"The Strike"
FUN FACTS
1. Atlas Shrugged took 12 years to write.
2. The working title of Atlas Shrugged was, "The Strike." It was actually Frank O'Conner, Ayn Rand's husband, who recommended "Atlas Shrugged" after the book was finished.
3. We're making another movie.
WHAT!? :)
Working on the Atlas Shrugged films presented us with some of the most challenging moments of our lives. It was rewarding too of course, but Challenging - with a capital C. Why? Those of us on the crew with any knowledge of the material were vastly outnumbered by those with none... by 1 to 100. I could count us on one hand. And at times, one finger.
The result? The movies do not adequately convey the message of Atlas. Period.
And, THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF MAKING THE MOVIES - to accurately convey and propagate the message.
But, what if we had another shot? What if we could do it all over again from the beginning? What if we could put together the ideal team of artisans whose sole purpose it was to finally bring Atlas to life as it was meant to be?
I spoke at length yesterday with John Aglialoro, one of the Producers of the films and sole owner of the movie rights to the book.
If you're at FreedomFest today in Vegas, John's going to be on a panel. You may want to attend.
We're making another movie.
Scott DeSapio
Associate Producer, Atlas Shrugged 3
1. Atlas Shrugged took 12 years to write.
2. The working title of Atlas Shrugged was, "The Strike." It was actually Frank O'Conner, Ayn Rand's husband, who recommended "Atlas Shrugged" after the book was finished.
3. We're making another movie.
WHAT!? :)
Working on the Atlas Shrugged films presented us with some of the most challenging moments of our lives. It was rewarding too of course, but Challenging - with a capital C. Why? Those of us on the crew with any knowledge of the material were vastly outnumbered by those with none... by 1 to 100. I could count us on one hand. And at times, one finger.
The result? The movies do not adequately convey the message of Atlas. Period.
And, THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF MAKING THE MOVIES - to accurately convey and propagate the message.
But, what if we had another shot? What if we could do it all over again from the beginning? What if we could put together the ideal team of artisans whose sole purpose it was to finally bring Atlas to life as it was meant to be?
I spoke at length yesterday with John Aglialoro, one of the Producers of the films and sole owner of the movie rights to the book.
If you're at FreedomFest today in Vegas, John's going to be on a panel. You may want to attend.
We're making another movie.
Scott DeSapio
Associate Producer, Atlas Shrugged 3
At any rate, look forward to the new movie!
Think of the recent John Adams mini-series put out by HBO. Can you imagine something like that condensed into a movie, or spread out into 3 movies a year or more apart?
I think a movie, or trilogy of movies, will only work if you have a huge budget.
A mini-series is much more workable. Also, you can make the entire series at one time, to ensure that you have the same actors portraying characters throughout, for one thing.
The 1st attempt at making the movies was at least an attempt. But if we are honest with ourselves in true objectivist fashion, fell way short of the mark. Those films felt much more akin to several of the "christian" films and christian programs of recent years - poorly produced productions that only "true believers" will want to see, programs that preach to the choir but will never generate interest or be seen by outsiders.
This time lets be sure to get it right, and to put some real money into this. It's better to do this fully-funded, or not at all.
Someone should approach Peter Thiel this time to fund this.
This is the sole reason I became a Gulch producer, to try to improve attempts to portray Rand's philosophy dramatically.
Polemics don't work. Audiences self-select and, those who don't already agree with your polemic won't listen. Drama works. It engages our mirror neurons and bypasses our analytical minds and makes us feel. Drama convinces where polemics fail to convince.
Rand's dialogue was too polemic, too on target. The novel suffered for it and, so did the films. You can only throw your ideas in someone's face so many times and, they turn away. You've got to show them in a way they find intriguing.
If you've got a different story in mind, count me in. If you're refilming Atlas Shrugged, count me in. If you've got the Atlas Shrugged scripts in Final Draft format, send them, please.
In the case of Rand's ideas, the screenwriter and film team must sneak past the audience's prejudices, probably via the back door and appeal to their emotions. Even the hint of a lecture or moral message will cause the audience to slam the front door.
It's definitely a challenge. The world is much more ready to hear "It's not your fault. Nothing's your fault. You shouldn't have to carry your own load." than is it ready to hear "It's your life, they're your choices and, the consequences are yours to bear."
Still, the challenge must be taken up because, if we don't get the message out, we're doomed to be Venezuela on a huge scale.
Be that as it may, any story that will be universally accepted, must be written about the people who believe, and of course those who don't believe in Ayn Rand's philosophy. That premise is the basis of conflict.
The current election cycle is a fantastically practical way of demonstrating philosophical opposites. I compare the Clintons' unbridled lust for power to Shakespeare's General Macbeth and his wife. Of course, today’s good guy is Donald Trump, and I compare him to Shakespeare's Henry V, which I would call in today’s common lingo, a righteous dude. When he defends his goal of ruling France as a result of winning a battle, his men and the audience are with him 100%. He won that ancient battle as Eisenhower, Patton and MacArthur won the World War II. Neither three modern generals inveigled their way into a winning position; they fought for their victory. Can you picture Bill Clinton as a general trying to win a straight up battle? Possibly he might have take a survey to find out what the enemy thought about the whole idea. Or Hillary Clinton as a Mata-Hari type spy trying to keep secrets for five seconds.
In other words, a story of today must be written about people of today, as living expressions of universal ideas (hatefulness, greed, lust or rational philosophy.) Those concepts and the conflicts they create in a story have thrilled audiences of the past. Therefore, a writer must use words and actions based on a character’s ‘sense and value of life’ rather than any heavy and pendulous philosophical ideas, to wit Ayn's 100 page soliloquy on her philosophy in Atlas Shrugged.
Paraphrasing Macbeth as he ponders the act of killing King Duncan, by saying, "If it were done when tis done then well it were done quickly. If the assassination should trammel up the consequence and, catch with his surcease, success... That but this blow may be the be-all and the end-all here…" This soliloquy indicates that he's really concerned about that thing called conscious, as it controls his actions, and the possible result of those actions. Of course, he disregards conscience and goes through with the assassination even though it is based on the most heinous of ideas such as killing a king. Naturally, he pays for his intransient actions in the end.
Compare Bill Clinton in the same scene, agonizing over the repercussions of making advances to his female intern. He might even do just that for about two seconds before he goes in for the attack.
The audiences in 16th-century England, were not as sophisticated as we are today, but they knew a good metaphor when they saw or heard one; and they could learn from that experience. We don't have to use flowery Elizabethan dialogue today, but it is still possible to show how a character and his philosophy control the art of storytelling.
Of course they do. They just don't like her ideas.
Do you think the millions upon millions of Americans who have never paid a dime of net tax in their lives don't understand Rand?
Of course they do. They just don't like her.
We live in a time that mirrors the period of Rand's story so, people will have a gut understanding of a contemporary telling of the story. The problem is to sneak past their dislike of her message and deliver a dramatic story that makes them feel it. We can ignore ideas. We do that all the time. We can't ignore feelings.
Hitler didn't die wishing he'd not killed the most creative and hard working people in his country. He didn't care that he'd burned the world down. He died wishing he'd been able to kill more of them.
Rand's message is simple. Understanding it takes almost no thought. Accepting it takes virtue. Clinton, Warren, Sanders don't lack understanding, they lack virtue.
One cannot teach virtue to an adult. One must sneak it in on them and help it grow inside. We can do that, just as leftists have done their best to destroy it, we can plant it and help it grow again, as long as the plantee doesn't know that's what we're doing.
As for virtue, any acting human has virtues by which they gain their values. It is what one believes to be a value that is the key. Some choose values that further life and are rational. Others choose values that are anti-life and have virtues by which they will try to gain such, shell we say evil, with them. What makes life interesting is that no two people have all the same ideas and thus are individuals. Hard to like many of them for everyone.
Philosophical speeches will bore audiences, even those who know the speeches. Can there be a way to dramatize important ideas as Rand did in a movie without explicitly giving speeches?
Atlas Shrugged cannot be made a successful film in its native state, as AS 1-3 have shown. It must be carefully dramatized, with much less and much shorter dialogue. Dagny's inner thoughts have to come out but, since we're viewers, not readers, they have to come out via her expressions and interactions with other characters.
It can be done. I'd love to try it.
It all boils down very basically to what is good and what is evil and what's the difference.
Dig a little bit into the "Romantic Manifesto" by Ayn Rand, and you will find that her statement "...art is a re-creation of reality, according to an artist's value judgments..." This little short phrase will suffice to teach a writer, sophisticated ways of putting his character's philosophy and feelings into a great story.
Today Rand's prose doesn't suit most people, doesn't suit most audiences. Life changes and people change with it. I realize years ago Atlas Shrugged was voted the 2nd most influential book in the western world, after the Bible but, if you polled people today, neither AS nor the Bible would rank in the top 20. It's a comic book world. I can't think of any literary works that have widespread appeal.
If we want to get the masses to pay attention to Rand's message it's not going to be through her books, it will be through visual storytelling, it's going to be through appeal to emotion. Once we capture their emotions we can insert the message. AS 1-3 failed to capture their emotions. Your phrase will have zip impact on the masses. The Romantic Manifesto had no impact on me. It's on my shelf and it's going to stay there. It's a polemic. Polemics don't work. Story works. Drama works. Avatar, as silly and unscientific as it was, works.
If one does not dramatize the message, the message will not have widespread impact.
The logging industry knows all about this. They will exhaustively cite the value and renewability of wood for creating a better world, then the progs will simply ask how one thinks the birds and squirrels feel when their homes are being cut down. End of argument.
My first impulse, when people told me we couldn't cut down old growth forests because spotted owls couldn't live in new growth trees was to ask:
Do you believe in evolution as an ongoing process?
They'd always answer yes. After which I'd say:
Then isn't extinction the proper course for an owl too stupid to move to another tree?
I just hate seeing it play out in real life with so few people in the world not knowing what it means.
Best of luck with the new movie!
Her human behavior prediction was based on history but she was writing a 1984 genre science fiction.
As for "Directive 10-289", there has been an Executive Order in place since the Nixon administration that gives the president those powers and more, simply by declaring an emergency. It lets him/her seize factories and re-allocate goods as was done during WW2.
How much do you want to bet those powers don't get used if Soros manages to start the race war he's been trying to provoke?
There are some "theater people" (like me) in the Gulch. 😉
1. At least twelve hours long...could be a season series of two hours each.
2. Some history of Dagny, Francisco, and Eddie's early days.
3. The Thanksgiving dinner where Hank finally lets his family have it.
4. And most importantly, Jeff Allen, the tramp who has dinner with Dagny on the train, explains the downfall of the Twentieth Century Motor Company. It's the finest piece of writing against Communism that I have ever read. It needs to be included in the movie in its entirety.
That said I do love all 3 of the original movies and I believe they can also be vastly improved for a new trilogy box set with some minor edits (which I'm happy to provide more details on).
It needs a woman (Dagny) to chase a man (Galt) and the backdrop is the world around them. Otherwise you are making a documentary, or a science show, or worse an economics lesson or a philosophy sideshow. Get " Melanie Anne Phillips, co-creator of Dramatica." to help you out here guys. She can fix it. Best wishes CM
Most books I have read have taken me a few hours over a few days, or weeks if I'm really busy. Reading Atlas Shrugged is an entirely different endeavor. It was such a time commitment to read this book and it took me so many months of slowly digesting the story that it became a transformative experience in my life. All I read for an entire year was this book until I finally finished it. At the beginning it felt like starting a marathon. I knew there were many miles ahead of me. Towards the end I was feeling the rush of having committed myself to completing such a great work of literature and also the excitement from the plot building to the finish. When the book ended I was sad to not have any more pages to read. I realized that this chapter in my life was over. I could read the book again but it wouldn't be like that first time. I had this realization that blinders had been removed and I saw the world in a whole new light.
I relay this story to illustrate that it is impossible to recreate this emotional, transformative experience in a person by exposing them to a few hours of movies. It just ain't gonna hold a candle to the book. I truly believe that a TV series in 3 seasons corresponding with the parts of the book would allow the producers, writers, and actors to tell the story to the audience and have the intended impact on them. Isn't that why Game of Thrones has been so popular? What if they had rushed through all the stories and characters and done it in a few movies? It wouldn't have been nearly as good. It would've just been another, forgettable summertime action flick with lots of special effects. Can someone name a single movie in recent memory that changed their life?
I sympathize with your assessment. Just before Part 1 was released, I was asked by Producer Harmon Kaswell to write a review (he sent me an advance copy). My review is here: http://blog.paulmckeever.ca/uncategor...
I'm an employment lawyer by trade, but I am quite actively involved - and, I believe, skilled - in communicating Ayn Rand's philosophy to the general public in ways that are implicit and attractive, rather than explicit and academic. I have been forced to learn that skill by way of being a political party leader for the last 14 years. I understand the general public; I know what they grasp, and how they grasp it...and what bores them or puts them off.
I've given considerable thought to what is needed for a successful Atlas Shrugged movie, and what should be avoided.
If you are interested in my assistance, I'm a phone call away: (#DELETED BY ADMIN).
Please refer to the Gulch Code of Conduct: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/faq#...
It should be possible to upgrade the film on the cheap. A character driven film doesn't need a $60 million budget, it needs drama, good dialogue and great acting. Great acting doesn't mean "star" in fact, there are lots of great actors who'll never be stars.
Damn, this could be fun.
Atlas Shrugged would make a good TV series too.
Among the brilliant scenes were the nature of money speech by Francisco and Dagny's scene with Jeff Allen, both in part II, The second always brings tears--I'm a sucker for discovery scenes.
That part of Atlas Shrugged was heavy reading, but I'm sure a dedicated Rand fan screenwriter will find excellent material in that 'century' of philosophy.
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