I don’t remember the book at all and I’m with DiosaBellissima on the interpretation of the scene. Nick’s comments in the movie so support that interpretation.
I do agree with you about the near phone call though. Me least favorite part of the movie (which I liked a lot).
What a gorgeous movie, with extravagant costumes, sets, etc. The FX worked really well for me, and I was totally into it. . .until Fergie started singing at the big party gala. Kee-RIST! The music was set to be as epic as the rest of the film - really huge, energetic, picking me up and carrying me along with the movie, but they HAD to throw the modern touches in. It was such a BEAUTIFUL, if idealized, period piece, and then they had to use the musical anachronisms.
Now, for those of you who haven’t seen the film, I’m not referring to one modern singer standing up and performing an appropriate piece, or the like. I’m referring to the way they mixed modern songs, production, sampling, effects, etc into the classic big band sound they had going. This seemed to work for some people, but it just served to remind me that I was watching a movie. Clearly, the director didn’t have a problem with doing that. Maybe he didn’t want us swept up, but somewhat outside the movie. I wasn’t up for that.
I didn’t finish the movie.
Edit: Full disclosure - I’ve never read the book either.
Yes, it reminded me I was watching a movie. But big band music sounds quaint and old-fashioned to my ears (I enjoy it, but it’s quaint and old-fashioned). Luhrmann’s injection of hip-hop into the music serves to remind folks that the music at the party would be edgy and modern to the ears of partygoers, and so even as it takes viewers out of the movie, it manages to place them in the perspective of the characters in the movie. I thought it was brilliant.
It reminded me of Deadwood’s use of modern profanity. The writers could have used period-accurate profanity, but the goddams and hells of the time period sound mild to modern ears, and the writers thought it was more important to make the profanity as powerful to modern ears as it would have been to the ears of the characters, so they used fuck and limberdick cocksucker to achieve the same shock value that damn and hell would have achieved at the time.
I thought the partying, drinking, wild dancing, gross extravagance and casual sex well-communicated their edginess. There was perhaps some drug use as well, ISTR. It was communicated in so many other ways that the music was heavy-handed and an unnecessary intrusion. McGuire literally told us what wild parties Gatsby had, and I though it obvious that his parties were, ‘the place to be’. I was well settled-in, ready to watch their world, and suddenly, MY world intruded. Didn’t work for me. Looks like they made their money back and then some, even before DVD sales, so it worked for others.
The swearing on Deadwood was elevated to poetry, and while it contained words we’d consider anachronistic (I don’t personally know for sure they were, I just assume they were), they worked to weave them in a manner unlike we’d use them today. I’m not sure that all the “fucks” & “cocksuckers” and such would have been necessary if they’d had another class of people to compare them to, but of course they didn’t have many churchgoing, upright citizens in Deadwood that I recall.
Though, of course, I got a kick out of Swearengen’s verbal tirades like everyone else. 
I ended up seeing Gatsby in July, and mostly liked it (certainly more than I liked Moulin Rouge, which, as I wrote earlier, I gave up on after half an hour). Good-looking and engaging movie, and both Leonardo and Tobey were very good in their roles. I re-read the novel over the summer, too, and got a lot more out of it than I had in college.