Ranting About My Problems With ‘The Great Gatsby’ On The Train: It’s All Jay-Z’s Fault
Sorry if I destroyed your weekend with my opinions about Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby on the L train. At least they were solicited by an innocent guy who didn’t care about how this disaster — that should have been the miracle of my life and Leo’s life — negatively affected me physically, emotionally, and mentally.
“Did you see the movie and now you’re reading the book?,” he asked.
“I already saw the movie. I read this book all the time.” Blah blah blah blah, look at how cultured I am! I was hostile because I had to pee so bad and was also insulted that he assumed I never read the book before.
“Yeah, I can tell you like it a lot since you wrote in it.”
Within some seconds and a sentence we were on good terms again. He noticed I care about reading more than most of America because I write and doodle (shapeless cross-hatching) all over the margins in mechanical pencil. Does it matter that I write in mechanical pencil? No, but it’s important to me.
I’m suicidal when I read the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald because it makes me feel like I will accomplish nothing with my words or my life or love or whatever.
So, anyone whose nosy eye reads the notes I take in incredible books will think I’m going to murder myself by cutting my wrists in the bathtub with a Christmas butter knife. (Why a Christmas butter knife, Carrie? Because Christmas is the only thing I ever loved). On the final page of The Great Gatsby, I wrote why don’t you just jump off a boat into a deadly current or into a shark’s mouth with blood coming out of it in red pen. This is the least graphic example I can share. But I’m fine, I swear. And not in a way that someone is not fine when they say that they’re fine, fine as in the actual definition of fine. It’s just part of the process.
“Well, how was the movie?” He shouldn’t have asked.
Suddenly I’m shouting as I sit in my cowboy boots and wet raincoat. I’m waving my arms up and down with the book flailing around like a fifteen year old boy losing his virginity. And I’m not looking this guy in the eye because I have a problem with looking people in the eye because I read Greek mythology on Encarta ‘98 as a kid and Medusa scared me.
I made a self discovery that Jay-Z was the root of all of The Great Gatsby’s problems, because he probably just sat around in a gold throne telling everyone what to do. Even poor Leo. But in case you’re wondering or not wondering, these are some of the issues I shouted to about twelve innocent people trying to live in peace:
-Leonardo DiCaprio is a beautiful, beautiful man and he was perfect as Jay. His cool beautiful shirts were beautiful and well-fitted but even if Jay-Z music did exist in the 20s, I don’t think he’d play it at his parties
-Tom Buchanan didn’t slap Myrtle hard enough.
-Why did they create a whole storyline with Nick Carraway in therapy or some kind of insane asylum where he writes the book?
-Who approved of Fergie? Did she campaign to get Josh Duhamel a cameo? It might have been better if he was in it.
-I’m not trying to show off but while I was watching it all I could think was, I feel like I could have adapted a better screenplay. Or I would at least take advantage of the line, “I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it would sober me up to sit in a library.”
-Some of my favorite moments and quotes from the book were completely ruined as Courier New typography stretched across the already really colorful and shiny busy screen.
-Speaking of quotes, some of my favorites were completely left out or rewritten to sound terrible and worthless and the worst sentences I’ll ever hear.
-At least the costumes were really great (me and my new stranger friend agreed on this).
I should have provided a bag so people could drop in change for my free movie review. But maybe not because I’m sure the guy who started it got off at a stop just to get away from me.
I’m not sure he ever even read The Great Gatsby, but I think I assumed he had. He probably only talked to me because the notes to myself in the margins of the pages I had open mentioned drowning myself in my own blood in a bathtub, so he thought I needed someone to talk to. It feels good to know a random stranger is looking out for my heartbeat.
If you’re out there like a regular person who uses the Internet, I know how scary it is to be me and I’m sorry you had such a sudden trip into my weeping soul. On the bright side, you got a deeper look inside my feelings than some of my dearest, dearest friends. 
