With 'Atlas Shrugged,' Hollywood may have its first anti-bailout movie

http://www.riskybusinessblog.com/2009/03/with-atlas-shrugged-hollywood-may-have-its-first-antibailout-movie.html

by gibsonf1 • 17 years ago

40 99 17 years ago

frisco• 17 years ago

I don't know how I feel about this. It's my favorite book, and I've read it many times, but I feel like it's something that either means a lot to you or means nothing. It doesn't translate very well beyond how you personally take it, and I'm afraid of flamewars breaking out over the content, which can have no winner. Or the studios missing the point to make it more mainstream. I also just have a very good internal idea of what it looks like, and I'm somewhat afraid of it being ruined by a movie which misses the mark, but that's remedied easily enough by me not seeing it.

Atlas Shrugged is a powerful book, but the arguments it makes highlight fundamental disagreements between sections of society. We'll do as we will, and others will do likewise. Bringing it to a national stage I don't think would cause many to go "Oh! I get it now!". At worst, it could cause sentiment to turn against entrepreneurs given the current political climate, casting them as arrogant and malicious towards the rest of society. Not that popular opinion should influence the entrepreneurs, though.

electromagnetic8• 17 years ago

Don't worry about it, Atlas Shrugged is never going to get made. 35 years and counting kind of testifies to that effect.

Angelina Jolie was cast, but she got pregnant and left the project with all the prospect of it ever being made.

arakyd2• 17 years ago

Of course, that's what everybody said about Watchmen.

I've never read the book, but I've heard a lot about Ayn Rand's philosophy, none of it good.

endtime5• 17 years ago

Agreed 100%. I love the book, but I can't see how it could possible be turned into a good movie. I almost don't want the movie to be made at all...if it's not done well it'll just convince people the book isn't worth reading.

Some things just don't translate well. I also love the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the movie was painfully bad.

catone• 17 years ago

What's with the picture of Barney Frank?

I thought this was an April fool's joke, but IMDB has a page for it and a quick Google search does turn up articles from 2006 mentioned Jolie being attached at one point.

electromagnetic8• 17 years ago

It's been going for over 35 years, Jolie was cast but in 2008 got pregnant and the project is dead again. I personally hope it stays dead, the last thing we need is something else promoting government inaction, which gave us this problem in the first place.

The main reason the financial crisis happened was pure greed and the reason people got away with being so greedy was because they were allowed to. Umm... what's that thing called where companies are allowed to do absolutely whatever they want even in complete disregard of even their own long-term survival... oh yeah aggressive-free-market capitalism, just what Ayn Rand wanted.

I hope Ayn Rand's work is dead and gone so that at least my generation isn't going to suffer the complete stupidity. I'm 21 and I've already been through two large recessions thanks to the US, coming from the UK I hope to sweet god that America stops following moronic policies and starts towing the line with the rest of the world.

Quite honestly, if there's a 3rd economic recession because of the US, I'm going to start voting for the people trying to ban international trade with the US, at least then the US can kill itself without ruining everyone else's country too.

Femur2• 17 years ago

>I hope Ayn Rand's work is dead and gone so that at least my generation isn't going to suffer the complete stupidity.

I think a work of literature that has had such an impact should never be lost or forgotten no matter how much you disagree with the content. Mein Kampf is a great example of this.

electromagnetic8• 17 years ago

Coming from Europe and suffering two recessions caused by US economics, all which Ayn Rand promoted I hope this crap never gets turned into a film.

The economy grows at a fair rate on average, yet Rand's aggressive-free-market capitalism basically promotes trying to grow the economy at 5000% until pop and everyone who doesn't have $500 million in the bank gets screwed over. I'm sorry, but when someone gets fired and then handed a $150 million check for losing their job, I think capitalism flat out sucks.

All the CEO's who've been fired have lost their jobs for a reason: bad business. Yet they're rewarded with more money than an average person would make in a millennium. Yet if I lost my job, I'd be given nothing.

viggity2• 17 years ago

I think you're sorely mistaken if you think that the economics of the US are anywhere near what Rand would consider to be Capitalism.

Have you even read her books?

electromagnetic8• 17 years ago

Very unfortunately, yes. I'm aware US economics aren't a carbon copy of what Rand wanted, because it simply doesn't work.

Automatt-2• 17 years ago

Enlightened self interest doesn't work on a scale necessary for a civilization to function.

Every nation that has next to no government and every man is free to do with his life as he wishes is a giant shithole that teeters in and out of revolution. Want to see objectivism at work? Go visit Somalia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In those countries every man is free to pursue "... his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." Countries full of people who are "all noble heros free to pursue their dreams". Too bad their dreams all involve mass murder and slavery to pursue personal wealth and power.

Hobbes was smarter than Rand. We have a Government to protect us from each other.

Femur2• 17 years ago

>Coming from Europe and suffering two recessions caused by US economics, all which Ayn Rand promoted I hope this crap never gets turned into a film.

US economics and government policy do not at all resemble the ideas that Ayn Rand promoted. These policies resemble those of Europe much more.

>I'm sorry, but when someone gets fired and then handed a $150 million check for losing their job, I think capitalism flat out sucks.

That is indeed stupid. Companies that enter into contracts with individuals on those terms do deserve to fail

radu_floricica• 17 years ago

Well, high-paid CEOs are one of the things laissez-faire capitalism didn't really do well. Not the salary per se, but the very caustic obsession on short/medium term profit over long term. You can't really blame regulations here: the most important one was forcing companies to disclose CEO salaries 20 years ago, and we know how that turned out (they exploded because of competition).

I'm very much in favor of Rand's ideas, but we must admit they do require a rather hard to find mix of idealism and dedication for all parties involved in order to work out. They're a good start, but far from a final solution.

run4yourlives4• 17 years ago

This comment doesn't deserve its negative rating. This is not reddit folks.

davidw• 17 years ago

Perhaps that's an indication that discussions of Ayn Rand are bound to end up like this and simply ought to be avoided on this site? :-)

Darmani2• 17 years ago

All over the Internet (even a few other forums for the highly intelligent), there are people trying to blame the recession the "unfettered capitalism" we've apparently gained over the last decade. At HN, I expect people to know better, or, at least, to only have to be taught once.

gfodor• 17 years ago

Everyone who I know that's read Atlas Shrugged (including myself) turned into a selfish jerk for at least a month after reading it. God help us if the "Ayn Rand temporary jerk phenomenon" is unleashed through movie theaters all at once.

It's a good book but like anything else people extrapolate the points beyond recognition and additionally interpret it to re-enforce their own views, regardless of how unreasonable those views might be.

unalone13• 17 years ago

That latter point is the problem. Atlas Shrugged is a fine novel, and I'd excuse people for being jerks if they were in fact doing the brilliant things that AS says jerks are allowed to do, but people don't do that. They read it and interpret it so that whatever they were already doing, they're allowed to keep doing.

mpk• 17 years ago

>> Atlas Shrugged is a fine novel [..]

No it's not. It's really not.

I don't want to get into a big AS bashing here, but if you're looking for a good Ayn Rand novel on individualism I suggest you try 'The Fountainhead'.

grandalf4• 17 years ago

praise God!

vixen99• 17 years ago

How about not flogging the dead borse? Anyone who's read a classic novel or two can see that Rand is a lousy writer. Yes, we do know that. Can we therefore agree that it's what she says that is interesting not how she says it?

chops9• 17 years ago

While that's kind of true (after reading a book which extols rationality and logic above all, seeing constant irrationality in daily life does tend to make someone a little apprehensive), I find another common symptom of the post-Shrug reading is a feeling of helplessness and even to some a sort of depression - you see how society crumbles around the heroes in the book, only to see many parallels in reality. The feeling that society cannot be fixed is an overwhelming one to someone who takes Rand's ideas seriously, and does unquestionably lead to the feelings of anger (this feeling is not just isolated to Rand readers either, but to anyone who looks at the "big pictures"). It usually takes a while for new Objectivists to shake that feeling and start focusing on the good things in life, rather than the bad. But before that, the desire to "Go Galt" and abandon society for your own quasi-utopian refuge becomes very strong.

Personally, though, I find the "selfish jerk" thing more as a result of "The Fountainhead" than "Atlas Shrugged," though at the same time, I think TF is the right book to read before AS. TF prepares you for the "self", while AS applies all that to society.

All that said, while Atlas Shrugged can be an extremely depressing book (the constant feeling of "How can this get worse" coupled with the inevitable "Oh, this is how"), it's also a very uplifting book. After almost every reading session with AS, I found myself with a burning desire to work, to improve my business, to "go get it" and seize life. The heroes resonate very well with those who absolutely love their work.

The only other book that has come close to as uplifting a feeling as Atlas Shrugged (for me) is Founders at Work, because many of the people interviewed in that book share the same passion for their work as the heroes in AS, and pull off monumental achievements.

Will the movie be any good? I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see someone like Cate Blanchett play Dagny.

ojbyrne2• 17 years ago

Of course you mean everyone you know who actually liked the book. I didn't much like it, I like style, and there wasn't much of that. And, of course, I read "The Grapes of Wrath" right before - two polemics from opposite points of the political spectrum, but Steinbeck can actually compose a sentence.

unalone13• 17 years ago

Agh, really? Steinbeck in that novel comes across as incredibly shallow. I thought his style was painfully overwrought.

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

I said something similar on the last Ayn Rand thread, and indeed these threads do start to sound repetitive.

I read literally hundreds of books in school with socialist, feminist, existentialist, collectivist, or fatalist themes. I read exactly one author in all of American literature with the theme that an individual could shape his own destiny and that capitalism (you know, that evil economic system that has sort of created unprecedented global prosperity) is okay. That author is Ayn Rand.

I was an obnoxious Randroid for awhile. But Ayn gave me the ability to stand up for myself intellectually, to question establishment ethics and politics, and to eventually question and reject her. I think that's a valuable experience for a young person to have.

I suppose my parents thought I was a "selfish jerk" when, after reading The Fountainhead, I ginned up the strength to leave the religion that made me depressed and a little suicidal in my youth. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

In my mind, the inventors of the computer revolution did more good for humanity than all the starry-eyed kids going into the Peace Corps or working soup kitchens. How often is a teenager going to hear that? It's certainly against establishment ethics. It's not something that you can safely assert in mixed company. People will label you a sociopath if you state it. But I think it's true.

Is the worldview of myself and Ayn so dangerous that people should be completely shielded from it? If so, watch out for this movie. If it's done right, it's going to fill lots of heads with dangerous ideas.

Personally, I like dangerous ideas. I think we could use more of them. When people's minds are filled with safe ones, the intellectual climate stagnates.

Lastly, to those who say her characters are not believable, I reply that neither were the characters in the movie "300". This isn't Hemmingway. She has her own style. You hate her politics so you're saying she's a bad author. Admit it and we can discuss the real issues.

I've yet to find one person that says "I think Ayn makes some great points, but I really think she writes like crap". Rather, it is usually "Ayn is a hateful and evil person. And besides, her books are total crap. Nobody should ever read her works for any reason."

luckystrike• 17 years ago

  I think Ayn makes some great points, but I really think she writes like crap

Actually, i say something on these lines very often, if a discussion related to Ayn Rand is happening around me. I would say Ayn makes some good (and obvious) points, but at least for me, Fountainhead was not a "reading pleasure". It was too long and overstretched at places, when it could have been far more succinct.

Someday, i might actually get the dust off 'Atlas Shrugged' in my bookshelf, and read it.

msluyter• 17 years ago

I wonder if we'll get the complete Galt speech? ;)

unalone13• 17 years ago

That's Atlas Shrugged 2, due out a month after the main movie.

(Is it too off-topic/nerdy to make comparisons between that speech and the Spirit Bomb week from Dragonball Z? Something about way-too-long things is extremely hilarious.)

hermitcrab• 17 years ago

I tried to read 'Atlas Shrugged' recently. I only got a few chapters in before I lost interest. But I am not really much of a novel reader.

Is it worth reading the Galt speech on its own? If so, where in the books is it (I'm not reading 1,100 pages to find it)?

modoc• 17 years ago

I've read the book a few times. I've always ended up skipping over the last half of the Galt speech, so the idea of skipping the rest of the book just to read that never ending speech seems funny to me.

kirubakaran• 17 years ago

http://amberandchaos.com/?page_id=106

endtime5• 17 years ago

No, it's not worth it, unless you specifically like reading very dry passages. I slogged through it but only out of a sense of commitment to reading the book in its entirety.

systemtrigger• 17 years ago

I loved the Galt speech but it has been a few years since I last read it so I don't recall how much lead-in it requires. Sometimes I listen to the audio version of Anthem Chapter 11, another powerful speech.

rglovejoy• 17 years ago

It would probably work better as a television mini-series than as a theatrical release.

chops9• 17 years ago

Or, at the very least, a trilogy. The book is already divided into three parts, so you have natural breaking points.

tomjen• 17 years ago

You are absolutely right.

xenophanes10• 17 years ago

FYI The Fountainhead has a movie:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4619025/The_Fountainhead

chops9• 17 years ago

Maybe you could link a legitimate copy, rather than the pirated copy?

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Fountainhead-Gary-Cooper/dp/B000HWZ4A2...

Netflix: http://www.netflix.com/Movie/The_Fountainhead/70055755?trkid...

xenophanes10• 17 years ago

Why? Then less people will watch it.

paulgb• 17 years ago

Apologies for being slightly off topic, but since there are a number of Atlas Shrugged readers here, I have a question:

Is it worth reading? Most discussion about the book seems to be about Objectivism in general, understandably. But aside from the philosophy of the book, is it an entertaining or interesting read? (or is that like the quotation asking "Otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?") I generally like to read books that are getting talked about, but I've heard so many mixed reviews of this it's a tough decision.

unalone13• 17 years ago

The philosophy is mixed up in with it. I think it's an enjoyable book even if you don't agree with the philosophy.

Start with The Fountainhead, though. It's a much less flawed book, and it's less outright offensive.

jibiki• 17 years ago

It's a fun read, but it drags a bit towards the end. My gut feeling is that if you enjoyed Dune, then you would probably like Atlas Shrugged.

chops9• 17 years ago

I loved Atlas Shrugged (though it did take me a while to complete the speech), and coincidentally, I'm working on Dune right now, but I'm honestly struggling, and I haven't even reached page 100 yet.

It's just a little slow for me. Though having seen the movie and the miniseries, and knowing a fair bit of the Dune lore may be taking some of the "discovery" out of it.

Except for the speech, I didn't think Atlas Shrugged was slow at all, just LONG

endtime5• 17 years ago

Read The Fountainhead first. It's a good primer for Atlas Shrugged, and it's a bit shorter, so if you hate it you'll save some time.

grandalf4• 17 years ago

I recommend reading Atlas Shrugged first... the Fountainhead is a great book too, but not quite as good.

I suggest you download the unabridged audio version of Atlas Shrugged from audible.com or iTunes. It's read incredibly well and you'll probably enjoy it immensely...

Hast• 17 years ago

I think it's a better idea to read one of the shorter books first (IIRC the Fountainhead is pretty short). Atlas Shrugged could be cut down to about half the size and make the point it's trying to make better (by virtue of being more concise).

Personally I find it fascinating that the characters in the book (and Ayn Rand) constantly reiterate that "decisions should be made on logic and rationality instead of emotions" but the entire book is driven by pathos instead of any logical argument.

All the "good guys and gals" and smart, beautiful and horny. All the bad guys are ugly and stupid. They constantly use tautologies ("A is A") as if it was a way to debate with logic (it's not). And it never provides any attempt to prove that the entire premise is true or even feasible. Say what you want about Karl Marx but he did at least attempt to make a rational argument.

All that said you may still enjoy the book. Personally I've read a lot other books which make the same, or similar, point but better. Animal Farm springs to mind (no, it's not about objectivism, but it is about how power corrupts people, or animals).

dantheman• 17 years ago

The whole A is A thing is about reality and confronting it, very much like Nietzsche.

mattchew• 17 years ago

I was scanning and did a double take on this part:

"A high net-worth individual with whom the Baldwins have partnered"

For a moment I thought they were talking about Alec Baldwin and his brothers as producers. My Imp of the Perverse is sadly disappointed that it isn't so.

With 'Atlas Shrugged,' Hollywood may have its first anti-bailout movie

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