The Great Gatsby premiere is just days away and we linked up with Tobey Maguire to get some excluisve deets on the film.
In the film Tobey plays Nick Carraway, J. Gatsby’s [Leonard DiCaprio’s] neighbor, who is trying to reunite Gatsby with his lost love, Daisy Buchanan.
Tobey dished on the Jay-Z song that nearly turned the Gatsby set into an orgy, which of his friends throw the most Gatsby-like parties and his bromance with Leo on and off the set. Check it out…
GlobalGrind: Were there any particular Jay-Z songs that you liked and that kind of helped you get into character or into the scenes?
Tobey Maguire: Well first of all, I just love this moment in history, which I was not there for, unfortunately, but Baz and Leo going to Jay-Z’s studio while he was recording “No Church In The Wild.” To get to walk into his studio the moment he’s recording that song and that sort of starts the rove, you know for him in terms of collaborating with Baz on the movie. That whole album was very popular at the time, so I was listening to it constantly and Baz did play a couple of the tracks with speakers at loud volume. “No Church In The Wild” was one of those songs and, as Baz reffered to it, NIP was another one of those songs.
Director Baz Luhrmann weighed in on the matter…
Baz Luhrmann: We were about 20 minutes away from wrapping and we still hadn’t gotten that kind of wild party feel… So I’ve got all sorts of props and things and I said, “we’ve got 20 minutes left. Lets turn all the cameras on and let’s go for it.” So we started with Jazz music–only about a minute of the 20 minutes is in the movie–it was fun everybody was sort of pillow fighting and some photographs were being taken and right in the middle of the jazz I just turned up a track called “NIP” which was a Jay-Z track mixed with jazz. Next thing you know, we made a special track and things took off! There was a moment, and you see it in the film, where a very expensive lens smashes right in the middle of the movie and my first assistant says, “Baz, Baz, we’ve got to shut it down” because by then it was crazy mayhem of levels you can’t imagine–there was clothes coming off and feather fights and flowers being thrown–and I remember I grabbed every body and said, “get in the bedroom!” and the cameras kept rolling and that’s how it became known as the orgy scene.
If any of your friends were to throw a party, who would be most likely to throw a party like Gatsby?
TM: I don’t know. Those kind of parties are pretty rare. Honestly I’ve been out of that kind of scene for so long, you know? I’ve got two kids and I’m getting to bed for school drop off in the morning. There was some party I went to some time ago that was pretty crazy and had like, I think there was a ferris wheel. It was a private party in a parking lot and there was a ferris wheel at the party and other kinds of, grand things like that–big fire works and stuff.
You guys had great chemistry on screen and a great friendship and it really came across. Did the friendship you had translate into the characters in the role?
TM: Yeah. I think Leo and I have a very trusting and close friendship so, the comfortable open dialogue we had in terms of the working process contributed to what we did
The Great Gatsby hits theaters May 10.
