The Great Gatsby (2000 TV Movie)

Paul Rudd: Nick Carraway

Photos 

Quotes 

• Nick Carraway : The history of that summer really begins when I drove across the bay to the more fashionable East Egg to have dinner with the Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. His family was enormously wealthy and he'd been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at Yale. He and Daisy had spent a year in France drifting aimlessly among the rich. "This was to be a permanent move," Daisy told me over the telephone. But I didn't believe her.

• Daisy Buchanan : So how are things in Chicago? Do they miss me?

  Nick Carraway : There's a persistant wail of mourning all along the north shore.

  Daisy Buchanan : Oh how gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom, tomorrow.

• Nick Carraway : [Narrating]  I'd been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon. So everything that happened had a dim, hazy cast over it.

• Jay Gatsby : Your face is familiar. 3rd Division?

  Nick Carraway : 9th Machine Gun Batallion.

  Jay Gatsby : 7th Infantry until June of '18. I know I'd seen you before.

• Nick Carraway : [about Wolfsheim]  That's an interesting guy. What is he, a dentist?

  Jay Gatsby : No, he's a gambler.

  [quietly] 

  Jay Gatsby : He fixed the 1919 World Series.

• Jay Gatsby : You want anything, you just ask for it, old sport.

  Nick Carraway : 'Old sport.' Who is this guy?

  Jordan Baker : Just Gatsby.

  Nick Carraway : Where's he from?

  Jordan Baker : I hear he's an Oxford man, although I don't believe it.

  Nick Carraway : No? Why?

  Jordan Baker : I just don't think he went there. Anyhow he gives large parties and I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there's never any privacy.

• Jordan Baker : When I first met you, Daisy came up to my room later and woke me. She wanted to know what Gatsby. When I described him, she said in the strangest voice it must be a man she knew. Then it all came back to me. They knew each other in Louisville five years ago. We ran with different crowds then but I remember seeing them together once in her car. And I remember he looked at her in that way that all young girls want to be looked at sometime.

  Nick Carraway : A strange coincidence.

  Jordan Baker : It wasn't a coincidence at all. I think he half expected her to wander into one of his parties some night. She never did.

  Nick Carraway : What do you mean?

  Jordan Baker : Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay. He wants to know if you'll invite her over to your house some afternoon and let him come over.

  Nick Carraway : Why didn't he ask you to arrange a meeting?

  Jordan Baker : He wants her to see his house, and your house is right next door.

• Daisy Buchanan : So why did you ask me to come alone? Are you in love with me?

  Nick Carraway : [chuckles]  No.

  Daisy Buchanan : [Walks into the house]  Oh! Flowers! Are we having a funeral?

  Daisy Buchanan : [hears Gatsby knocking on the door]  And that must be the corpse!

• Jordan Baker : [Seeing Jordan listening to an argument at the door]  Something happening?

  Jordan Baker : Tom's got some woman in New York. I thought everyone knew. Are you surprised?

  Nick Carraway : I'm more surprised that he was depressed by a book.

• Wolfsheim : You like my cuff buttons?

  Nick Carraway : Ivory?

  Wolfsheim : Human molars.

  Nick Carraway : ...Unique.

• Nick Carraway : Is something happening?

  Jordan Baker : Tom's got a woman in New York. You surprised?

  Nick Carraway : Actually I'm more surprised that he was depressed by a book.

• Nick Carraway : Your place looks like the World's Fair.

• Owl Eyes : [At Gatsby's funeral]  I couldn't get to the house.

  Nick Carraway : Neither could anybody else.

  Owl Eyes : Why my God, they used to go there by the hundreds. Poor son of a bitch.

  Nick Carraway : [Narrating]  Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower. Poor son of a bitch.

• Jay Gatsby : This was a terrible mistake.

  Nick Carraway : You're just embarrassed. Daisy's embarrassed too.

  Jay Gatsby : She's embarrassed?

  Nick Carraway : You're acting like a little boy. Not only that, you're rude. Daisy's sitting in there all alone.

• Nick Carraway : You can't repeat the past.

  Jay Gatsby : Can't repeat the past? Of course you can!

• Nick Carraway : [First lines] 

  [narrating] 

  Nick Carraway : In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages you've had." While reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope, I've come to admit that my tolerance of human behavior has its limits. Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this story, represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. And yet there was something gorgeous about him. Some hightened sensitivity to the promises of life, a romantic readiness such as I've never found in any other person and which it is not likely I'll ever find again.

• Jay Gatsby : Is this tie too much?

  Nick Carraway : Nah, it's very gold.

• Nick Carraway : You can't repeat the past.

  Jay Gatsby : You can't repeat the past?

  [Chuckles] 

  Jay Gatsby : Of course, you can!