Atlas Shrugging
The bad news is that ATLAS SHRUGGED is being considered for a film project in Hollywood. The is about the same as having your Church Picnic organized by Attel Malagate the Woe, most cold-blooded of the Demon Princes.
The good news is that Variety reports a script is being written by Writer-director Randall Wallace (”We Were Soldiers”, “Braveheart”), who has a record of producing quality work. (Via Dark Horizons: http://www.darkhorizons.com/news06/061018j.php).
But… a lot of hands will stir the soup before the broth is finished.
My expectations are rock bottom and have starting tunneling to China. While there are things in Ayn Rand that annoy me, I would rather see a movie with those annoying things left in, that was true to the spirit and philosophy of the book, rather than a Bowdlerized version.
Good grief, if even LORD OF THE RINGS could not, in a film that was most remarkably true to the book, keep the basics straight, how in the world will this, the most richly-hated and controversial book of the modern age, a book that stands against everything Hollywood is for, ever make the cut?
Dagny and Reardon will be turned into tormented homosexual lovers dying of AIDS, Francisco d’Anconia will be a tormented man not able to come to grips with the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of a pederast Catholic priest, and Ellis Wyatt will be a tormented animal-rights activist who opposes oil drilling in ANWAR, and uses his Kung Fu to help the ‘Native American’ Eskimos against a greedy and corrupt Oil Company. Ragnar Danneskjöld; will be a CIA agent in Syria assassinating a freedom-loving reformer Oil Sheik. John Galt will interrupt all radio broadcasts in the last reel of the film to make a long speech in favor of gun control.
The movie will end with the entire economy falling into shambles and ruins because we did not re-elect Bill Clinton as Head of State to run it for us. Bill will be standing in the sunrise on the cliffside of Galt’s Gulch in the final scene, his hand raised in benediction, solemnly pronouncing, “I Swear by the Life and the My Love for It, that It’s the Economy Stupid!”
I also predict my prediction here will be seen in retrospect have underestimated grossly the true depth of horror Hollywood will inflict.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
