Many in Great Neck have claimed “Great Gatsby” author F. Scott Fitzgerald as a native son, assuming that when Jay Gatsby stares across the sound toward the green light, he’s peering from West Egg – or Great Neck – over toward Sands Point, or East Egg.
But filmmakers Richard Webb and Robert Steven Williams will be challenging this at a presentation hosted by the Great Neck Historical Society at the Great Neck Library on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. suggesting that Westport, Connecticut, might better fit the bill for inspiring the iconic book.
“They truly have done an amazing amount of research,” Alice Kasten, president of the Great Neck Historical Society, said on Thursday. “This is not a fly-by-night kind of effort.”
Webb and Williams have been working on a film for many years, Kasten said, interviewing Fitzgerald’s family members, scholars and traveling around the country to visit sites that may have influenced the author – including some on the North Shore.
Kasten recalled taking the duo around Great Neck and the North Shore, including the Hempstead House in Sands Point, and said they have since kept in touch.
“They have done a huge, huge, huge amount of research on Fitzgerald,” Kasten said.
Much of that research appears in “Boats Against the Current: The Honeymoon Summer of Scott and Zelda,” the main subject of the talk, which Webb wrote as an accompaniment to the not-yet-released documentary he is producing with Williams.
The book recalls the five-month honeymoon of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Westport, Connecticut, in 1920, where the couple was enjoying the success of Fitzgerald’s novel “This Side of Paradise.” They “lived a wild life of drinking, driving and endless partying” there, the book says, and suggests that the town might have been a larger influence for “The Great Gatsby” than Great Neck.
“The geography of the green light and Daisy’s house and Gatsby’s house apparently fits Westport really well, according to them,” Kasten said, adding that it doesn’t necessarily discount any influence from Great Neck.
This will mark their first Long Island book talk, the Great Neck Historical Society and Great Neck Library said, and will feature pieces of the film.
And, Kasten said, she expects a lot of interest in the program.
“We booked it in the library because we feel there should be more people than are able to be seated in the Great Neck House where [we usually do presentations] and because they need more technology for their talk than we can provide at Great Neck House,” she said.
