Full spoilers if you still haven’t gotten around to watching Paul Rudd’s TV version of The Great Gatsby or the filmed versions of two of his theatrical productions, Twelfth Night, or What You Will or Bash: Latter-Day Plays.

The Great Gatsby(2000) stars Mira Sorvino, Toby Stephens, Paul Rudd, Martin Donovan, Francie Swift, Heather Goldenhersh, Matt Malloy, and Bill Camp. It was directed by Robert Markowitz and written by John J. McLaughlin.

I have not seen Baz Luhrmann’s iteration of The Great Gatsby, nor have I read the book, I escaped that opportunity in school. I just felt it was only fitting to watch this after Romeo + Juliet. I can understand Luhrmann thinking 13 years later that going with someone younger to play Nick Carraway would be a good choice, nevermind that Tobey Maguire isn’t a very good actor and looks older than Paul Rudd, who he’d already worked with, though of course he probably didn’t know this existed, so I digress. This TV movie, and everything else I’m about to review, are available only on YouTube and I’m reviewing these now before they get taken down. Unfortunately the audio doesn’t quite line up with the pictures. Let’s get into it.

• You could say the well-aging Paul Rudd is finally starting to more visibly carry his 55 years with him, but in this TV movie adaptation of a well-loved book, the 30 year old actor still looks like he’s 20 years old. Partially because the cap he wears makes him look like a little boy.
• As I have no real way of comparing this story to anything else, I find it mildly interesting. Nick Carraway is, as far as I can tell, a sad rich man returning from the war with no sense of what to do in life, and he seems oddly obsessed when his friend Daisy Buchanan brings up someone named Jay Gatsby. Gatsby in this is played by Toby Stephens, an actor I’m not aware of.
• I appreciate and enjoy the dialogue in this movie more than I probably would if I’d read the book.
• Jay Gatsby lusts after a woman named Daisy Buchanan and asks Nick’s girlfriend, Jordan Baker, to ask Nick to ask Daisy to come over to his house and make it seem spontaneous, because he’s apparently the world’s most mysterious control freak. But Daisy is married to the world’s most slimy and adulterous man, Tom Buchanan, who can slap his mistress so hard she instantly gets a bloody nose. I would find this abhorrent if I didn’t know that fifteen years later, the actor portraying him, Martin Donovan, would get beat up by Michael Douglas in Ant-Man.
• Not sure if it happens in the book, but Gatsby often calls Nick “old sport” to the point that it feels somewhat forced.
• “Oh, I just want to get one of those clouds and put you in it and push you around.” What?
• So Gatsby and Daisy reconnect and start openly making out in her house in plain view of her abusive husband. Tom and Gatsby confront each other and Tom essentially tells Jay that Daisy doesn’t really love him and there’s parts to their marriage Jay will never understand. It’s interesting. Jay Gatsby could be an enigmatic character in other adaptations, but in this all those features are attributed to Daisy. Jay, in this, is a sad man who went to war and came back a different man who hoped he could reclaim the fairy tale romance with the perfect woman, and she had a child and married into an abusive relationship, but one she was unwilling to leave. And you’re led to believe he’ll take his own life, but he doesn’t.
• Daisy accidentally (Or intentionally, it’s hard to say.) hits Tom’s mistress with Tom’s car and brutally murders her in the process, only for the mistress’s husband to kill Jay, mistakenly believing he was the driver.
• And then Nick attends Jay’s funeral which is largely unattended, and casts off all connections to the world of the dramatic rich. I did know this bit, that everyone would attend Jay’s parties but he never has any real friends or connections, least of all Daisy, but he’s not necessarily a good person either. Nick does get to see Tom again and essentially tell him to fuck off.

Overall Rating: 7/10(It’s not bad, in my opinion, except for Toby Stephens’s portrayal of Gatsby. I’m sure there’s a more interesting way to adapt this and the Luhrmann version very well might be that. I should read the book.)
Rudd Rating: 8/10(As a perturbed man surrounded by rich assholes, Paul Rudd is very good. Though the rich people themselves at large need to be more flamboyant and esoteric. It’s not the kind of role you typically see him play.)

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Bash: Latter-Day Plays(2001) stars Ron Eldard, Calista Flockhart, and Paul Rudd. It was directed by Neil LaBute and written by Neil LaBute and Euripides.

This has been quite the journey, hasn’t it? Anyway, the lucky thing with this is that it’s a series of one acts and only one of the three has Paul Rudd in it. And it’s 33 minutes long! So I don’t have to watch an hour and a half of actors sitting on a stage staring and reciting chipperly at the audience.

• So Paul Rudd and Calista Flockhart are dressed fancy, him in a tuxedo and her in a dress. Bit of a letdown after his outfit in Twelfth Night. Their one-act is called “A Gaggle of Saints”.
• It seems as if they’re high schoolers? Or they just went to college, hard to say. I mean, they’re talking at me, but they’re doing the big bright theater dialogue thing. I did a play like this. It was called Hoodie. It was terrible.
• Paul Rudd is getting all the laughs. In addition to the theater affectation, he’s doing the jocky himbo voice.
• I wonder if Calista Flockhart knows in this scene that she’ll be married to Harrison Ford in nine years. Or that she’s about to film the last season of Ally McBeal.
• These two characters have been dating for six years and they’ve spent 13 minutes and one aerial Paul Rudd karate kick to tell why they love each other and how they’ve gotten to this one bash. People don’t really call them bashes, do they?
• HE JUST MENTIONED F. SCOTT FITZGERALD! IT’S ALL CONNECTED! EVERYTHING’S CONNECTED!
• So Paul Rudd’s character just dropped some vague homophobia about two smiling men he saw in the woods before launching into some white guy dancing. They’re at the bash now, and the spotlights and groovy reggae music I assume is the set dressing. It’d be weird if it was coincidental.
• I only say it’s white guy dancing because I do it and I’ve only seen actors like him do it when they’re playing dads or goofy weirdos. You know the moves. Move the hips ever so slightly and pump your arms up and down while you nod your head, you know?
• Oh, we’re back to the homophobia. “Tongues out and the arms around each other and nothing else in the world mattered to these two except finishing off the date. It’s probably a big night at the symphony. Or some foreign film. (Effeminate voice) It’s all see you soon and thanks so much and the hands all where they shouldn’t be. I mean, come on. I know the scriptures, know them pretty well, and this is wrong.” Oh, Paul. Why did I make myself watch this again?
• He did, in forcing his character’s homophobia onto the audience, make two references. He mentioned the movie Deathtrap, which I love, it’s an excellent movie. And he said they were making out like in Romeo & Juliet. It’s all connected but I no longer care. Ugh. Meanwhile Calista Flockhart is asleep.
• I don’t like this play anymore. And I’m very glad I won’t be watching the next two.
• Aaand him and his friends are beating one of them up in a bathroom. Jesus.
• That’s why we had all the jokes he was doing earlier, to offset these three dudes essentially killing a gay man while they pray at him. I mean, the writing is very good in that they know how to play such a horrible moment. And Paul’s character is certainly closeted, he let the man lick his teeth and touch him before he started the abuse. And he’s pounding tic tacs while he talks about this. I’ve always wanted to see him play more villains, and I guess I got my wish. He stole the man’s wedding ring and used it to propose to Calista. This is far too rough and real. Poor lady is gonna marry the worst man in the world.
• Well. That’s done. And boy, did it escalate quick.

Overall Rating: 2/10(It was very well-written, this one-act. But I would have been fine had I not watched it. The absence of “A Gaggle of Saints” did not make my life worse and the presence of it just made me sad. I gotta watch something else now, I can’t end the night on a homophobic one-act.)
Rudd Rating: 7.5/10(The performance was great but I can’t rate him that much higher because the character was so vile. It’s a massive testament to his ability as an actor, but I can’t enjoy it as much as I otherwise would.)

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Twelfth Night, Or What You Will(1998) stars Helen Hunt, Kyra Sedgwick, Philip Bosco, Paul Rudd, David Patrick Kelly, Amy Hill, and Brian Murray. It was written by William Shakespeare.

This might be my weirdest and most difficult endeavor yet, watching a three hour production of Twelfth Night that has the picture and audio quality of the recording of one of my school musicals (Some of which are available on YouTube under the play and musical playlists of Zephyr Fine Arts Live, check out The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, I’m particularly proud of that one. Or Curtains, Mamma Mia!, Beauty and the Beast, and Radium Girls. I was prolific in that there were few guys in the theater department to give roles to.) when I could just as easily just rewatch She’s The Man, but as you can see this is quite the look for Paul Rudd, so we’ll go with it.

• Again, this ties in tangentially to Romeo + Juliet, so I can convince myself to get these out of the way before someone takes them down. The final set of plays will seem irrelevant, and is very much the odd man out.
• Unlike R+J, this is straight Shakespeare, and my dull head isn’t paying much attention, but luckily I know the plot. Amanda Bynes wants to play soccer but sexism is afoot so she goes to this rich people school to pretend to be her brother because he doesn’t want to be there and in the process she falls in love with Channing Tatum and also Vinnie Jones is there.
• What’s that? I’m still thinking about She’s The Man? Sorry, I’m playing this at 1.25 speed, it was hard to tell whether they were playing soccer or not. So there’s a lady named Viola, she was in a shipwreck and she thinks her brother is dead, and vice versa, and I believe in order to keep up appearances (?) I’m not sure, hard to say, she decides to pretend to be a man and join Duke Orsino’s court. And Orsino tries to get Cesario, Viola’s male alter ego, to make this lady named Olivia fall in love with her. That’s what IMDb says. And then, presumably, they all play soccer.
• “I am a great eater of beef!”
• Oh, Paul Rudd is just in his underwear now! I think they showed an image of that on Graham Norton once.
• I know this is meant to be one of the funniest of Shakespeare’s plays, but surely you would get killed back then for doing a Mulan. Not to mention Helen Hunt barely looks like a man. She just has her hair in a ponytail and she’s not even playing soccer.
• Quick note about the stage. The set dressing is scarce, it seems to be a largely attended theater in the round situation, but there’s some nice trickery. The stage is painted to look like the ground, but there are roads carved in and a pool of real water for Paul to lounge in, not to mention benches that rise from the stage itself. As someone who had to do far too many plays of “Making the set and props with your own body” I appreciate seeing purposeful minimalism done well, and not used as an excuse for a high school that cares far more about pouring all its money into the football teams.
• Okay, so the brother is alive and about, but who’s this random guy named Toby Belch who keeps getting more and more drunk? I’M NOT EVEN AN HOUR IN, GOOD GOD! Oh, he’s just eating regular Chinese takeout now. What a guy. Oh, and Mrs. Kwan from The Cat in the Hat is here! This is such an odd time.
• So everyone is in love with everyone else, and very horny about the whole thing, while also trying to trick various characters into thinking others love them back. I’m crabby, but this isn’t unfunny or lacking entertainment, and either way intermission has come and gone and at the very least I’m halfway through.
• Act two brings more farce and horniness and misunderstandings. Also, some offhanded fourth wall breaking jokes about “Whether this story will ever take to the stage” wink and nudge.
• A swordfight with “Cesario” and many fools leads to Viola being mistaken for her brother and vice versa. We also learn that either these actors are incredible stuntmen or the pool of water is deep enough for a man’s whole body to fall deep within and swim around. And now it’s raining! Ah, three huzzahs for theatrical trickery!
• Then Olivia meets the brother, and lots of steamy sex later, a deeper misunderstanding is set up. This play, with its lack of Paul Rudd, finally brings him back to us (Three hours of this is rotting the language centers in my brain) but no longer clad in purple undies, he’s now in a fancy cream white coat. Still one that shows off his chest. And his hair is still impossibly long. Finally he’s reunited with the woman he’s pined after but seemingly never met.
• AND NOW PAUL RUDD IS HOLDING A SWORD! THIS IS A WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF CHARISMA AND ATTRACTION!
• I love that the whole final act is predicated on the belief that everyone thinks Helen Hunt and Rick Stear, the actor who plays the brother Sebastian, are the most identical looking people there have ever been.
• And all ends happily ever after. Sort of. Orsino and Olivia are more than happy to accept the confusions for what they are and partner with the one who truly loved them all along. And I guess I’m inclined to accept it too, since the story was written hundreds of years before I was born and Paul looks really cool.

Overall Rating: 7/10(It’s not the worst Shakespeare production I’ve seen, that was Romeo & Juliet In Space. Also I loved the set.)
Rudd Rating: 9.5/10(He’s not in it nearly enough but boy, what a fascinating look he had in this one.)