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Z: The Beginning of Everything

2017; Penn State University Press; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/fscotfitzrevi.15.1.0214

1755-6333

Ruth Reitan,

American and British Literature Analysis

“Not to alarm you, but the writers from Z are in the room,” the conference cochair Melissa Barker murmured as I hastily grabbed my badge, bag, and program en route to deliver a rather academic critique of the new Amazon series, Z: The Beginning of Everything, to what I presumed would be an audience of sleepy-eyed literary profs and brighter-eyed graduate students. Nine o'clock on a Monday morning in a basement classroom in St. Paul, Minnesota, is not exactly where one expects to meet a Hollywood showrunner. The one great break in an aspiring screenwriter's career is to get two minutes “in the room”—or at least in an elevator—with such folks. Yet in an ironic twist akin to a Garrison Keillor radio tale, Hollywood had come to beautiful downtown St. Paul, Minnesota. The Mountain to Mohammed. The pitch room, to moi. And instead of a rushed two-minute spiel, I was to get my full twelve to seventeen minutes of their undivided attention, thanks to the temporal tyranny of the conference panel format.Needless to say I was rewriting my presentation on the stairway down.The 14th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference was “that sorda deal” as they say in Minnesotan, for not one but two showrunning teams. Karl Gajdusek of Z and Christopher Keyser and A. Scott Berg of The Last Tycoon, Amazon's other Fitzgerald-inspired series, joined conferees for a week of free-wheeling panels, plenaries, and informal chats on the facts and fiction of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Keyser told us that Amazon's Global Content chief Roy Price “is obsessed with Fitzgerald,” and luckily for us he is putting his company's bulging pocketbook and production slate where his passions lie.Amidst all this small-screen shoulder-rubbing, Kirk Curnutt (who chronicled his earlier “Brush with Fame” consulting on Z in the 2017 F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Newsletter) asked me to review the show for this journal. What follows comes less from my original conference presentation than from reflecting on the vibrant conversations had among Society members and our visiting showrunners during that week in late June 2017, and then rewatching and reassessing the season in light of those conversations.The first season of Z: The Beginning of Everything has much to commend it. Veteran head writing team Nicole Yorkin and Dawn Prestwich, previously of AMC and Netflix's The Killing, helmed a well-cast and well-paced series of ten half-hour episodes loosely adapted from Therese Anne Fowler's bestseller Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (2013). In just under five hours, we are whisked from Zelda and Scott's “meet-cute” in Montgomery, Alabama, at the end of the Great War through their whirlwind marriage and “It Couple” days in Manhattan and Westport, to their return to Alabama three years later jaded by marital infidelity, financial strain, and an unwanted pregnancy. The half-hour episode length is unusual for a dramatic series. But Gajdusek, who has replaced Prestwich and Yorkin as showrunner (i.e., head writer and business manager), appreciates the short format's forced emphasis on the “A” story to the exclusion of subplots, which add complexity but can slow the narrative momentum and emotional intensity.After watching Z a second time and comparing it with The Last Tycoon (whose episodes run for an hour, typical of a drama series), I am persuaded by Gajdusek's logic. In Z, Zelda's character is being revealed and her relationship with Scott developed in every single scene. In the very rare instance when two minor characters are on screen without Zelda or Scott, it is always in service of the couple's story, such as a heartrending moment in a later episode when Zelda's mother breaks down in her husband's arms, crying “they're gonna use each other up.” The Last Tycoon, by contrast, is more ambitious but also more plot-heavy and character-loaded. To keep so many “story-plates” spinning, so to speak, the editor must cut between major and minor scenarios every minute or two, giving the show a somewhat stilted effect. In any event, the briefer format seems especially suited for a “smaller” bioseries such as Z.Praise also goes to those who created the lushly nostalgic mise-en-scène, including cinematographer David Franco, production designer Henry Dunn, art director Neil Prince, set decorator Cherish M. Hale, and costume designer Tom Broecker. Despite these strengths, however, the critical and popular reception of Z has been mixed, a composite 69 percent favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 61 percent on Metacritic, the two main online rating aggregators. This lackluster reception probably accounts for the change in showrunners. But Karl Gajdusek is best known for his television and film work in the genre of science fiction (coming fresh from the multiaward-winning Netflix series Stranger Things), and so while experienced, he is not an obvious choice to replace Prestwich and Yorkin. He said he “jumped at the chance” to take on Z when his agent mentioned it in passing and then “fought hard” to convince the show's producers Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films of his credentials. Growing up in the household of an acclaimed Hemingway scholar (he is the son of the late Robin Gajdusek), he told conference goers what he told Vachon and Koffler to win the job: “I love each and every one of these characters.”Given this background, Gajdusek spoke of the deep sense of responsibility and unprecedented opportunity that Z grants him as an artist and writer. Reassuringly, he told us that Therese Anne Fowler's book would be just one of many sources guiding his future vision for the show. The main source, he said, is “the real lives of these characters.” I got the sense that there are red lines he will not cross just for the sake of dramatic effect. Fitzgerald (and Hemingway) scholars can take some assurance that he will vet potential story lines not only against the vast historical record that he and his team began slogging through as they prepared to convene their writers' room last August, but also against the more personal question of “what would Dad say about this?”And like Gajdusek as showrunner, Christina Ricci is not the most obvious choice for the show's titular star. Yet her sheer will to own the role of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and to break from her gothic genre typecasting is ultimately as winning as Gajdusek's story. The actress acknowledged in a candid Glamour interview that “I wouldn't have gotten this part because I'm not really considered a ‘traditional romantic lead,’ so I created it for myself” (Kantor). Z is very much a star vehicle and Ricci's baby: she spearheaded the effort to get the rights to Fowler's book and exerts considerable creative control as one of the show's producers. For all these reasons, Ricci is the force majeure of season one and her performance has garnered near-universal praise. We breathlessly watch her Zelda metamorphose from spunky Southern Belle to Jazz Age flapper, and from artist's muse to reluctant mother-to-be and caretaker wife to a dashing but frankly unhinged alcoholic.Which brings us to Scott—And to my and many critics' main gripe with the show's first season. In terms of style, David Hoflin fills F. Scott Fitzgerald's shoes and suits out handsomely. Hoflin was not the first choice for the role: in the series pilot Gavin Stenhouse portrayed the budding author but was replaced when Amazon decided he lacked chemistry with Ricci. At the level of substance, whoever plays Scott will be hamstrung as an actor (emphasis on “ham”) by a supporting role written so instrumentally as to become caricature. Hoflin is forced to play the cock-blocking foil to Ricci's chrysalid Zelda (pardon the mixed metaphor, but it is actually pretty accurate). If Zelda/Ricci is to win every scene—and by God she does—what is left for poor Scott/Hoflin to do but lose or play the loser, and try to drag our heroine down with him? His pat reaction to every rejection (and, handily, he is dealt one “inciting incident” that spirals him toward doom each episode) is to get blindingly drunk, belligerent, and, yes, a little bit crazy. He teeters on ledges high over Manhattan streets. He eats whole cigarettes. He burns bridges with mentors, friends, and acolytes alike when a speaking engagement at Princeton goes way south. Meanwhile, Zelda plays the “hot mom” coping as best she can with her man-child's tantrums.Gajdusek reminded us that the show is called Z—not Z & S—so Fitzgerald aficionados should not expect a 180-degree pivot to Team Scott. Point well taken. But F. Scott Fitzgerald is a significant and fascinating character in his own right, and while he was unquestionably an alcoholic, it will serve neither the story nor a potentially broader audience well to defeat him so facilely to score every goal for Team Zelda.What is missing from the show is the “fun fact” that Zelda, to paraphrase her nemesis Hemingway, was crazy in a way that Scott will never be—the good and the bad “sorda” crazy. Which goes to the crux of the drama, and the historical record: Zelda's x-factor, which so attracted her to Scott and to many around her, was also her one tragic flaw leading to her demise. Her x-factor was not F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was something unusual about her mind's wiring and her speech and her fearlessness, which grew into an incurable mental illness that was probably psychosis. Season one's writers would have us believe that the impetus for her illness was Scott; that is to say, crazy Scott would eventually drive Zelda crazy. Granted, a lousy husband can give his wife many things—depression, anxiety, a black eye, situational alcoholism, an unwanted pregnancy. Scott probably gave Zelda all these and then some. But he could not have given her psychosis—much less his psychosis. Even monstrous people—and Scott was not monstrous—cannot drive a person mad (studies of Holocaust survivors seem to have proven this point).So how did we get here? In rereading Fowler's source text, it is striking that in the span of just three breezy pages of a nearly 400-page book, the author takes us from sound-of-mind if weak-of-body ballerina Zelda to “Schiz-o-phren-i-a…. that's the diagnosis they've settled on,” as Zelda quips glibly to Scott (321). Wait; what? Gajdusek shed some light on this glaring obfuscation when he noted that apparently Fowler was dissuaded by her agent and publisher from depicting Zelda's mental illness in any downbeat detail. And it shows on the page, as well as in season one's very odd transference of latent illness from wife to husband. While this may have been the right choice for the book's target audience, Fitzgerald scholars at the St. Paul conference were adamant in their appeal to Gajdusek that he treat Zelda's illness with sensitivity, courage, and honesty, a point that he seems to have taken seriously; he said later that both Christina Ricci and Christine Vachon are keen to do just that in forthcoming seasons.Scott's caricature-ish portrayal in season one, however, may also have been partly a function of the half-hour format, for he was forced to play both love interest and antagonist to Zelda. Looking ahead to season two, Ernest Hemingway as antagonist and the young French pilot Edouard Jozan as a new suitor will hopefully present greater freedom for Scott's character to be developed. But Scott, or Ernest, or any other person for that matter, does not have to be her ultimate antagonist; the disease—both of their diseases, actually—could prove to be the more worthy and compelling adversary. (One thinks of the film A Beautiful Mind, for example.)Hence one of the challenges that Gajdusek has identified, which is starting basically from scratch in terms of supporting characters as the action moves to France, also presents an opportunity. While the two supporting actors whose performances stood out in season one—David Strathairn and Kristine Nielson as Zelda's parents—will likely see their roles reduced or eliminated in season two, we can look forward to their return in later seasons. For now, choosing among and then casting the larger-than-life Lost Generation characters will be crucial to the show's survival and success.To wrap up my Fitzgerald conference tale: Tragically I was not able to charm, hustle, or harangue my way into the writer's room of Z. Not yet. But Hollywood may again brighten our Society's (or a sister society's) conference doorway, so people should get ready. Amazon prides itself on location shooting—although Savannah, Georgia, stood in for Montgomery, Alabama, in the show's first season due to state tax incentives. Season two is slated to shoot in “Paris” next summer. And while Bucharest—like Savannah—may ultimately stand in for Paris, both for financial reasons and because it looks more like the Paris of a century ago, when I mentioned to Gajdusek that the Hemingway Conference will be meeting in the City of Light next summer, he exclaimed: “Wouldn't it be great if Society members could come on the set and be extras?”So while I work on perfecting my twelve-to-seventeen-minute pitch, Hemingway and Fitzgerald scholars heading to Paris next summer should get ready for their close-up!