If it stays true to the book, people will walk out of the movies, particularly during John Galt’s famouse speech ;)
Ayn Rand really, really needed an editor.
If they can keep the oratories to a minimum, a three-hour movie would be PERFECT.
Maybe four, with an old-style intermission.
Indeed. If it stayed true to the book (which I’ve never read due to it’s insane length), it would be at least a week long. This is likely to be one of the rare cases where book-based movie is much better than the book.
Che was 4 hours. Even the lefties wouldn’t sit through that.
I think the Shrugged speeches can be condensed and the deterioration of the economy and society shown succintly. Movies are about visuals, not long speeches.
It would be fabulous to satirize the dilitantes of the left as well as the harden commies of the Democrats using recognizable impersonators.
That would take up the normal two hour movie slot by itself.
Ayn Rand really, really needed an editor.
Editors are the looters and moochers of the publishing industry. They can only cut the words of the producers without writing anything themselves. Ayn Rand would have nothing to do with them. < /sort of sarcasm>
I don't know how well some of the 1950s styling, especially the focus on the railroads, will transfer to the modern film. Will the screen writers try to update the story to 2009 (as Hank Rearden pulls out his Blackberry, only to realize the Department of Bandwidth Equalization had shut him down for the month), will they portray it as halfway through a collapse with the airlines having failed and railroads are again primary, or will they just put it in the 1950s without needing further justification?
As for actors, I saw Portia de Rossi in a show recently with her hair pulled back in a stern looking suit which would look great as Dagny Taggart. Of course with her being "married" to Ellen Degeneres, maybe the whole Hank Rearden character could be "updated" for Hollywood.
you know what would be better than a movie, is if they made it into a mini-series. there is NO way they can cram all the important info into 3-4 hours.
Not really, for her books, but definitely for any movie of one, especially Atlas Shrugged.
I saw "Fountainhead." It was one of the most horribly stiff, stilted movies, with terrible acting, that I ever went to. Since Rand spent a great deal of her life living in a way that was often contrary to the principles of personal freedom so brilliantly portrayed in her books, a life style that included a cult of the personality based on herself, it's easy to see what a totally irritating, galling author she would be to work with on a set. Indeed, I suspect one of the reasons "Fountainhead" was such a flop was intense micromanagement by Rand. The real trick will be to keep true to the book's plot and philosophy while translating it to the screen, no small feat, especially given the way Hollywood has totally destroyed other great books, like Tom Clancy's Sum of all Fears.
LOL. Agreed. Great Story. I did read it but must admit to several episodes of "scanning" through numerous pages of tiatribes that re-hashed points already covered in previous diatribes. The Gault speech at the end I followed and starting reading faster and faster until I started looking for where it ended. I admit to not reading his whole speech. I knew what it said.
I think the book could have been about 200 pages shorter and not have given anything up.
I have the "unabridged" books on CD version of Atlas Shrugged......
50 CDs......yep....fifty.....