Rand pronounced it “FRANK-un” (but with a Russian accent).
You would think . . . But, weren’t Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie ready to do it a while back? What ever happened with that?
From what I understand, both Pitt and Jolie are pretty big fans of Ayn Rand. Probably in that confused, Hollywood way which doesn’t mean a damned thing about anything. However, the scuttlebutt is that their salaries were just too big. The producers of the movie couldn’t raise enough capital to pay them. Various big name directors had expressed interest in the project as well, but ultimately wanted too much money.
From what I understand, both Pitt and Jolie are fans of Ayn Rand. Probably in that confused, Hollywood way which doesn’t mean a damned thing about anything. However, the scuttlebutt is that their salaries were just too big. The producers of the movie couldn’t raise enough capital to pay them. Various big name directors had expressed interest in the project as well, but ultimately wanted too much money.
Hollywood is about making money. It isn’t a lefty conspiracy that’s kept the movie from getting made, it’s that it’s an extraordinarily uncommercial property. It has no cinematic hook, characters or story. It’s not a movie. It’s a really boring shaggy dog story used as a vessel to convey a long-winded, self-important, tedious, repetitive and shallow political harrange. That doesn’t make for a commercially viable movie regardless of whether it’s left or right, but right wing harrangues are even less commercial than left wing harrangues.
By the way, I read some interview somewhere where Brad Pitt said he was interested in making The Fountainhead because he has an avid interest in architecture, but that he thought the book was too dense to condense into a two hour movie.
Right, because Hollywood would never spend money on a difficult movie with a heavy political point. Ever seen the movie list at Cannes?
There was a period of about five years when Hollywood kept cranking out anti-Iraq war films, and every one of them crashed and burned at the box office. Even people against the war didn’t want to spend their evenings being reminded of it. That didn’t stop Hollywood from continuing to lose millions of dollars each time they cranked out another one.
The fact is, Hollywood is only about 10-20% conservative. A lot of the big money brokers and power players are die-hard liberals. The rank and file in the various trades that make movies are overwhelmingly liberal. The writers are overwhelmingly liberal. This makes it hard for any conservative or libertarian movie project to make it all the way through the process unless it has a big name star or director behind it. But hey, you want to make a movie romanticizing the Bolshevik Revolution or the life of Che Guevera? No problem.
For a better example of this effect, consider Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. Now that’s a book that could be made into a great movie. It’s got tons of action, intrigue, rebellion, and interesting characters. But it’s been in ‘development hell’ almost since the book came out. There have been several screenplays written for it. It could even be made on a low budget, since most of the action takes place in tunnels on the moon. You could shoot 80% of the movie on one sound stage, with maybe 20 minutes of CGI space scenes. It’s been in ‘pre-production’ several times. It’s been optioned repeatedly. But there’s always some roadblock that stops it from being made.
Or consider “Starship Troopers”, which was in the same position for years, and which would have also translated fairly straight into a very marketable movie. But it wasn’t until Paul Verhoeven decided to turn it into a fascist parody of the book that it actually got made.
As a matter of fact, they don’t very often, but even when they do, it’s something with a cinematic hook.
What movies were those? I never heard of them. They tried a few Iraq-war themed movies, but none of them were anti-Iraq. Did yiu ever even see any of them? Can you cite an example of an anti-Iraq movie? There weren’t any that I can think of.
This is Rush Limbaugh demagoguery. Hollwood doesn’t make political movies because political movies aren’t commercial. That’s why even when yous ee movies with washington politicians as characters, they tend not to mention parties. Hollywood is 100% about the bottom line, and that means not alienating audiences. The right wing perception of “liberal politics” in a movie is if it shows gay people as normal human beings or says anything about the environment.
I’m not familiar with this book, but if it isn’t getting made, it’s not because of any political message. If it could make money it would get made. Hollywood is not a red or a blue state, it’s a green state (yes, I know i’s not a state, I’m being metaphorical).
It was greenlighted before Verhoeven made that decision, and the book was already fascist self-parody.
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.
Once, at an SF convention, I read a (spurious) blurb in the film schedule for Jim Henson’s Atlas Shrugged. Six hours long, with Kermit the Frog as John Galt.
Another rand debate… I think I’ll give it a miss this time.
If that’s true, that they’re fans and not just fascinated by certain concepts (architecture, Rand herself as a crazy bitch, and Jolie could play her well and was interested in playing her at one point) then that’s incredibly depressing, and makes me agree with your second sentence. I really like Pitt and Jolie. Finding out they were Randians/Libertarians would be almost as bad as finding out they were Scientologists. I don’t buy it until I see cited quotes from their own mouths, preferably on video so they can’t be misquoted.
Good.
Yeah, have YOU? “Hollywood” typically has very little presence at Cannes, Sundance and Toronto. The big movies/stars in small movies may get all the publicity, but actual “Hollywood” movies are a mere blip in the sea of other indie/arthouse/Non-English language films.
Is this assessment based on even the tiniest mote of reality, or perhaps in some imaginary universe?
I’m a fan of Rand’s work, and even I will readily admit, based on the biographies of her that I’ve read and some of her own writings, that she seemed to have some pretty severe psychological issues.
I actually knew her, and the only “psychological issue” I can attribute to her was chronic depression.
Well, that *is *a psychological issue. Obviously I’m not going to contradict you with what I’ve read if you actually knew her, but a lot of the things I’ve read about her could be explained by chronic depression. I certainly wouldn’t say “crazy bitch,” but from everything I’ve read about her life she wasn’t exactly the most stable of individuals.
Maybe the “crazy bitch” perception has more to do with her bizarre ideology than her psychological makeup, though it’s certainly possible that the perception comes more from her whacked-out followers than anything else.
If Jolie ever did a biopic of Rand, I promise I’ll see it.
From The WHYS of a Philosophical Scrivener, by Martin Gardner, Chapter 7: “THE STATE: Why I Am Not an Anarchist”:
—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.
Darth Panda, you might be interested in this thread in GD. But meanwhile, I may be able to explain why you’re not seeing it.
I think the problem with your optics here involves a restricted field of vision. Pull back from that one sentence and there are several thousand other statements Rand wrote regarding objectivism, through which she described the implications (as she saw them) of her philosophy.
The commonly perceived* problem is in how she developed and articulated her fundamental beliefs. Some see inconsistencies, inaccuracies and a lack of intellectual rigor in her work. This alone would not produce consensus judgements such as “bizarre ideology”, but combine it with the cultism around Rand herself and the appropriation of her views by far more influential free-market enthusiasts, and the level of distaste among her detractors is a good bit higher than it might be otherwise.
This is also, by the way, the context that makes ‘Atlas Shrugged the Motion Picture’ a more reasonable proposal than it would be from the quality of the fiction alone. The work is, for better or worse, already valued as a source of dispute and controversy; it’s either adored or derided by large numbers of internet ideologues. I doubt this lightning rod status will necessarily bring in huge opening numbers, but there’s at least enough ready made interest to guarantee some viewership…
*Perceived by her detractors, of course.