“The Great Gatsby” opened the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France on May 10.
Two days prior to that, the Great Neck-based Gold Coast Film Festival screened the movie in the Soundview Cinemas in Port Washington for 300 VIP guests – with an introduction by director Baz Luhrmann.
The preview was followed by an after-party at the Hempstead House at the Sands Point Preserve that captured the spirit, if not quite the scale and extravagance, of the parties portrayed in the movie.
The film-world coup was the result of an introduction of Great Neck Arts Center Executive Director Regina Gil to Luhrmann four years ago by Gil’s son – a friend of Luhrman’s.
Gil, who also serves as executive director of the Gold Coast International Film Festival, said the two initially spoke over the phone and hit it off with a great conversation.
“I immediately realized he was an extremely smart and exceptionally grounded human being,” she said.
Gil said that Luhrmann also invited her to his studio in New York City to show her some of the information he had collected for his proposed movie based on F. Fitzgerald Scott’s novel of the same name.
She said that Luhrmann and his wife, costume designer Catherine Martin, would eventually scour the North Shore, where the movie is set, to capture the film’s setting.
“He and his wife are diligent researchers. Every blade of grass was researched,” said Gil.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age elegy to fading American dreams opened with mixed reviews but strong box office over the weekend. The blockbuster adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan is set on the Great Neck and Port Washington peninsulas, where Fitzgerald lived, wrote and watched revelers party from across the bay, and the movie is shining a light on the Gold Coast’s cultural history.
Lurhman used footage of Great Neck’s and Port Washington’s mansions as reference for Gatsby’s home, according to Gil.
Luhrmann briefly described his research prior to the screening of the movie at the Soundview Cinemas. He said that while he was financially unable to film the movie on the North Shore he had recreated homes and gardens he studied here on sets in Australia to provide authenticity to the film.
The exclusive pre-screening in Port Washington was the subject of a snarky comment in the London Telegraph’s Cannes preview.
“This is not, I suspect, an event with which Thierry Fremaux, Cannes’s redoubtable artistic director, is used to jockeying for primacy,” the critic wrote.
But there were no complaints among those attending the screening and after party.
Gil said Luhrmann was extremely supportive of the Great Neck Arts Center and the Gold Coast International Film Festival, an annual event that Gil has put on since 2011 to showcase feature films and benefit the community.
At the inaugural Gold Coast international Film Festival in June 2011, Gil set up an outdoor screening of the 1957 musical film “Funny Face” at the Nassau County Museum of Art.
Since the film is directed by one of Luhrmann’s idols, Stanley Doden, Luhrmann came to the screening and spoke to the crowd about the director and his love of of Doden’s work.
After Luhrmann finished his speech he told Gil he would be in touch when his Gatsby movie was finished – a promise that he kept last week.
From the beginning, Luhrmann said he wanted the after party to be fit for Jay Gatsby at one of the Gold Coast mansions.
Gil said that they originally looked at Oheka Castle and a few other locations before settling on the estate at the Hempstead House.
Not only were they able to use this beautiful space, Jean-Marie Posner, the executive director at the Friends of Sands Point Preserve, waived the fee to use it.
Luhrmann was unable to attend the after party because he had to immediately jet off for Cannes, but Gil said she felt it was still an amazing party to cap off the event.
“All this publicity could not have come at a better time,” said Gil. The Gold Coast International Film Festival is set to take place in October, and there are already as many sponsors attached to the event as there was last year.
“When you have validation from Baz Luhrmann, it helps persuade people that we’re here to stay,” Gil said.
The arts center recently received another boost when the Town of North Hempstead agreed to purchase the arts center’s Middle Neck Road headquarters in an effort to boost the organization’s finances. Under the $800,000 deal, the art center would change its name to the “Gold Coast Arts Center” and expand its operations throughout the town.