'The Great Gatsby' DVD And Blu-Ray Includes An Alternate Ending That Would Have Made The Film Even Longer

Kirsten AcunaAug 29, 2013, 02:43 IST

Warner Bros. Entertainment"The Great Gatsby" is out on DVD and Blu-ray and included in the special features of the 2-disc special edition is an alternate ending to the film. (Don't get too excited. Gatsby doesn't live.) Rather, director Baz Luhrmann originally had the film continue well after Gatsby passed away. "I shot a lot of scenes after Gatsby's death," says Luhrmann in a featurette. "And it was a very painful process of progressively letting them all go, because at first, I put them all in." The film continues with the fallout from Gatsby's death. Scenes cut from the end include one between Tom (Joel Edgington) and Nick (Tobey McGuire), another where Gatsby's father visits Jay in his coffin, and lastly a scene where Jordan (Elizabeth Debicki) and Nick bid say goodbye over the phone. Luhrmann said the scenes — especially the one with the father — were in the film for a very long time. At 143 minutes, "The Great Gatsby" is already nearly a 2 and a half hour movie, it's not difficult to see why the scenes were cut. However, the director says he took them out one by one after realizing they took away from the point of the story. "What I found as I played the film to my colleagues, to my co-collaborators ... that the more we focused after Gatsby's death just down to the relationship between Nick and Gatsby, the more you realize that that's actually what the film is about, even more than the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy. It's about Nick trying to work out why this person that everyone looks upon so ... who everyone discards as such immoral trash is the most hopeful human being he has ever met, and is ever likely to meet again." Luhrmann also said the scenes with the father reiterated information the viewer had already learned about the young Jay Gatz early in the film. The alternate, extended ending is one of many features on the disc. Watching the special features, the viewer gets an innate sense of how hands on Director Baz Luhrmann was with every single detail from the set research, to music, to clothing in the film. Here's what's inside the Blu-ray and 2-disc special edition: The Greatness of Gatsby Details how director Baz Luhrmann came up with the idea to film "The Great Gatsby" on an 8-day train ride aboard the trans-siberian railroad and the extensive research that went into making the film. "I remember thinking to myself, 'That is almost perfect cinema structure.'" He wanted to solve the problem of telling the internal story of Nick Carraway. "Within and Without" with Tobey Maguire During the filming of "Moulin Rouge," Luhrmann says a tradition was started where one of the actors would report from the set. Maguire brought a camera along to capture the scene on set. The Swinging Sounds of Gatsby "You don't see a Baz Luhrman film and not go get the soundtrack," says Leonardo DiCaprio in the featurette. "They're like one and the same. " If you you're a fan of Baz, you know he's not only passionate about his filmmaking, but also the music in his films. This segment goes inside how closely Luhrmann worked with musicians Jay-Z, Lana del Rey and more to create a modern-day score reminiscent of the Jazz age. The Jazz Age Nearly 20 minutes highlighting the history of the era when "The Great Gatsby" took place. Mini-biography on what life was like for author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Razzle Dazzle: The Fashion of the '20s How Production and Costume designer Catherine Martin worked together with partners from Tiffany, Prada, and Brooks Brothers to bring the look and feel of the '20s to the big screen. Fitzgerald's Visual Poetry Luhrmann explains his use of visual text from the novel on screen during the film. Gatsby Revealed Consists of five scenes from the film for which Luhrmann provides commentary including the first time Daisy and Gatsby meet along with how the Plaza Hotel was re-imagined. Deleted Scenes Other than the alternate ending, Luhrmann introduces two other deleted scenes, one between Nick and Jordan and another where Gatsby says the iconic line "Her voice is full of money." Luhrmann reveals he cut the latter from the film because it hinted that Gatsby was disappointed by Daisy when he was about to fight to win her from her husband. A trailer for the 1926 adaptation of the film featuring Warner Baxter as Jay Gatsby and Lois Wilson as Daisy Buchanan. Watch it below:

Warner Bros. provided us with an exclusive preview from one of the special features.

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'The Great Gatsby' DVD And Blu-Ray Includes An Alternate Ending That Would Have Made The Film Even Longer