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your new account, go to Shutterstock.com and use offer code Spoiler 5. Hi, this is Dana Steven Slate's

movie critic here with the Slate Spoiler Special podcast on The Great Gatsby, new Baz Luhrman adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

And joining me in Slate Studios is David Hagland. David, how should I identify you're the editor of Brawbeat, the culture blog at Slate?

That's right. Correct? And you're going to write something on the Great Gatsby, the novel.

Yeah, I'm going to write something about the ways that the movie departs from the novel and the ways that it doesn't.

So let's just start off with a yay or nay. How did you feel overall about the movie? Then we'll get

into the details. I enjoyed it. You know, it's an extravagant movie and some of its extravagances

are extravagantly bad, but many of them are extravagantly good. And overall, I just, I had a blast.

Yeah, I have to say, I hated it less than I thought I would. And I tried to go into the Zen

mind. I'm not a Boz-Lerman person. I've essentially, except for Strictly Ballroom, I think,

pretty much detested all of his movies that I've seen. And so I was not looking forward to this, but I will say that it is two hours of immersion in all kinds of visual pleasure, if nothing else.

Right, and I was worried that it would be boring. I had sort of seen a little bit of scuttlebut here and there on Twitter, and I do think the movie opens a little more slowly than it should.

Gatsby takes a long time to enter the scene. And there's this whole frame story, which we'll talk about.

But so I was worried that it would sort of put me to sleep a little bit, and it definitely didn't do that.

I mean, I enjoyed it from start.

Yeah, it definitely catches you up.

In times, yeah, at times in ridiculous ways, and at times in ways that really, I don't think, do justice to the book, but I mean, can this book really be adequately filmed? That's another whole question.

But, okay, so let's get into the details. I think we should start by peeling the onion,

because this has a frame story around it, as you mentioned, that the novel doesn't have. Do you want

to help put it together with me? So we open on Nick Carraway, as we do in the novel, right? The narrator, played by Toby McGuire here. But there's a twist. Yeah, he's in a sanitarium, which is just a complete invention of the screenplay.

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