I read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in the last year (I'm 38) in my endeavor to read books that are deemed "important" or that I was supposed to read in high school/college but didn't. I didn't like Fountainhead because every single person in it was an asshole. I liked Atlas Shrugged, loved Dagny, but skipped Francisco's party monologue and Galt's radio speech. I don't feel I missed anything. Ayn did go on so.
Wasn't this supposed to be Brangelina's vehicle? Thus the bartering for their *cough-cough* Oscar nominations last year?
I met one of the early screenwriters on this project about 3 to 4 years ago at the Austin Film Festival. It seems like a meat grinder of a project, spitting out talented, capable people left and right. Another "Apocalypse Now" in the making?
Anthony Lane, rather than directly review the film adaptation of Great expectations (starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow), reviewed the novelization of that film adaptation of the Dickens novel, which was of course very different from the Dickens novel. That's funny for the travesty it exposes, but think of the opportunity here for Rand.
One ingenious literary innovation of Rand's is that you know exactly how a character is going to turn out by the sound of his name, or by a description of his figure. As soon as pudgy little Bertram Scudder hits the scene, you can be certain he will eventually say something like, "You know, money is the root of all evil." At which point he gets totally ObjectivistPWND by Francisco's 18-page rebuttal. ("Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?" etc. etc.)
So obviously, we can be sure that once printed word is translated into moving image, the end result will be about as thrilling as watching an inventory of your own spice cabinet taking place.
My high school theater class did a production of the Rand play "The Night of January Sixteenth." It is a formulaic choose-your-own-adventure/ courtroom drama /murder mystery. I played a prostitute with a very short skirt because my theater teacher was a perv.
That is what I always remember when anyone tells me what a great writer Rand was.
@Botswana Meat Commission FC: Almost without fail, across all borders of gender, class, race, time, space, etc etc, my college comp students love this "Boondock Saints." They have tried to convince me to watch it, but I resist. Still all this adulation leaves me in a mild state of WTF. How is this film the "We are the World" of college freshmen?
@Pope John Peeps II:
Usually I'm all over interesting, well-executed action movies. My problem with B.S. had more to do with its philosophy. Just sort of a juvenile mess of bullshit...
@Botswana Meat Commission FC: My sentiments exactly. But out of curiosity and the totally fucked-up desire to seem au courant to my students, maybe I'll check it out.
We're developing an Ayn Rand Deprogrammer at Denialism Blog: http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/01/the_ayn_rand_deprogrammer_subm.php
Also, Paul Pickrel of Harper's wrote a divine review of Atlas when it was released: "...It makes life wonderfully simple, and in a way that is agreeable to many of us, probably to all of us at some moment in our lives: according to its argument there is no contradiction or strain between man's inner life and his social role, for unrestrained egoism solves all problems. In addition, Miss Rand is able to enlist some of the more disreputable human emotions--hatred, contempt, anger--in a pretty powerful way. Oddly enough, though I do not believe in her characters for a moment, I do believe in their wrath."
Trivia: John Galt Corporation was implicated in the fire at the Deutsche Bank downtown that resulted in the deaths of firefighters. Life imitating art imitating delusional world view of Ayn Rand?
"Public and private records give no indication of how many employees it has, what its volume of business is or who its clients are. There are almost no accounts of any projects it has undertaken on any scale, apart from 130 Liberty Street. Court records are largely silent. Some leading construction executives in the city say they have never even heard of it."
You can't make this stuff up. Well, you can, and it's just as liable as the real thing to end up as a miniseries on Lifetime.
How about Charlize Theron as Dabney Coleman as Francine M. Hart Jr. in a reversed role remake of 9 to 5. The three male secretaries will be played by Ryan Reynolds, Paul Rudd and Jason Seigel. I
@J. Frank Parnell: I was hoping Bobcat Goldthwait, so he could incomprehensibly scream, squeak and squeal Galt's 90 page soliloquy to the moochers. Him or a drunken Gary Busey. ::Sigh:: Oh well, who is John Galt ....
07/22/09
07/21/09
I met one of the early screenwriters on this project about 3 to 4 years ago at the Austin Film Festival. It seems like a meat grinder of a project, spitting out talented, capable people left and right. Another "Apocalypse Now" in the making?
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07/21/09
So obviously, we can be sure that once printed word is translated into moving image, the end result will be about as thrilling as watching an inventory of your own spice cabinet taking place.
07/21/09
That is what I always remember when anyone tells me what a great writer Rand was.
07/21/09
I should have known it would automatically suck when she told me college kids liked it.
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Rent it some weekend. It's not bad. But it's only amazing to boys still impressed with fake ways of feeling manly.
07/21/09
Usually I'm all over interesting, well-executed action movies. My problem with B.S. had more to do with its philosophy. Just sort of a juvenile mess of bullshit...
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07/21/09
Also, Paul Pickrel of Harper's wrote a divine review of Atlas when it was released: "...It makes life wonderfully simple, and in a way that is agreeable to many of us, probably to all of us at some moment in our lives: according to its argument there is no contradiction or strain between man's inner life and his social role, for unrestrained egoism solves all problems. In addition, Miss Rand is able to enlist some of the more disreputable human emotions--hatred, contempt, anger--in a pretty powerful way. Oddly enough, though I do not believe in her characters for a moment, I do believe in their wrath."
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"Public and private records give no indication of how many employees it has, what its volume of business is or who its clients are. There are almost no accounts of any projects it has undertaken on any scale, apart from 130 Liberty Street. Court records are largely silent. Some leading construction executives in the city say they have never even heard of it."
You can't make this stuff up. Well, you can, and it's just as liable as the real thing to end up as a miniseries on Lifetime.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/nyregion/23company.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
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Maybe they should make it a comedy?