Filming Headache of Atlas Shrugged

[Backlighting]

Of course, he wouldn't be allowed to lite a cigarette today.

--Brant

Only if it was medical marijuana.

Nor would he be allowed to waterboard the enemy.

-J

[Selene]

How does the National Guard "fit" into the military structure today?

[Peter]

I was looking at Entertainment Magazine and it had a brief article about authors who wrote their own screenplays and why they shouldn't. The Fountainhead was rated as excellent as a book but soso as a movie.

[Brant Gaede]

I was looking at Entertainment Magazine and it had a brief article about authors who wrote their own screenplays and why they shouldn't. The Fountainhead was rated as excellent as a book but soso as a movie.

Rand was constrained by 90 minutes screen time. She told Branden she would have preferred to open it up in the middle for more character development.

--Brant

she did an excellent job of story compression; she truly was an expert screenwriter (see Love Letters)

[Backlighting]

I was looking at Entertainment Magazine and it had a brief article about authors who wrote their own screenplays and why they shouldn't. The Fountainhead was rated as excellent as a book but soso as a movie.

Rand was constrained by 90 minutes screen time. She told Branden she would have preferred to open it up in the middle for more character development.

--Brant

she did an excellent job of story compression; she truly was an expert screenwriter (see Love Letters)

Yes.

And oh what could have been had AR's partially completed AS screenplay been used for Pt 1.

Would love to read that screenplay. Perhaps one day Peikoff & Co. will release it.

-J

[Brant Gaede]

I suspect she was writing it as a tv mini-series, which would make it linear. As a single movie you can rework the entire plot presentation, which would be a lot more work and three hours long with an intermission, sort of like Lawrence of Arabia. The basic structural problem of the novel is that after The John Galt Line is destroyed it transitions from an American to a Russian story and heads downhill to the climax. This is most of the novel. That's okay for a novel, but movie poison. The movie needs to be 100% American which means taking on continuous, active involvement of all the protagonists in back and forth time cutting throughout most of the story. Galt would be much more active. The strike more of a rebellion. And Rand would hate the gigantic transmogrification of her magnum opus.

If I were in the business and had the money ($100 million plus) and access to the rights, I would not do it. What I've basically written is only a structural critique of the novel qua movie. Consider the status of the American world of the mid-1940s when she got the idea for it and started writing and compare that to today's world. It's much more top-heavy than that earlier time but hasn't fallen over yet. It seems obvious to me she was thinking both of America and Russia and logically projecting a mish-mash of the two into the future.

--Brant