Jim V. Hart's ATLAS SHRUGGED

Peter Reidy: "Can't you see Hank and Dagny playing a scene on top of that desk?"

Yes I can, but if I worked for "Baldwin Entertainment" I'd be fired.

Post 21

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 5:22pm

"I personally crave to see a modern version of the film made. In fact, years ago, some of us even dreamed about changing Taggart Railroad to Taggart Airlines to satisfy the obvious dated aspects of the book in making a movie out of it."

When I first read Atlas Shrugged, about five years after its original publication, the heavy reliance on railroads already seemed "dated." But, I reasoned, the novel depicted a civilization in decline, a society slipping backwards technologically. Mightn't Rand have made railroads so important in a novel published in the late '50s and supposedly taking place about twelve years in the future (i.e., about 1970) as a way of showing how far back American civilization had already slid by the time of the story's opening?

JR

Post 22

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 6:42pm

Jeff's on to something there. They said about the show HAPPY DAYS that the 50's were too dated for a show in the 70's. But the defense was that if you try to make a show contemporary, it will look dated. But if you set it in the past, it can obtain a timelessness that transcends it's current setting.

Post 23

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 7:05pm

The date of reference, Jeff, should be about 1945 when she started work on the novel, not the unknown, to her at the time, publication date. I think she imagined it would take several years to complete the novel, so I would use 1960, not 1970 if I agreed with your analysis.

There was some technological backsliding in Atlas, but not much. There was a reference to a type of machine not used anymore and typewriters that couldn't be fixed.

What was depicted was a grinding down of the economy, an economy that could no longer advance.

One could use airlines rather than railroads, but I'd personally prefer railroads and the sort of art deco feel I'm increasingly associating with the novel. Also, railroads today don't carry many passengers but they do carry a lot of freight, especially bulk freight--even more, much more actually, than big trucks.

If I were doing the screenplay I'd have an admixture of airlines, railroads and trucking companies in the transportation mix, leaving the primary focus on the railroads.

--Brant

Post 24

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 7:34pm

All the while the destruction of the American way is hastened by a mysterious force that is silencing the great thinkers of the day. Their disappearance inspires a universal sense of fatalistic dread that is summed up by the new popular catchphrase: �Who is John Galt?"

That gives away too much of the story, and makes the story seem too depressed. They should leave both of those sentences out of the description.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 8/17, 7:34pm)

Post 25

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 7:47pm

    Re 'trains' vs 'planes,' I'm a bit perplexed why AR didn't make the focus on an airlines rather than a train company. I understand all the associative metaphors re transport/blood-vessels life-growth, but, she must have understood the place of airlines in American (and global) civilization (re same metaphors) even in her time, when, yet, she decided to publish it as finished; that she decided to stick to trains as her representational symbolic-icon of life-processing is...Curious.
   I have little prob with any ideas of 'updating' it (if they can do it WITHOUT actually 'dating' it, as Kubrick unfortunately did with '2001' re our biggest-of-the-time airlines PanAm being 'the' space-lines to space-stations, a couple yrs before PanAm actually went bankrupt.) Changing to an airlines focus, referring to the ISS and InterNET, ongoing (though non-specific) probs re UN, and global-guerilla terrorists, if they can without making any of such (including the Twin Towers) any kind of 'centerpiece' of the movie, I think would be good...if they have a good enough writer who could do it. (And...the screenplay writer(s), whoever s/he is/are IS/ARE the most important character(s) in this whole buisness, no?)
    My only prob with the idea of the movie is: it's a 'movie.' We're talking 2->2 1/2 hrs, maybe 3 (like Ben-Hur), no more.--- Not enough time for this kind of story, without bastardizing it through nothing more than mere 'cutting' (nm any interfering 'ideology.')
    George Lucas 'conditioned' the movie populace to accept a movie-story taking up more than 1 movie (via necessarily-integrated 'sequels', which are totally different from 'further adventures of...'), shifting tv 'mini-series' stories into movie 'sagas.' This allowed The Matrix, Kill Bill and Lord Of The Rings as movies the movie populace was willing to 'wait' for the next...chapter...regarding. This just wouldn't work with Atlas Shrugged; the last (3rd) part, "A is A" (assuming each 'part' could be truncated into 2 1/2 hrs without noticeable loss) just wouldn't make it as a 'theatrical' movie, even if done with nothing excised, (unless they got Jerry Bruckeimer [Armageddon] or Joel Schumacher [Batman & Robin], I guess; but now we're talking an unrecognizable radical-overhaul.) --- Too bad James Cameron didn't go for it; he'd have done it fair justice, methinks. (maybe even Martin Scorsese [John ducks])
    Ever since the 'talk' started re Atlas Shrugged being a movie, I'd always thought that it shouldn't be so. Galt's speech truncated to maybe a 1/2 hr would have more majestic loss than presence, even if Ayn Rand herself re-wrote it (as I believe she did re Gary Cooper's Roark-speech in the movie The Fountainhead; don't blame him for any of that film's flaws. He wasn't 'great,' but he wasn't 'bad' either; I found him acceptably believable. And the actor who did Toohey: Awesome...but I digress.) Galt's speech needs to be damn close to 'as is,' AND presented in a way that is 'audio'-only...for the supposed hearers. Cinematically, the producer/director/screenplay-er could work out a 'montage' of history-scenes for parts, visualizations of 'abstractions' for others (like in Little Man Tate, showing the kid's views of how billiards work via his visualization of the mechanistic-geometry of billiard-ball-causality). Ntl, all would be a time-consumption in a single theatrical movie ('action-filled' rescue of Galt notwithstanding.)
    Atlas Shrugged should be a tv-miniseries, or, better yet (no 'time'-limit inherent) a Made-For-DVD...saga. Anything else will inherently be...something MUCH less.
     I'll probably see the movie (if it ever comes out before I die, I must add, at this rate). But I don't have high hopes for it, no matter WHO produces, directs, or acts in it (though, I am curious as to the music composer !)

LLAP
J-D

(Edited by John Dailey on 8/17, 8:13pm)

Post 26

Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - 7:52pm

I'm curious...does anyone know how much leeway they were given/not given when they purchased the rights to the movie? Just thinking that this could explain the "why they didn't" scenarios.

Post 27

Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 2:20am

According to this report, which I believe to be accurate despite the blatent sarcasm in regard to casting�.

Ann (sic) Rand�s heir, Leonard Peikoff, sold the movie rights to �Atlas Shrugged� many years ago. The estate does not have any direct control over who makes the movie or who is cast...

Ed Snider (of the Philadelphia Flyers & Comcast) initially bought the rights, but he has apparently sold them to Baldwin. I have no idea if the �rights� came with any particular restrictions as to content. I seriously doubt it.

Sean Penn as Wesley Mouch. Hmmmm� Now that might work�

The only way this movie could avoid being a travesty is if every effort was made to remain faithful to Ayn Rand�s story. Contemporary Hollywood could not possibly integrate a topic as complex as Islamic terrorism without totally destroying the brilliant ingenuity of the plot. Can you imagine Dagny (Jennifer Connelly?) getting furious with Mr. Thompson (Woody Allen?) for provoking the Islamists into blowing up one of TT�s railway stations?

Ayn Rand did not deal with the "Cold War" of the fifties in the novel because she understood that it was incidental to the fundamental philosophical conflict that was destroying America from the inside. The fact that the writer and producers want to incorporate "international terrorism" into the story probably means they have no idea what that internal philosophical comflict is about.

Ayn Rand did not intend for ATLAS SHRUGGED to be a tearjerker, but it may well turn out to be just that.

Post 28

Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 6:09am

I seem to recall reading somewhere that, at the time of her death, Ayn Rand was working on a TV series based on Atlas. Does anybody know if that's correct and if any of her work along those lines survived? It would be interesting to know how she envisioned bringing the novel to the (small) screen.

Post 29

Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 1:09pm

Agreeing with Joe Maurone and John Dailey, I'd love to see a streamline-moderne Atlas Shrugged with trenchcoats, fedoras, seamed stockings (not all on the same character), jello-mold cars and luxe passenger trains, but I doubt that this would be commercial. Somewhere along the line I read that Riggenbach's solution (the world has regressed technologically to the point where passenger trains have replaced airlines) was the strategy for one of the projects that have come along over the years.

My understanding is that Peikoff sold an option, not movie rights. This means, if correct, that he has no control as long as the option lasts, but the rights revert to him once it expires.

(Again, so I'm told...) A miniseries project came up in the late 70s, with Sterling Silliphant to write the script. According to Barbara Branden, the agreement was that he could omit or rearrange dialog but not otherwise change it. It was killed in1980, supposedely because Fred Silverman, president of the network, was afraid people would accuse him of trying to sway the election. Toward the very end of her life Rand signed a deal to write a movie adaptation and announced it at her last public appearance, in New Orleans a few months before she died. I doubt that she got very far, but if she did we can count on Peikoff to publish it.

On one occasion or another Madonna was going to make Her Second Career and Charlize Theron The Husband I Bought; Michael Cimino and later Oliver Stone (!?) were going to remake The Fountainhead. Michael Paxton, who made the documentary Ayn Rand: a Sense of Life, wanted to make Ideal (maybe still does, but who could play Kay Gonda? Garbo's booked.). Nureyev was to choreograph Anthem. The lesson of stories like this is: don't believe anything you hear about a pending showbiz venture until you see the finished project on the screen or in the store.

Peter

Post 30

Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 3:49pm

Landon said: "See The Creeper, the Question, And Shade the Changing man).

But Ditko kind of brings me back to my original point... We're supposed to be "New Intellectuals" armed with the Romantic Manifesto. Atlas is over 50 years old and it bothers the hell out of me that no one has written something that's even come close to it yet. And I can objectively and honestly say Ditko is the second most successful Objectivist author and he hasn't been actively working for a while."

Don't forget Mr. A! And I'd have to say that Terry Goodkind is a very popular Objectivist fiction author, although I can't objectively say that he's more succesful than Ditko.

Post 31

Thursday, August 18, 2005 - 5:09pm

Kay Nolte Smith wrote one superb novel, A Tale of the Wind. None of her others that I've read (almost all) impressed me.

Peter

Post 32

Friday, August 19, 2005 - 2:05am

What impresses me the most about the log line and synopsis is not what they say, but what they don't.

Where is any mention of any of the ideas? Even in a more colorful manner? The motor of man's soul? Spiritual rebirth? Individualism versus collectivism?

I fear that Ayn Rand's magnificent work is about to be watered down so that the villains will become "politics of fear" and "government corruption" and the like. I don't mind the terrorism bit if the ideas stay intact. It is the ideas that make this novel great, not the damn railroad, a "legacy," government regulation or (and this one gives me the willies) "irresponsible foreign policy."

From what I have read, Ayn Rand always complained bitterly about this kind of approach to publicity for her work. It is based on a fear that ideas do not sell. Ayn Rand has proved time and time again that they do.

If the initial hype is any indication of the approach to how the film is to be made, the wrong people are doing this project.

Michael

Post 33

Friday, August 19, 2005 - 8:04am

Not for the first time, I say QED. You want a tract, not a movie. (Rand was selling books, where the rules are different). Movies are inherently unsuited to promoting ideas, one reason being that they have to move too quickly for contemplation if they're going to keep the audience awake and in their seats. The Fountainhead, an artistic and commercial disaster, is an example of what happens when moviemakers ignore this. So are all virtually all the politically messagey movies that have come and gone in recent decades. Examples are hard to come by, because they disappeared so quickly, but The Book of Daniel and The Front come to mind. China Syndrome is a rare exception.

If the people responsible for the production are watching the Objectivist websites (as they might well be), they're going to see what a huge marketing problem they have. How many movies start getting poisonous buzz before they even have a script?

I won't feel put out if the movie never happens. Failing that, I'd rather be entertained than embarrassed.

Peter

Post 34

Friday, August 19, 2005 - 9:50am

Peter:
    Re your last line in post29, "The lesson of stories like this is: don't believe anything you hear about a pending showbiz venture until you see the finished project on the screen or in the store."
    --- In the vid-game industry, there had been many mag-ads for games A, B, C, etc that were planned mos. if not a yr or two; yet there were the ads, and even 'analysis' about the expected prod...which never got made because of varied developing company problems.
    There was so much of this over a decade or so, such got the nickname: 'Vapor-ware.'
    Maybe this stuff re cinema (given today's use of 'digital' and computer-programming) should be called 'Star-ware'?

    Re Anthem, too bad Disney no longer has interest re an animated version.

    Re your post33, "How many movies start getting poisonous buzz before they even have a script?" --- Well, there was Burton's Batman, where a lot didn't even like the idea of Keaton. Then Tombraider (the 1st one ONLY!) where purists hated the vid-game costume change (especially the buckle), though none had a prob with Angelina (well, maybe 2 or 3 sickos.) Still, your point does show heavy odds against.

Brandon:
    Re your quote of Landon: "Atlas is over 50 yrs old and it bothers the hell out of me that no one has written something that's even come close to it yet."
    My comment shouldn't be necessary, but, apparently it is needed to clarify the need to quell such expectations:
     Any one like Ayn Rand, da Vinci, Aristotle, Jefferson, Einstein, etc. does NOT show up every century, much less every 1/2 of one.

Michael:
    As Yoda answered when the 'ghost' of Obi-Wan commented (at the end of TESB) something like "There goes our last hope." -- "No; there is another."
    I've noticed sometimes that (nowadays) hype and ads for movies sometimes do NOT reflect anywhere near the actual movie 'theme', scene-depictions (nevermind verbal summaries) nwst. I don't hold out much hope re what I've read so far...but...there is a shred (as long as they don't have Tom Cruise or Britney Spears in the leads.)

Post 35

Friday, August 19, 2005 - 1:05pm

For an update on the movie please read the information at the attached link. You can also search The Atlas Society Website for other information.

http://www.atlassociety.org/news_atlas-movie-updated050304.asp

In addition, to set the record straight:

Ed Snider's film option expired years ago. He did not sell his rights to
Baldwin; they reverted to Ayn Rand's estate. The estate then resold film
option rights to John Aglialoro. With the sale of rights the estate also voluntarily relinquished editorial control over the film. John Aglialoro continues to hold these screen option
rights. Under his current arrangement with Baldwin Entertainment, he is a co-producer of the project.

A script of the first section of the story was completed last year by
veteran screenwriter James V. Hart. His initial draft was then revised after
input from David Kelley. David remains a consultant to the project, brought
in by John Aglialoro for the specific purpose of helping to ensure the
script's philosophical integrity.

This partial script currently is being considered by major directors and
stars, a number of whom have expressed serious interest.
Finally, contrary to speculation, the precise format of the final project
has not been settled. All options are being seriously explored: a single
feature film, a series of two or three films, or a cable TV miniseries.
We plan to publish a full report on the current status of the project in an
upcoming issue of The New Individualist. We'll also publish updates on any
specific, concrete developments on our website.

Post 36

Friday, August 19, 2005 - 2:58pm

I think about this film pretty darned often. Lately my thinking is around if it could be a major populus hit, and still get the message across intact. That would be great. It could easily be a minor film, and get the message across. But wouldn't it be something if it really hit on all the burners, without getting all messed up and lame? That would be a day to remember...

The scene on top of the desk could work. But that's just my thing.

(Edited by Rich Engle on 8/19, 2:59pm)

Post 37

Friday, August 19, 2005 - 3:04pm

Hank and Dagny playing a scene on top of that desk?

Are you guys nuts? It's so darn uncomfortable. I'd prefer what's in the book: in bed.

Post 38

Friday, August 19, 2005 - 3:20pm

Hong, your comment reminds me of a joke:

Are you in favor of sex on television?
No, the cable box hurts my back.

BTW, a movie should generate additional interest in the source novel. The more popular the movie, the greater the interest generated. This can only be a good thing.

Post 39

Friday, August 19, 2005 - 3:26pm