Ready or Not, Here comes Gatsby

"The making of a blockbuster is the newest art form of the 20th century."

—Robert Evans

Two hundred pounds of beef, 400 lbs. of fish, some 100,000 lbs. of real-life Newport socialites hung with $1 million worth of Cartier carats, and a mound of butter carved into the shape of a lamb by an 80-year-old nun? A Scarlett O'Hara-style search for a movie heroine and screen tests for 75 antique automobiles? Five 40-ft. glass and steel panels removed from a New York showroom in order to put a $100,000 Rolls-Royce on display? Great Scott!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the creation. Right before your eyes, Paramount Pictures will attempt, using a rare blend of ancient skills and modern moxie, to manufacture a blockbuster hit. The blockbuster has, for the last dozen years or so, been cherished as the Miracle Aid cure for an ailing film industry and, for the moment at least, Paramount is rapidly becoming known as blockbuster-broker No. 1. In the way that one picture often constitutes a Hollywood trend, two can make a reputation, and Paramount's current supremacy is based on a pair of recent box office-boggling successes: Love Story (which netted more than $84 million) and The Godfather ($145 million).

Now the folks who made "What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?" and "Make him an offer he can't refuse" into household catch phrases have another entry in the giant sweepstakes: a new film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's luminous classic The Great Gatsby. If selling can make it so, Paramount intends for the movie to be bigger than either of its predecessors. "After Love Story and The Godfather," says Paramount President Frank Yablans, "I think of Gatsby as the Triple Crown."

Lost Love. Robert Evans, the studio's production chief, proclaims Gatsby "the most talked-about film since Gone With the Wind. "Evans' former wife Ali MacGraw started a bit of the talk. Scheduled to star as Daisy in the film, she lost the part when she left Evans for Steve McQueen. Still, since the film does not open until late March, it is most often talked about simply as "the most talked about," rather like the celebrity who was always called "famous." Famous for what? "Famous for being famous."

The unreleased film, which stars Robert Redford as the brooding Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy, his lost love, has generated enough audience anticipation to have already earned an unheard-of $18.6 million in advance bookings—nearly three times its $6.4 million cost. Since the industry rule of thumb is that a movie must bring in 2½ times its cost to break even, Gatsby, if not yet quite a Triple Crown winner, is already in the black. And since the film will open almost simultaneously in 370 theaters round the country, Yablans can say that even if the film itself flops, "by the time the word gets out, we will have played to so many" that a good profit is secure.