On July 17, 2014 I posted the following blog (www.henrymarkholzer.blogspot.com) concerning the third Atlas Shrugged alleged motion picture. The title was “The Final Desecration of “Atlas Shrugged.”
I am aware that among
the hundreds of people who receive this blog not everyone is devoted to Ayn
Rand’s ideas, or believes that her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged is a
masterwork. Thus, what follows will probably be of no interest to them.
However, for those
who revere Rand’s 1957 novel as a superb example of romantic realism—let alone
brilliantly predictive—the recently announced third motion picture installment
of Atlas Shrugged must be considered the final desecration.
Of the many points I
could make, here are only two of the major ones.
The feature film
rights to Atlas Shrugged should never been sold (let alone several times
over) because the scope, characters, plot, and ideas of Atlas are
inherently impossible to dramatize in two hours.
I say this because
of two personal experiences.
One is because in
1968 Erika Holzer and I found the missing Italian film of We the Living, a
much shorter and easier story to tell than Atlas. In its original form, WTL
was three-plus hours long. Only due to Rand’s personally suggested edits, a bit
of her restructuring, and some 4,000 subtitles written by Erika Holzer and
Duncan Scott, did the film become the international motion picture success it
deserved to be.
The second is
because toward the end of Rand’s life she worked with a TV producer and writer
to create a network miniseries which would have been at least seven hours long.
The writer was Oscar-winner Stirling Silliphant, whose writing achievements
included the TV series Route 66 and the feature film In the Heat of
the Night. At dinner one night in Los Angeles Stirling told the Holzers
that there was no way Atlas Shrugged could, with any fealty to the
novel, be done as a typical two-hour feature film.
As further proof
that it was folly to try, I submit that the eventual producers themselves
realized that a standard feature was impossible. So they made three, somewhat
connected, but still standard feature films.
I repeat, the
feature film rights should never have been sold, and when it was clear the
current producers intended to dissect Atlas into three standard feature
films, they should have been stopped.
Instead, the
producers’ “solution” to the unsolvable length and complexity problems—driven
also by the need to begin principal photography before their rights-option
expired—was to quickly make one-third of Rand’s magnum opus, with
the other two-thirds to come along in two later installments.
As to Atlas I and
II (and doubtless the forthcoming Atlas Shrugged III), not a
single nationally or internationally household name was associated with the
project. This failure was most egregious regarding the script. While it would
have been too much to expect that the producers would hire a journeyman writer
like William Goldman (All the President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid), there were some well-credentialed Hollywood writers who
understood Rand’s novel and could have created a faithfully powerful script. I
know one of them.
Worse than all this,
by far, is that the well-intentioned producers apparently believed that even
though they were making an “entertainment” not a documentary, it was incumbent
on them to provide “philosophical oversight.” So they hired the equivalent of a
philosophical commissar, to keep the production on the Objectivist
straight-and-narrow.
(There’s more. For
example: difficulties with distribution, changing actors from one of the parts
to the others, miscasting, the impossibility of showing Atlas Shrugged I,
II, and III together in a movie theater or even on television.)
The noise you hear
is Ayn Rand spinning in her grave. The feature film rights should never have
been sold.
In the days of the
Italian version of We the Living (1940-1941) it was possible for the
film’s negatives and prints to vanish, as nearly happened because of Nazi
hostility to Rand’s story about the impact of the Bolshevik Revolution on a
fiercely independent woman and the two men who loved her.
Unfortunately, in
today’s world of the Internet, cloud storage, digital recorders, and DVDs,
there is no way Atlas Shrugged I, II, and III, unlike We the
Living, will ever be lost.
Pity.
I was wrong.
Apparently those of us who admire Rand’s work have not yet
seen the end of desecration of the much-admired author and her writing.
Today, I (and doubtless many others) received a pitch for
money in an email offering an Atlas Shrugged comic book and an
Ayn Rand cozy fleece winter blanket. See below.
For these moral obscenities, and perhaps even violations of
law, we have to thank The Atlas Society’s new CEO’s “outreach” to the younger
[and cold] generation.
Jennifer, this desecration is
shameful squared. You are cheapening Ayn Rand’s name and insulting her work.
TAS founder, board member, and “Chief Intellectual Officer”
David Kelley should be doubly ashamed.
And the other four board members, well, they should resign.
If this happened years ago when I was Ayn Rand’s lawyer, on
her behalf I would have sued all of them.
For free!
From: The Atlas Society [mailto:tas@atlassociety.org]
Sent: Thursday, January 5, 2017 2:01 AM
To: hank@henrymarkholzer.com
Subject: 2017: Rand Will Roar! 💸
Sent: Thursday, January 5, 2017 2:01 AM
To: hank@henrymarkholzer.com
Subject: 2017: Rand Will Roar! 💸
Atlas Society Weekly
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