I saw the movie readn the book, but what gets me is that Tom is very different in the movie.. Bruce Dern is a tall slender guy with a whiney like voice, but in the book they make Tom Buchanan sound like Marlon Brando...I dunno I just think they should of cast someone else.
sharei agree. i laughed so hard when i first saw tom, cause he looked like a wuss. I expected this big bulky guy to come out and intimidate everyone he looks at, and was definately surprised when i saw bruce dern.
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really? it's the best casting choice to me.
His name...was Julio Iglesias!
I thought that initially as well. When I first saw him I thought, "Surely you're like... a pal who'll introduce Tom." But no. It was him. The thing is, as the film progressed, and specifically in the lead up to and including the hotel scene, I thought he was tops. He really sold me on the man and even made me sympathize with him, which was dangerous because the dude was also unfaithful. He brought a certain humanity to Tom that I didn't really feel in the novel. It was an interesting casting decision that ultimately paid off.
I think there's been a rape up there!
I finally saw this movie and I caught the impression of Tom exactly like you did. I don't know if it means good or bad 'cause we are not supposed to sympathize with a character like Tom Buchanan, right? Especially during the hotel room, I couldn't help rooting for Tom instead of Gatsby.
What does it matter what I think? What does it matter what anybody thinks? Most people don't think.
At first I didn't buy him as Tom. He didn't have the hulking physique. But he had all the mannerisms and class views down pat (drawing on experience?).
Eventually I saw that his Tom was still a brute but went about it in a way that was more sinister. The scene in which he punches Myrtle wasn't surprising in the least.
Dern was one of these best elements in the whole film.
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I went to Yale back in the 1970s and I know exactly the "type" that Fitzgerald was thinking of when he created Tom Buchanan.
They are RICH and belong to the secret society "Skull and Bones" and look PERFECT: muscular, tall, and HOT.
Some of them would get drunk and experience some "guy-on-guy" action occasionally, so it would come as no surprise if Tom and "sensitive" Nick first met this way - and why they became such good friends (Nick was Daisy's cousin - and so of course Tom knew that Nick would never DARE mention anything about having a drunken tryst with Tom).
Also - when they would get drunk, they would trash things, like windows, furniture, etc.
But they were definitely the BMOC's.
Dern supposedly has some aristocratic lineage, but he nevertheless comes off as less than someone who would rule the Yale campus, being someone everyone just HAD to know.
"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"
Yes, he was writing about the George Bush types, the Winklevoss Twins types.
It is possible that Tom and Nick may have had some kind of encounter. And the book already gives an instance where Nick got extremely drunk and had a fling with another man.
I agree for the most part about Dern. But at least he knew the history and the prototype. That isn't the case in new Luhrman version.
Agreed.
Usually an actor's nationality should not matter, but I think an actor's "cultural insight/instincts" can be quite significant - if not critical - when playing certain characters.
The characters in the "Great American Novel" have to be, well - American - and from both sides of the tracks.
The Australian actors in the new "Gatsby" are talented, but I think there are major disconnects when it comes to having such actors portray privileged American WASPs as well as members of the New York metro's "Bridge and Tunnel" crowd.
"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"