Baz Luhrmann raised eyebrows last year when he released a trailer for that eschewed Jazz-Age standards in favor of, well, Jay-Z.
Of course, in the months since, fans of the book — and HOV — have come to understand why Luhrmann made the musical choices he did; namely, to prove a point: that the songs of the Jazz Age aren’t all that different from the songs of the hip-hop era. And he wasn’t the only one who bought into that premise, either.
“Jazz was this almost underground music at the time, like hip-hop started out. I like to think of it as a character, because it’s so interwoven into the storyline,” Jay-Z said. “[He’s] seamlessly shifting different eras of music together, which I thought was genius process. That’s one of the things Baz has a reputation for: Treating the music like another star.”
And so, as he’s done on all of his iconic films, Luhrmann has assembled a scintillating soundtrack for “Gatsby,” one that includes a who’s-who of today’s stars — Jay-Z, Beyonce and Andre 3000, Florence and the Machine, will.i.am, to name just a few — bringing the Jazz Age to the 21st century. He worked closely with Jay-Z on the project, bringing an idea that began during the recording of Watch The Throne full circle.
“Baz and Leo [DiCaprio, who plays Gatsby in the film] came to a recording session, and I was working on a song called ‘No Church in the Wild,'” Jay-Z said. “We just talked about the art of collaborating. I guess that was the seed of the idea.”
And the end result is a bold update on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic story … on that only a director like Luhrmann could make; and one that, hopefully, will engage moviegoers in 2013 in much the same way the book has been enthralling readers for nearly 100 years.
“As much as Baz is a great filmmaker, he is a fanatic about music as well,” DiCaprio said. “I love how infusing hip hop makes you understand the cultural references, what it would be like if these people existed today.”
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