TVTime
Amazon’s newest production takes inspiration from author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last, unfinished novel.
Those of us who have seen Matt Bomer star in a supporting role on the short-lived Tru Calling as well as his claim-to-fame series, White Collar, know that he’s one of the better actors to emerge from the world of TV. Since then he’s played a number of roles in prestigious projects like The Normal Heart, In Time, Magic Mike XXL and American Horror Story: Hotel.
More to the point, Bomer is staging an intriguing return to television with Amazon’s newest production – The Last Tycoon - that takes inspiration from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last, unfinished novel.
Matt Bomer stars in The Last Tycoon as Monroe Stahr, a whiz-kid film producer with a broken heart while Kelsey Grammar essays Pat Brady, who is both studio boss and father figure to Stahr.
Created by Billy Ray with Chris Keyser serving as executive producer, the drama is set in the late 1930s during the rise of the Great Depression and hopes to convey struggles that remain relevant even today.
“The story that we’re trying to tell is both the gap between the dream of Hollywood and the reality of Hollywood and why that dream has such an irresistible and intoxicating grasp on us,” Ray told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview. “We were sort of past Fitzgerald’s novel by the time we were done with the pilot.”
In a nod to the grim political climate in the United States producer Keyser added: “Is it really true that we live in a country in which we all have the chance to become something other than who we are? That’s not really clear anymore and the question of all of that is very critical.”
“The American dream both works and has its costs,” he added. “[The characters] are all putting on clothes and trying to be somebody else as they attempt to make it in America. That’s really romantic, obviously, but at the same time, that’s really destructive.”
Describing the first season, which is making its way across Amazon, Ray stated, “It is a beautiful, shocking, funny, romantic, slightly dangerous, compelling, operatic, intimate, American story that says something about who we are as a people in a timeless way.”
The bad news is that despite being an elaborate production, it hasn’t opened to the best of reviews. But, with the presence of actors like Matt Bomer, Lily Collins and Kelsey Grammar, one must give the pilot a chance before dismissing it entirely. It is also entirely possible that the bad reviews won’t mean too much since the creators have plans to keep the series going for five seasons.
“The last episode [of the first season] ends in a way that is no way closed-ended and there are things — you get answers to some questions — but there are more things left unanswered,” Ray said. “It was written entirely in anticipation of our hoped-for second season.”
In another interview, Matt Bomer, the actor who nabbed the lead role in the series, explained that though he had never read The Last Tycoon, which was published posthumously in 1941, he did read another novel that was set in the same period, namely Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust. He prepared for the role by going over prose penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“I was contemplating the themes both books deal with: How do you maintain your artistry in such a commercial industry as the movies — and can you? And I was thinking about how much Hollywood has changed since that time period. And how little has really changed.”
In the series, Bomer is starring as Monroe Stahr, “a whiz-kid film producer with a sure eye but a broken heart — a congenital heart defect that means he is living on borrowed time while he mourns the recent death of his wife (and the studio’s biggest star). Consumed with making a perfect motion picture that can stand as his legacy, he clashes with his studio boss and father figure, Pat Brady, played by Kelsey Grammer.”
Speaking about how he tried to stay true to the vision of the late author, Bomer said, “I read the novel several times. I’d highlight passages that I thought were really central to the character. I wrote them in my notebook so I could always refer to them as we were going scene by scene. That was my way of trying to keep F. Scott in the picture.”
The result of this discovery, said Bomer, is that he learned about self-reinvention. “I learned a lot about self-reinvention. How you can be born Milton Sternberg in the Bronx and then become Monroe Stahr in Hollywood.”
Whether The Last Tycoon actually makes it to five seasons remains to be seen but with several episodes on the way, there is a good chance that the series will gain better traction or so we hope.
– With information from The Hollywood Reporter and The Associated Press