# "Atlas Shrugged, Part One" finished filming, now in post production **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 9, 2010, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745 "2010-08-09T19:43:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/121 "2010-08-12T15:06:19Z")
There is a difference between who makes a movie and who distributes it. Generally the Big Corporate Studios will not themselves make a politically polemical film, they’ll let some independent do it, and THEN if they like it, will pick it up through their distribution branch. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > You must have read the lefty cliff notes instead of the actual book. Rand said nothing about an overclass, and she doesn’t have disdain for “little people” or whatever. That much is true – nowhere in the text does she propose a ruling overclass, in the sense of a caste or guild into which you have to be born or selectively initiated. She presumes that those who are the Rational, Creative beings will competitively end up on top if fair play prevails - and not just that, but being so Rational, they will go for exactly the station in life at which they are best and defer to others the station at which the other is best(\*). That this seems to be so contrary to reality turns off many people. As is often said of Marxism, her world sounds like a suspension not of disbelief but of human nature itself. (\*That in her universe, extending to the way she led her personal life, that apparently included that if your spouse runs into someone she finds even more rational and creative than you, you should be rationally delighted that she did and you should happily accept she decides to shack up with the other person while you just sit there, but that if you do the same _TO_ Ayn Rand then you’re some form of vile scum, ticked off many more. But that is part of the Rand problem - she allowed [encouraged?] a personality cult to form that made the messenger obscure the message) However, strictly in regards to how that projects in her fiction (and complicates making a movie of it), that view means she has a problem with her characterization. Her heroes and heroines are so 100% heroic, rational and creative from the top of their perfect hair to the sole of their sensible shoes and all the way from the marrow of their strong bones to a 10-foot radius, including their beautiful physiognomy and even the design and décor of their buildings and goods, that many modern readers can’t help but feel that she’s describing superheroes, and they associate that with a caste of born Übermenschen. That’s not what she’s ostensibly picturing, but it comes accross that way because in their minds, who the hell else can overcome ANYTHING through superior virtue? This would make it very, very hard in this day and age to make a film where you’d feel the characters are “real” or that you’d take seriously. _The Fountainhead_ had the fortune of being made at the tail end of an age where you could stage an absolutist good v. evil morality tale as drama, with a straight face (Is it our loss that it is no longer so? That’s another potentially good debate). Nowadays that sort of scenario, though, would be seen by modern audiences as either escapist fantasy, or preaching. Not that there aren’t film audiences eager for a good fantasy or preaching-to : _Avatar_ was an immensely commercially succesful preachy fantasy, but they really worked on selling the fantasy; like I think I mentioned before, it comes across as a “story with a message” rather than a “sermon pretending to be a story”. Meanwhile _The Passion of the Christ_ and _Fahrenheit 911_ were both quite profitable for their creators, but neither pretended to be an exciting drama. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/122 "2010-08-12T15:32:20Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > John Mace could possibly be right. I suspect he’s thinking about the huge sales for right-wing books these days. Sarah Palin’s biography sold a million copies in the first month. Beck and Coulter and Levin are at the top of the best-seller charts on a regular basis. > > Even if the only people who see the movie are people who bought a Palin or Beck book in the last year, the movie could open to $30 million dollars. That’s maybe 3 million tickets. > > But more likely is that it will open to limited release, and the publishers will be watching extremely carefully for whether it’s striking a chord with the country. If it’s well acted, well written, and philosophically compelling to the right and the center, it’ll make a zillion dollars. If the limited release just exposes serious flaws in the film, it will fade away fast. They have organizations that buy up tons of the right wing authors books to skew the numbers. I get right wing Emails and Palin’s book was offered to me for $4.99 when it was new. The numbers are twisted to create the idea that the righties are mainstream. It is only a few rightwing nuts that buy that. That may be the reason someone suggested tickets would be sold and the people sitting in the theaters would not reflect it. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/123 "2010-08-12T16:42:59Z")
I can’t quite see the teabaggers embracing _Atlas Shrugged_ with any real enthusiasm. Wasn’t Francisco a - (gasp!) - illegal immigrant? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/124 "2010-08-12T17:10:39Z")
As asked in [post #68](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12785918#post12785918), could someone please give me a one paragraph outline of the first third of the book that would convince a non-Randian that it would be worth seeing? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/125 "2010-08-12T18:31:15Z")
The industrial promise of the U.S. is gradually being corroded by philosophers who preach that the society matters more than the individual and charity is more important than productivity. A number of industrialists, including James Taggart, the president of the Taggart Transcontinental railroad, use this philosophy as a means to seize more and more economic power, shutting down rivals that are more efficient. His younger sister, Dagny, the Vice-President of Operations, is seeing the system being undermined and doing her best to fight it, similarly to Hank Rearden, industrialist, who has just invented a new type of metal that promises to revolutionize the economy. The general population has a somewhat fatalistic and helpless view, answering any question about how screwed up life is becoming with the rhetorical question “Who is John Galt?” though the meaning of this cryptic phrase is at first unclear. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/126 "2010-08-12T18:43:13Z")
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/127 "2010-08-12T18:45:50Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > …could someone please give me a one paragraph outline of the first third of the book that would convince a non-Randian that it would be worth seeing? Seems doubtful. Here is [what one Rand fan said](http://www.amazon.com/review/R3NK0O3XXLTEND) about the first third of the book in order to convince people that the book itself was worth reading: > [@Amazon review](#): > > Atlas Shrugged is a thousand plus page book that is tedious at times, especially the first third of the book. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/128 "2010-08-12T19:24:35Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I can’t quite see the teabaggers embracing _Atlas Shrugged_ with any real enthusiasm. Wasn’t Francisco a - (gasp!) - illegal immigrant? You misspelled “international businessman”. I’m not sure if Francisco held U.S. citizenship or not. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/129 "2010-08-12T19:27:03Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Insightful as always. I think by now we get that _you_ won’t like this film, but feel free to repeat the sentiment fifty or sixty more times. ---
**Author:** ![woodstockbirdybird](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/woodstockbirdybird/32/7905_2.png) [@woodstockbirdybird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/woodstockbirdybird)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/130 "2010-08-12T19:37:57Z")
Even had I not read the book, your synopsis wouldn’t in any way draw me into paying money to see that movie. The description alone makes it sound like some right-wing polemic. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/131 "2010-08-12T19:48:13Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > The industrial promise of the U.S. is gradually being corroded by philosophers who preach that the society matters more than the individual and charity is more important than productivity. A number of industrialists, including James Taggart, the president of the Taggart Transcontinental railroad, use this philosophy as a means to seize more and more economic power, shutting down rivals that are more efficient. His younger sister, Dagny, the Vice-President of Operations, is seeing the system being undermined and doing her best to fight it, similarly to Hank Rearden, industrialist, who has just invented a new type of metal that promises to revolutionize the economy. The general population has a somewhat fatalistic and helpless view, answering any question about how screwed up life is becoming with the rhetorical question “Who is John Galt?” though the meaning of this cryptic phrase is at first unclear. Massive unemployment! Hyper-inflation! Over-taxation! The vanishing of the creators, the producers, the artists, and thinkers! “Who is John Galt?” the people cry. Railroad heiress Dagny Taggart vows to find out. She vows to fight the looters in power, including her brother James; the mood of despair; the destroyer who is stealing the brains of the world. She loved the brilliant copper tycoon Francisno d’Anconia, and despises the profligate playboy he has become. She champions Hank Rearden, revolutionary metallurgist, yet is seen by him as an object of contempt and lust. To manifest her defiance, she risks her fortune to build the John Galt Line… and summons the destroyer to come. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/132 "2010-08-12T19:51:36Z")
Well, geez, I make no pretentions to being a serious, or even particularly skillful, literary critic. I’ll give it another shot: In the dystopian America of _Atlas Shrugged_, car chases and gun battles are a daily occurrence Out of the chaos, one man rises. Who is… John Galt? ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/133 "2010-08-12T19:58:04Z")
> [@Equipoise](#): > > > [@Zebra](#): > > > > There was this little Christian Football\* movie called [Facing the Giants](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0805526/). > > > > With a budget of 100,000 and NO name actors the studio managed to get 10 million out of it and it opened at number 10 on under 500 screens. > > Where are you getting your data? Not according to [Box Office Mojo](http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekly&id=facingthegiants.htm), which says it was ranked 12th for [the weekend it opened](http://boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2006&wknd=39&p=.htm), behind other first weekend films such as Open Season, The Guardian, and School For Scoundrels, and ranked far below 2nd weekend holdovers such as Jackass Number Two, Gridiron Gang and Flyboys. It never got any closer to the top 10. I trusted IMDB. The point is that a low budget film can still make some money if the distribution company does a good job. Facing the Giants stayed away from most major markets and still made a nice pile of money. ETA to add that it’s opening weekend per screen average puts it at number 4 for the weekend. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/134 "2010-08-12T20:02:27Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > > > Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz > > Insightful as always. I think by now we get that _you_ won’t like this film, but feel free to repeat the sentiment fifty or sixty more times. Dude, I’ll have to agree with him. If you changed the names in your synopsis so that Randfans wouldn’t recognize it, would _you_ see it? What you just described would have trouble being shown at an art house, let alone a mainstream theatre. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/135 "2010-08-12T20:15:28Z")
And it’s fine if you agree, inasmuch as the expression of your agreement used more than one letter. If dio disagrees with my summary, I cordially invite him to write his own paragraph, though I suggest he try to limit the number of times “fascist” appears to three or fewer. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/136 "2010-08-12T20:21:12Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > And it’s fine if you agree, inasmuch as the expression of your agreement used more than one letter. If dio disagrees with my summary, I cordially invite him to write his own paragraph, though I suggest he try to limit the number of times “fascist” appears to three or fewer. I don’t think that he was suggesting that your one paragraph summary was needlessly boring-having read the book, I think you did the best you could with the material on hand…and the material on hand is a massive borefest. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/137 "2010-08-12T20:29:17Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > > [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > > > Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz > > Insightful as always. I think by now we get that _you_ won’t like this film, but feel free to repeat the sentiment fifty or sixty more times. Well, that’s fair enugh, I guess. The problem with your synopsis (other than that the premise is neither interesting nor believable) is that it doesn’t contain an actual narrative line. It reads like the one of the opening crawls from the _Star Wars_ movies, only more dense and more boring. To make a movie work, you need a simple narrative line – the audience needs vicarious, or at least interesting characters to give the audience ingress into the movie, and a character based (not grand philosophy-based) story to pull them along. You haven’t really described what you would do in terms of actual scenes and characters. What would be your first shot? Your first scene/ How would you establish characters? The way you described it sounds like a an old “News of the World” reel, like you would just show a montage of people being laid off from their jobs. The closest you come to establishing an anchoring character is Dagne “seeing the system being undermined and doing her best to fight it,” but that doesn’t really say much in terms of how you would cinematize it, and how you would do so in a way that was interesting to the audience. Frankly, I think the premise that industry (itself a dated concept now as far as the US goes, since most of our industruy is now outsourced to other countries) would be taken over and undermined by “philosphers preaching that…society matters more than the individual and charity is more important than productivity.” is too ludicrous to establish with any credibility on screen anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/138 "2010-08-12T20:34:52Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > > > And it’s fine if you agree, inasmuch as the expression of your agreement used more than one letter. If dio disagrees with my summary, I cordially invite him to write his own paragraph, though I suggest he try to limit the number of times “fascist” appears to three or fewer. > > I don’t think that he was suggesting that your one paragraph summary was needlessly boring-having read the book, I think you did the best you could with the material on hand…and the material on hand is a massive borefest. Yes, this. The material itself is boring. I wasn’t deriding **Bryan’** summary of it, _pers e_, but saying that it would make for snooze indicung fare on screen. I think the only way the material could be translated in any kind of entertaining way would be as satire. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/139 "2010-08-12T21:10:20Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > > [@Equipoise](#): > > > > Maybe the “crazy bitch” perception has more to do with her bizarre ideology > > > [@](#): > > > > My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. > > —Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, pp. 1170–1171 (the about the author section) > > Do people really consider this to be that bizarre? Try to be happy and try to be productive, using reason as your guide. I understand that people may think that the goals should be different (try to help others, try to be content, try to rid yourself of material needs, etc.) - but bizarre, really? I’m not seeing it. Meh. I remember writing off Randism after reading an Objectivist’s web page where he spent something like five paragraphs justifying his enjoyment of pro sports (as a spectator). DO NOT WANT. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745/140 "2010-08-12T21:12:35Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > I think the only way the material could be translated in any kind of entertaining way would be as satire. Of course you do, because you don’t think the book is worthwhile. I, on the other hand, quite like the book. All the philosophy aside (and of course it would have to stay in there _somewhere_, since that’s kind of the _point_), if done right on the screen \*Atlas Shrugged \*is a lot of things that would go over well with many people who don’t know anything about the book: 1. A rather torrid love story 2. A mystery story 3. A science fiction story 4. A thinking man’s adventure story 5. An ‘out of time’ '50s art deco gorgeous period piece (this is just my opinion, but I feel strongly that any successful film adaptation of AS will set it in a very vague time period, with strong art deco visuals (similar to “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” or Tim Burton’s “Batman” films). Almost an alternate-universe thing. I get it–you don’t like it. That’s your right, of course. But don’t say that it can’t be made interesting on film, because I think I’m not the only one who disagrees with that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atlas-shrugged-part-one-finished-filming-now-in-post-production/549745.md?page=8)