure, the brilliant American novelist doomed by flawed ambition, a prodigal thirst for alcohol and a compulsion to act out the excesses of an extravagant era in American life.

Old Magnates. He would be a prince in Hollywood now. In addition to Gatsby, Paramount plans to make The Last Tycoon, his last, unfinished novel, next year, and is contemplating a film of Zelda, the Nancy Milford biography of his glittering, mad wife. This season has also seen two major dramatizations of Fitzgerald's life, one on television and one on the New York stage.

Fitzgerald, who died in 1940 at 44, spent the last four years of his life working unsuccessfully in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's stable of writers. The late '30s represented perhaps the apogee of studio supremacy in movie production. The film industry has gone through a series of declines and rebirths since then. Hollywood today is discussed in terms the old magnates would not even recognize: independent productions, runaway productions, marketing packages, made-for-TV movies. The old generation would be aghast too at the kind of business-school, risk-minimizing maneuvers that Paramount has made with Gatsby, like selling $1.5 million of the movie's $6.4 million cost to outside investors.

Although they would not have used the word, the tycoons who fascinated Fitzgerald would certainly recognize the meaning and value of "hype." The "New Hollywood" is annunciated almost annually by this image-conscious town, but the current version is in some ways like the Old Hollywood. The late '60s saw a period when the big studios looked for "a formula" while independents turned out Easy Riders. That was when Robert Evans, already at Paramount, was making $15 million disasters like Darling Lili. Then, three years ago, Fox made The French Connection, opening up the rich vein of the cop genre. Shortly before, with Love Story, Evans had hit on a couple of formulas of his own. In that film he learned the value of romance and romanticizing; in The Godfather and Gatsby he added nostalgia to his equation. At the same time, he discovered the super-package, the art of the supersell, laid on before a filmgoer ever saw a frame in a theater. With Gatsby, the art has been tuned to a perfect pitchman's dream. As a result, the selling of The Great Gatsby makes an instructive case history of modern studio merchandising.

One Jewel. No one markets a movie better than Paramount's own odd couple (see boxes pages 88 and 89). An industrial-diamond-in-the-rough, Yablans, 38, orders the world around like a drill sergeant and employs a primal scream as casually as most people sneeze. The slight, agile Evans, 43, given to longpoint collars and cashmere sweaters, projects a kind of artless charm and wide-eyed aestheticism. But he is as obsessive about what he wants and is credited with being the figure who has, in show-business parlance, turned Paramount around. He runs day-to-day production matters--the selection and making of films. Yablans, who is New York-based, distributes and promotes the products. He also controls the budget.

"We decided we would avoid the old Louis B. Mayer v. Irving Thalberg-style battles for power," says Evans. "We wanted to be like brothers." To post some fraternal boundaries, the men decided to split tangible rewards evenly. Both have the same amount of Paramount stock and make equal base salaries (a reported $250,000). It is hard, however, for two aggressive men not to covet the major credit for a success as gaudy as Paramount's. A recent 16-page advertising flyer--approved by Yablans --for new studio productions displays his photograph but fails to mention Evans at all. The brotherly yoke may be getting heavier.

Still, when Yablans announces that "there has never been a promotion campaign like this before," he dutifully adds that "Bob and I did it totally together, and it began the day we decided to do the film. We target one jewel a year. Once the gem is decided upon, then we work on the mounting. And we make an incredible setting." Yablans calculates that the "totally choreographed" campaign has created some 1.5 billion impressions of Gatsby in the collective moviegoing mind, a statistic as unprovable as it is absurd. More important to Yablans, who is tightfisted as well as two-fisted in his business dealings, "the price was right." Paramount has spent a mere $200,000 for publicity and promotion so far, and it dipped into its $1.5 million paid-advertising budget for the first time only two weeks ago. The rest has been free.

The first big promotional step was getting Women's Wear Daily involved in Gatsby as a fashion goal for the 1973-74 season. It is doubtful that Paramount choreographed Designer Kenzo Takada's Paris show in October 1972, but the appearance of Kenzo's V-necked, red-and-blue bordered tennis sweaters and boxy white flannel pants was deftly followed by the announcement that the film was going to be made. Women's Wear Daily promptly translated Paris' le style tennis as "the Gatsby look," and the fashion publicity fairly snowed. It was a case of perfect timing--or at least it would have been had the movie not been postponed right in the middle of it all. The fashion strategy fitted fine in the Gatsby game plan, says Evans. "The only problem was they brought it out too early."

The delay was caused by budget problems and the crumbling Evans marriage. If the interval undermined the Women's Wear campaign, it did have one good side effect; the studio milked hundreds of extra inches of press copy out of the deliberately prolonged search for a fresh Daisy. When such established stars as Katharine Ross, Candice Bergen and Faye Dunaway were made to test, photographers were dutifully stationed at the door to record their comings and goings.

The product tie-ins, valued at $6 million, were designed to "create a third level of awareness," says Paramount Promotion Director Charles Glenn. That is, they are designed to flog Gatsby on the Main Street level. "I figured we could get $2 million in paid publicity from somebody else's budgets," says Yablans. (The $6 million figure includes the calculated cost of each manufacturer's in-house and labor costs.)

The studio claims to have turned down more than a dozen manufacturers eager to link their products with Gatsby. "Anything that was not in keeping with the taste level of the film itself was not considered," says Mildred Collins, a publicist who coordinated the tie-ins. Also anything that did not smack of cold cash. Says Glenn: "We looked for companies that would put their money where their mouths were."

Classic White. Finally four firms were picked: "21" Brands (Ballantine Scotch); Glemby International, a chain of more than 500 hairdressing salons; Robert Bruce, a men's sportswear manufacturer; and E.I. du Pont, for their new "classic white" line of cookware. "You have turned The Great Gatsby into pots and pans," complained Fitzgerald's daughter, Scottie Lanahan Smith, but to no avail. (The film lavishes attention on Gatsby's Escoffier-worthy kitchen that is stocked completely with gleaming copper utensils.)

Ballantine was the only association initiated by the studio. "21" Brands weighed in with $350,000 for a campaign whispering "Gatsby's parties . . . Ballantine's was there" -- illegally, of course, since 1922 was a Prohibition year as well as the height, in Fitzgerald's judgment, of the Jazz Age. Robert Bruce failed to get the services of Robert Redford as model for its $175,000 commitment ("Drape me in a suit like a Vogue model?" stormed Redford. "No way"). But the firm did get the use of Newport, R.I., location backgrounds for its "Gatsby's Times" ads and some movie tickets to award in the "Gatsby man" contests it will sponsor in its 400 retail department store outlets. Glemby promised $250,000 worth of "Gatsby cut" promotions in its 600 department store salons. (In the film Farrow's marcelled wig is pretty but has all the natural hit of a helmet.) Du Pont will also blanket 52 department stores in major markets with displays, books, records, block movie tickets, and provide each store with a half-hour film on the making of the film for local TV exposure. "The idea," concludes Glenn modestly, "is to Gatsbyize the entire country."

The Gatsbyization of America was hardly what Ah' MacGraw had in mind when the project began. A true Fitzgerald freak, she dreamed of playing Daisy, the elegant, money-voiced heroine of Gatsby. Evans set out to secure Gatsby as a present for his bride.

The film rights had reverted to Fitzgerald's daughter. In 1970, Evans and MacGraw approached Producer David Merrick. "Bob said to me," recounts Merrick, " 1 want to do this picture for Ali, and I think you have the class to do it properly. And, of course,' he added, 'you are a friend of Scottie's.' " Bare Bones. Evans had hoped to buy the rights for $130,000, but by the time Merrick got to Mrs. Smith there was a sudden spate of competitive bidders, including Robert Redford and Producer Ray Stark. It took Merrick a year and a half to close the deal for $350,000 plus a generous percentage.

In both Love Story and The Godfather, the studio was working with solidly presold properties, recent bestseller-list books with strong, clearly defined plots. (Love Story, of course, was a screenplay before it was a book. Evans talked Author Erich Segal into writing a novel from his original screenplay, and then spent $10,000--including cash doled out to studio employees to buy it in their local bookstores--to boost the book onto the bestseller lists. Only then did Paramount release the film.)

Gatsby presents a different problem. The valuable 20s ambience is there to be tapped, but in practical adaptation terms, the bare bones of the book's plot .are slender. It concerns the tragedy that follows when Jay Gatsby, a mysterious bootlegger, tries to use his money to revive a wartime romance with the rich, spoiled Daisy, who has since married even richer. Their crossed purposes are refracted in the lives of those near them: Daisy's philandering husband Tom, his mistress and her husband. At the end Tom and Daisy retreat into their "vast carelessness"; the others are all dead. The story is secondary to the novel's brilliant crystallization of the pace and mood of the '20s and to what Fitzgerald himself called "blankets of beautiful prose." Deprived of that prose, a writer is in the position of "the poor devil of a screenwriter," in Fitzgerald's short story, Financing Finnegan. After trying to adapt "a distinguished author's novel," he says, "it's all beautiful when you read it, but when you write it down plain it's like a week in the nuthouse."

First choice for an adapter was Truman Capote, but Paramount found his treatment "unacceptable." Godfather Director and Academy Award-Winning Screenwriter (for Patton) Francis Ford Coppola was brought in, and he turned in the script in three weeks.

The next step was the casting of Gatsby and the hiring of a director. Ideally, of course, the director and principal actors of a blockbuster should also be presold. But finding suitably lustrous names for Gatsby was far from easy.

Brando's Slice. Directors Peter Bogdanovich, Arthur Perm and Mike Nichols were initially interested, but only if Ali MacGraw, whose reputation as an actress was more fire sale than presale, did not play the lead. Warren Beatty (who five years before, hoping to produce Gatsby himself, had offered the role to Bob Evans) was interested, if MacGraw would take the secondary role of Jordan. Jack Nicholson was interested, again if MacGraw was not Daisy. Evans was undaunted. "There was no equivocating," he recalls. "My wife was going to play Daisy."

Evans next turned to his Godfather, but Marlon Brando made a salary-and-percentage demand that Paramount could not buy. "Marlon wanted the moon and the stars," says Evans, "because he was angry about not having a bigger percentage of The Godfather. I told him we did not have that kind of budget, and he said, 'Well, take a slice of Godfather. " Exit Brando.

Debatable Move. The packaging was not going as well as might have been expected, perhaps because the approach was not sufficiently imaginative or even thoughtful. "The fact that Paramount approached Marlon really makes you wonder," says Robert Redford, noting that Brando is almost 50 and Gatsby is 31. "Didn't anyone at Paramount bother to read the novel?"

Another debatable move was hiring British Director Jack Clayton for a story that so subtly reflects American class attitudes. The five films Clayton had previously directed, including Room at the Top and The Pumpkin Eater, were reasonably well received, but he had not made a film in seven years. Nonetheless, Clayton was signed for $315,000, cast approval and the promise of a free hand.

Still searching for a Gatsby with the film's starting date only two months away, Evans met with Clayton and Merrick in Los Angeles. Merrick wanted Robert Redford, but Evans was not sure. Evans suggested Steve McQueen, who was at the time on a Texas location filming The Getaway with MacGraw. His suggestion was received in embarrassed silence. Finally, Clayton said, "No. McQueen cannot speak the language." Gossip about the romance between McQueen and MacGraw had been circulating since The Getaway's first days of shooting. Evans now says, "I guess the easiest man to con is a con man. I didn't believe the rumors."

Redford was finally signed in May, and a few days later the whole Gatsby project was temporarily shelved. Then the one member of the cast who was sure from the start filed for a divorce from Evans. After two months of haggling, MacGraw's agent accepted a $1 check to release her from the movie begun for her.

The search for the new heroine began. Evans received a cable from Mia Farrow in London: "Dear Bob, may I be your Daisy?" Clayton directed Mia in a test in London, and arrived to test "the other ladies" with Farrow's film under his arm and a firmly preconceived notion. The Paramount powers agreed with him. Says Evans, "She brought a mystical quality, a kind of spoiled arrogance, which made her especially interesting."

In the Tent. The remaining loose ends of the Gatsby package wrapped up smoothly: Karen Black and Scott Wilson as the ill-fated Myrtle and George Wilson; Bruce Dern as Daisy's husband Tom Buchanan; Sam Waterston as the narrator, Nick Carraway; Lois Chiles as Jordan Baker; and finally Howard da Silva, who played Wilson in the 1949 version, as Gatsby's mysterious business connection Wolfsheim, "the man who fixed the 1919 World Series."

Compared to the pasting together of the project, the 20 weeks of shooting on location in Newport and at Pinewood Studios near London were placid. But Robert Redford compares the set to a tent in the eye of a storm. "We just prayed we could get finished with our work before the tent crumpled in on us or was simply blown away. The storm, of course, was all of that hype and promotional bullshit Paramount arranged that threatened to destroy us all."

For Redford, playing Gatsby was the achievement of an old ambition. When he signed for the role, he had just done a couple of unsuccessful pictures following his first big splash in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He was a star, certainly, but he had not yet entered the ranks of the "bankable" top ten. During the work on Gatsby, however, The Way We Were and The Sting were released, and Redford became the most sought-after actor in town.

Added Ruffles. "I wanted Gatsby badly," he says. "He is not fleshed out in the book, and the implied parts of his character are fascinating." Redford's biggest problem was Gatsby's language. "He simply didn't talk like a real person," he says, quoting Fitzgerald's own description of his hero: "His way of speaking bordered on the absurd."

All of the actors, says Redford, were very much aware that Paramount was trying to steamroll a superhit and that they were expected to cooperate with the game plan by producing superhit performances. If the picture flopped, Redford understood only too well, "there would be a lot of whisperings about how Redford was wrong for the Gatsby role."

There was less pressure on Redford's co-star Mia Farrow, 29, simply because she no longer takes her career so seriously. "She has spent her life being treated like a butterfly who needs to be protected," says Jack Clayton in a burst of romanticism. This is not strictly true. In her Hollywood days, Mia ground out TV's Peyton Place until she briefly became Frank Sinatra's wife. She almost became a major star in Rosemary's Baby. But after marrying Conductor Andre Previn, she opted for domestic life in England with the couple's twin sons and their adopted Vietnamese daughter. Quiet, sparrow-thin and doe-eyed, Mia hardly seems a candidate to play Fitzgerald's teasing, haughty heroine. Yet in Theoni Aldredge's exquisite period costumes, she is at the very least the most beautiful thing in the picture.

Mia also caused the production's only true crisis by discovering that she was pregnant. A few additional ruffles were sewn to her dresses, and the shooting schedule was speeded up a week. Clayton retreated to London to edit the film. At Paramount the whole hard-sell operation went into its final phase, designed to "peak and bloom" in the last two weeks before the film's release. Color spreads with photos provided by the studio have been planted in 50 newspaper Sunday supplements. Film clips of the New York premiere party at the Waldorf-Astoria will be shipped out overnight to scores of local TV stations.

It was faith in the efficacy of this kind of floodgate flackery that prompted Paramount's exhibitors to come up with that $18.6 million in advances and guarantees. If the film flops, "which God forbid," says Loews Theater Chain President Bernie Myerson, it will be a matter of subtle negotiation how much of that advance cash is returned to exhibitors. Paramount is not legally bound to refund it all, but, explains Yablans cheerily, he would undoubtedly return a reasonable percentage just because the studio will have other films to book with those exhibitors in the future.

Big Bird. Can saturation promotion and publicity, no matter how carefully executed, guarantee a superhit? The virtually unanimous answer from other film industry executives is, not really. "If a film does not work, the public will not see it," says Dick Shepherd, Evans' counterpart at Warner Brothers. "Word of mouth is essential." Jonathan Livingston Seagull, he notes, was an "abysmal failure" as a movie, despite the immense public awareness of the big, beatific bird. Although Warner's own current smash hit The Exorcist is based on a bestseller, Shepherd contends it was really a word-of-mouth success. A pre-release survey, he says, indicated that very few people knew of the book or even what the word exorcist meant.

Shepherd also doubts the claim that Gatsby is guaranteed to recover its costs. "United Artists got good advances for The Fugitive Kind, a Marlon Brando-Tennessee Williams package," explains Shepherd. It opened, bombed and "all the advances just went away."

John Friedkin, head of advertising and promotion for 20th Century-Fox, cites Fox's 1967 "blockbuster" Dr. Dolittle, which went out with a whimper despite a brilliant merchandising job. "All the guarantees and promotion can buy a couple of weeks' business," says Friedkin, "and after that it has to be word of mouth. If the picture is bad, you might as well shoot everybody coming out of the theater--they will quickly enough kill any film."

The word of mouth that has trickled out from those who saw Gatsby at a special screening for Paramount's exhibitors in Beverly Hills last week is inconclusive. The audience was about equally divided.

Great Expectations. Most found Gatsby visually beautiful, an example of a lavish budget used intelligently. Acknowledging the movie's opulence, one guest said that it is "very slow in getting started, ran awfully long, and the characters were about impossible to get into at all." Part of the problem apparently is the pace. Both Coppola's script and Clayton's direction treat Fitzgerald reverentially, giving each scene almost equal emphasis. Another problem, surprising in a Coppola script, is wooden dialogue. Several viewers complain that the actors cannot speak long stretches of straight Fitzgerald prose convincingly. Unfortunately, the chief victims seem to be Redford and Farrow.

There was more curiosity about Farrow than anyone, but after the show, least agreement on her performance. It is an uneven portrayal: "She comes, she goes, but in the end she just fades away." Most of the praise for actors is for Bruce Bern and Sam Waterston, though just about everyone agrees that Howard da Silva's brief appearance as the gambler is the best bit in the picture. There is also agreement that the picture does not grip the emotions. Said one departing guest, "What's that line in the ads, 'Gone is the romance that was so divine . . ."

The reaction of an audience of Paramount exhibitors and their guests is hardly a bellwether, but the possibility exists that Paramount's supersell could backfire by bringing in audiences primed to expect a masterpiece and then letting them down. A modestly good movie can suffer from great expectations.

Yablans scoffs at the notion that the heavy promotion might hurt Gatsby. "No matter what we do, the film will stand on its own merits," he says. "My only concern is not whether we've oversold it, but rather about the intellectual, purist approach the critics might take. I sense," he adds darkly, "that some of them have a real you-better-show-me attitude."

The suspense--and the hype--is nearly at an end. Gatsby will finally have its premiere in New York March 27 with the last big burst of ballyhoo: an old-fashioned gala replete with truckloads of white roses, pounds of caviar and enough breast of pheasant to endanger the species. After that, audiences across the country will get the chance to make the kind of choice only they can make: to go to the movies and see Gatsby or stay home and read the book.

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