The Great Gatsby

Here's a little screenplay from a fun scene in The Great Gatsby, where Nick attends his first Gatsby party. At the party he slowly starts to make sense of what kind of guy his neighbor is (or, at least, what kind of impression he makes) through a variety of rumors told by the party guests. For me, reading all these rumors and being made to wait so long before I could finally meet the titular character made the moment when Nick finally does meet Gatsby, a the end of the party, so much more exciting.

I chose to sort of chop together a bunch of different people talking about Gatsby into one scene, which isn't exactly how it goes in the book but which seemed more appropriate for a film.

FADE IN:

GATSBY’S GARDEN – EVENING

Gatsby’s party is well underway. The band is playing and people are everywhere, drinking, laughing, and dancing. The garden is lit up in different colors.

NICK, new-in-town next-door neighbor to Gatsby, and one of the few people actually given an invitation to the party, awkwardly moves through the crowd. He approaches a couple.

NICK

Hello, great party isn’t it? Have you seen Mr. Gatsby? Believe it or not I haven’t actually met the man…

COUPLE give Nick a confused and astonished look and, mumbling and shaking their heads, move away.

NICK

(stands a moment looking extremely uncomfortable)

Right then…

NICK,  embarrassed, moves towards the cocktail table, but comes to a stop when he notices someone at --

THE STAIRS

JORDAN, cool, cocky,  young athlete, stands at the top of the stairs and looks down haughtily.

NICK

(hurries toward JORDAN)

Hello!

JORDAN

(slowly descends stairs, giving NICK a lazy nod in greeting)

I thought you might be here. I remembered you lived next door to…

(trails off as she sees--)

LUCILLE, girl dressed in yellow, eagerly waves to JORDAN.

LUCILLE

Hello! Sorry you didn’t win.

JORDAN

(mumbles to NICK)

Oh, she’s talking about that golf tournament. I lost in the finals, you know.

LUCILLE

You don’t know who I am... but I met you here a month ago.

JORDAN

You’ve dyed your hair since then-

(breaks off when she sees LUCILLE has already moved on. Shrugs, takes NICK’s arm, and leads him into the garden)

A TABLE IN THE GARDEN

A few minutes later, JORDAN and NICK are seated with LUCILLE and three other men.

JORDAN

(to LUCILLE)

Do you come to these parties often?

LUCILLE

The last one was the one I met you at. I like to come. I never care what I do, so I always have a good time. When I was here last I tore my gown on a chair, and he asked my name and address – inside of a week I got a package from Croiriers with a new evening gown in it!

JORDAN

Did you keep it?

LUCILLE

Sure I did. I was going to wear it tonight, but it was too big in the bust and had to be altered. It was gas blue with lavender beads. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars!

(lowers her voice to excited whisper)

There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll do something like that. He doesn’t want trouble with ANYbody.

NICK

Who doesn’t?

LUCILLE

Gastby. Somebody told me…

(lowers her voice even further, and JORDAN, NICK, and the men at the table all lean in to listen)

Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once.

INTERCUT DIFFERENT PARTY-GOERS AS THEY RELATE DIFFERENT STORIES

PARTY-GOER

No no, I heard he was a German spy during the war. I heard that from a man who knew him, grew up with him in Germany.

PARTY-GOER 2

No, couldn’t be. He was in the American army during the war.

PARTY-GOER 3

I hear he’s a bootlegger. One time he killed a man who had found out hew as nephew to Von Hindenburg and second cousin to the devil.

PARTY-GOER 4

I tell you, you look at him sometimes when he thinks no one’s looking at him. He’s killed a man.

Last cut is to OWL-EYES, middle-aged and very drunk man, in ---

LIBRARY

OWL-EYES

They’re real!

NICK

What’s real?

(OWL-EYES gestures behind him to the full bookshelves)

The books?

OWL-EYES

Absolutely real – have pages and everything. I thought they’d be a nice durable cardboard. Matter of fact, they’re absolutely real. Pages and – here, let me show you!

(turns to bookshelf and pulls out “Volume One of the Stoddard Lectures”, pushes it into NICK’s hands)

See! It’s a bona-fide piece of printed matter. It fooled me! This fella’s a regular Belasco. It’s a triumph! What thoroughness! What realism! Knew when to stop too – didn’t cut the pages. But what do you want? What do you expect?

(snatches book back from NICK and stows it back into bookshelf)

NICK and JORDAN

(exchange looks, NICK uncomfortable and JORDAN amused)

OWL-EYES

Who brought you? Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought.

JORDAN

(smiles, bemused, but does not answer)

OWL-EYES

I was brought by a woman named Roosevelt. Mrs. Claud Roosevelt. Do you know her? I met her somewhere last night. I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

JORDAN

Has it?

OWL-EYES

A little bit, I think. I can’t tell yet. I’ve only been here an hour. Did I tell you about the books? They’re real. They’re-

JORDAN

You told us.

JORDAN and NICK shake hands and leave OWL-EYES alone in the library. He continues mumbling to himself.

OWL-EYES

Real. Absolutely real…

FADE OUT

A Cheesy Story About Photographs

Melinda frowned, puzzling over the letter that she’d found on the table, addressed to her. The envelope was weathered and a bit crinkled, as if it had travelled a long way to get to her tiny house in the woods. She carefully lifted the letter to examine it. It had several strange stamps on it, as well as something written in a language she did not recognize. However, there in the middle of the letter, written in a small clean script, was her name and address.

“Who’s that from?” asked her mother, as she entered the kitchen and saw Melinda holding the letter. Melinda shrugged and held it out to her.

“It looks like it’s come from far away…” Melinda suggested. Her mother gasped, delighted.

“Oh! Melinda dear, it must be from Mr. Cochon.”

Melinda’s heart froze. Nader Cochon was the son of a friend of Melinda’s father. He had served in the war across the sea, and had stayed there when it ended, which would explain the foreign script on the letter. He was seven years older than her, and their fathers were more of old acquaintances than great friends, so the two had never met. And, once arrangements were made, she too was to be sent across the sea to marry him.

Melinda’s mother was nearly shoving the letter into her hands before she reluctantly took it. Holding it away from her, as if it might bite, she excused herself and hurried up the narrow stairs to her bedroom.

She dropped the letter onto her desk and stood, eyeing it from afar. It had fallen next to a framed photograph, one of Melinda’s favorites. It was an old photograph of her and her older sister Morgana, dressed in lace and with carefully curled hair. Her sister, dark haired, wore a smile so faint, that half the time Melinda wasn’t even sure it was there. There were other photographs framed on a desk as well; a young Melinda gently tugging and braiding Morgana’s long black hair, Melinda dressed for a school play in a ridiculous horse costume, Morgana floating in the water (Melinda had taken that picture herself one summer).

 

Her heart ached looking at the photographs. She hadn’t seen her sister in several years. The older girl had been married to a sea captain and shipped away to the distant coast. The sisters had kept in touch at first, but over time the letters arrived less and less.

Her gaze slowly returned to this new letter. The sender, her own husband-to-be, frightened her. It frightened her that she had never seen the man, it frightened her that he would take her so far away, and it had frightened her when his family showed her his picture.

Finally, she told herself that it was no good just sitting there, and what was the worst thing this letter could possibly say? Unconvinced, she reluctantly opened the envelope.

Only one thing fell out; a photograph. For a moment she studied it, silent. Then she let out a tiny giggle, and finally laughed out loud. It was a picture of a carriage, similar to the ones she saw in town, being pulled by an enormous ostrich. A man was leading the bird, looking almost straight up to see up its long neck to its tiny head.

Still giggling, she turned the photograph. On the back, in small neat handwriting, was one short message:

“Caire Strommeyer and his ostrich offering rides through the park. They both look forward to meeting you.”

 She looked at it for a long time, not sure how to feel. Finally, she set the picture against one of the frames on her desk. When she didn’t think about who had sent it, the photograph made her smile.

--

About a week later, Melinda returned from school to find another letter on the table. It was just as mistreated as the last had been, and covered in that same foreign script. It made her heart lurch again, but this time her interest in what could be inside the envelope subdued her nerves. She pulled it open and slid out another photograph.

The photo showed a man in some sort of elaborate, foreign costume. He wore some kind of monstrous mask and a large, ornate headpiece with what looked like two long antennae sprouting from it. He wore an intricately detailed robe and had a beard so long that he had it wrapped around his waist and held off in his hand.

“What on earth is that?” Melinda’s mother had heard her daughter’s giggling from across the house, and now stood eyeing the photograph skeptically.

Melinda turned it over to see if the sender had written an answer to her mother’s confusion. She read aloud:

“The dancer Shi Puat was on his way to perform for the emperor, but he allowed me to take his photo before he left. When I told him of you, he promised to perform a special dance just for your arrival.”

“Well, isn’t that lovely,” her mother said, trying very hard to look as though she really did find it lovely. “I’m sure it will be, er, a wonderful place to live.”

Melinda had been smiling at the picture, but her smile vanished when she remembered that soon she would indeed be living across the sea with these people who wore masks and traveled by ostrich. Suddenly the dancer’s mask didn’t look funny, it looked frightening.

When she returned to her room, she took both photos and tucked them into the desk drawer. She spent the rest of the afternoon seated at the desk, staring at the old photograph of her sister and wondering what it felt like to leave home forever.

--

Several weeks and letters later, however, Melinda’s fears were replaced with dreams of strange dancers with long beards and sword swallowers and trapeze artists standing on one another’s shoulders. In her dreams, she rode an ostrich through villages and past gigantic trees, under enormous stone sphinxes and beside long-legged birds wearing shoes.

Her desk was covered with photographs of these strange people. Each came along with a message; “the birds outside my home wear shoes so they do not get their feet dirty”, “these girls made a pyramid so tall I was sure they were going to topple over any second”, and always “they all look forward to meeting you”.

At first she had kept the photographs in her drawer, but she was constantly taking them out again to look. Finally she propped them back up against the frames on her desk. By now, there were so many pictures propped up that it was hard to see the old images of her sister behind them. She liked to look at them all together, imagining the strange world from which they all came.

When the last letter came, she eagerly opened it without a thought. The photo that fell out seemed different then the others; it was somehow more dark and dreary. It was an image of a soldier in a strange, pointed mask. He was seated on the ground, looking tired. She turned it over.

“When I first left home for this country,” the note said. “I was very frightened. Everything seemed so strange and different from home. But over time I came to realize how exciting and beautiful something so different can be. I fell in love with this place, and made my home here. I hope these photos help you love it as I have come to.

I especially look forward to meeting you.”

Melinda smiled at the letter. She smiled at the strange man in the mask, as well as at the dancer with the beard and the ostrich and all the rest. She smiled at the thought of the adventure that awaited her.

Suddenly struck by an idea, Melinda rushed upstairs to her desk. She reached into the drawer until she found a fresh, white envelope. Then she paused, looking over the old photographs on the desktop. Slowly, she reached out and chose her favorite; the picture of her and her sister as children, her sister with that small smile. She carefully pulled it out of the frame.

Then, she turned it over and began to write.