I’m fond of wingnut Australians (including Russell Crowe and my wife), but Baz Luhrmann is being uniquely annoying with his it’ll-happen-eventually adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘s Great American Novel, The Great Gatsby. With Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan supposedly on board as Jay Gatsby, wealthy bootlegger and Daisy Buchanan, the love of his life, the other casting choices are still up in the air. (Although we’re hearing Tobey Maguire is the “top choice” for the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway).
But what of Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s millionaire husband and all-around prick? The Playlist reports that Bradley Cooper, star of The Hangover, revealed to the New York Times that he really wants the role:
“To me, he’s the best character in the book. He’s so complicated,” Cooper said. “He’s xenophobic, he’s an alcoholic, but he also understands some profound stuff about class. Whoever plays it has to take a gentle hand, because it could so easily be stock, where he’s a rich jerk you don’t identify with at all.”
In the book, Tom cheats repeatedly on Daisy, only to angrily resent the situation when Gatsby reveals his love for her. Having played a similar jack-ass in Wedding Crashers, Cooper could pull it off handily.
At the moment, though, there aren’t any offers to Cooper, who admits he’s shooting for the moon on this one:
“I don’t even know if I’m on Lurhmann’s radar,” he said. “Maybe he’ll read this article after the role’s cast and say, ‘Oh. Ha. Yeah, that guy was never going to get it.’ ”
While Luhrmann isn’t exactly the pie-in-the-sky ideal choice for director another Gatsby, (I’d like to see someone with a more elegant touch, like Marc Forster, at the helm), his films are never less than interesting. The notion of seeing such a film in 3-D is troubling (and pointless), but there’s a lot of potential for something special with this hypothetical cast. We’ll just see how it shakes out.
Have you read The Great Gatsby? Do you think Bradley Cooper could be a good Tom Buchanan?