>From reason.com
Atlas Shrugged Part I, the 2011 film version of Ayn Rand’s hugely influential novel Atlas Shrugged, was the result of a decades-long journey, and its sole financier, John Aglialoro—a successful serial entrepreneur best known for running the exercise equipment company Cybex—found the costs and troubles more than he bargained for. Official critical reception wasn’t so great—though normal folk seemed to like it better than the credentialed tastemakers, according to fim review sites such as Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. For a brief moment even Rand-inspired businessman Aglialoro, new to filmmaking and brought to the business through his love of Rand and desire to bring her message to a movie audience, was discouraged. He told critics last April “you won” and said he was reconsidering whether or not to move forward with filming parts two and three. By January, buoyed by what he calls encouraging DVD and video-on-demand sales, and the partnership of four other Rand-inspired financiers to help bear the production and marketing costs, Aglialoro and his production partner from Atlas Shrugged Part I, Harmon Kaslow, decided they were ready to finish what they started. At Reason Weekend, the annual event held by the Reason Foundation back in February, they announced Atlas Shrugged Part II was a go. The movie is now shooting (digitally, with Arri Alexa cameras) around the Los Angeles area. On Wednesday I visited a giant empty warehouse in downtown Los Angeles (near, naturally, a train track) to witness day 10 of a planned 31 day shoot (slightly longer than Part I's 27 days, but with a far more leisurely couple of months of pre-production). This warehouse will be Rearden Steel’s foundry and Hank Rearden’s office. In the novel, Rearden invents an amazing amalgam known as Rearden metal only to have his industrial progress hamstrung and his property stolen by an ever-more-repressive state attempting to centrally control an economy already choking under too much government management. >From the producers’ video monitors—the actual shooting set of Hank’s office was too tight and cramped for reporters to lurk—I watched the shooting of two scenes in Rearden’s office. The setting is all huge looming empty spaces, dusty light, rusting metal, and overhead gantries that the bright and perspicacious production intern, Justin Lesniewski, tells me were previously, in a Randian touch, used to suspend and work on rail cars. Lesniewski is an aspiring novelist and Rand fan who won his job through an essay contest, one of many ways the production hopes to keep the Rand fan community invested in the project. The warehouse already feels convincingly “steel foundry” and they built out Rearden’s office so its windows actually are physically looking out over that part of the set. In a move that might prove controversial to fans of Part I, this new movie has been entirely recast—not a single actor reprises their role. Director Paul Johansson, meanwhile, has been replaced by John Putch (a TV veteran with many episodes of Scrubs and Cougar Town behind him). “The message of Atlas is greater than any particular actor, so it’s one of those pieces of literature that doesn’t require in our view the interpretation by a singular actor,” Kaslow says. “But just from a practical standpoint when we set out to make Part I we had a ticking clock where if we didn’t start production by a certain date John’s interest in the rights could lapse. We didn’t have the luxury at that moment to negotiate future options with the various cast members.” Their eagerness to keep the project moving made arranging schedules with the dozens of speaking roles in Part I hugely impractical, so they chose instead to concentrate on making sure the look of the movie created the world they needed it to create. As Kaslow put it, “we just gave ourselves a clean slate put together what we think is a real terrific cast.” The new Rearden, Jason Beghe (most recently of Californication), plays Hank with far more gruff menace than his predecessor, the suave Grant Bowler. Beghe goes with an intensity that draws you in to him rather than projects flashily, and delivers his lines with a deep growl that almost made him feel like a Hollywood take on a Randian crime boss, someone driven to organized crime in a world where just trying to be productive on your own terms had become illegal. And despite the fact that both Rearden and his metal were invented by Rand in the 1950s, while audiences today participate in an economy where more and more people are living not through mass production but by individualized creativity (what some social scientists are calling the “personalized economy”) Rearden and his troubles still feel more of the moment than they do some sort of outmoded industrial age castoff. During my time on set I watched the shooting of another scene that is, in a way, the lynchpin of the entire novel: the subtle attempt by Francisco D’Anconia (played by Esai Morales, most recently seen as Caprica’s Joseph Adama) to convince Rearden to abandon this world of statist control, by reminding him that Rearden never wanted to devote his life’s energies and creativity to “looters who think it’s your duty to produce, and theirs to consume. Moochers who think they owe you nothing.” (Yes, Rand fans, “looters” and “moochers,” both delivered seriously in mainstream movie dialogue.) Morales delivers the iconic line about what he would tell Atlas if he saw him bleeding and suffering, trying to bear single-handedly the burden of the world: “To shrug.” Morales does the scene, delivers the line, more than five times while I watch, running a range from intense near-menace to ironic lightness; the camera angle I’m watching doesn’t show Rearden’s reaction, which will be key to how the emotion of the scene plays. Between shots, I get to walk and sit in Rearden’s office set, complete with Randian modernist metal sculptures: shining, swirling ribbons and abstract geometries made solid. In fact, there's lots of great metal work everywhere. The huge windows overlooking the foundry also provide an unexpected dramatic touch as the “shrug” scene ends, propelling Francisco and Hank into an action scene on the factory floor (which will be filmed the next day) and a tightening of their mutual respect. The other office scene acted Wednesday involved the respectable-seeming but sinister Dr. Floyd Ferris of the State Science Institute coming to Rearden’s office to blackmail him into signing over Rearden metal to the “Unification Board.” Once again, the actors tried out a wide variety of styles to play the scene; I preferred the ones that maintained a steadier aura of menace. (Ferris can go with either businesslike jovial threat or calm and steely—I preferred calm and steely.) My vantage point again prevented me from seeing Rearden's reaction. Part IIs new Dagny Taggart—the railroad magnate heroine struggling to keep the motors of the world running while mysterious forces try to shut them down—is Samantha Mathis (perhaps most famously of Pump Up the Volume opposite Christian Slater). She wasn’t on set Wednesday, but co-screenwriter Duncan Scott, fresh to this project but with a long history with Ayn Rand and the movies, showed me some rough footage he shot of her filming a couple of scenes on earlier days. One of them quietly helps frame the deteriorating world of Atlas—with Mathis walking past grim lines of citizens selling their possessions on the streets in a world of 20 percent unemployment and $40 per gallon gas, shot outside the Los Angeles convention center. Another was of her fateful solo plane ride. Kaslow and Scott are both excited about their new Dagny. Scott says Mathis is always believable as a woman serious and powerful enough to run a railroad, and Kaslow says she’s fully embraced the character and went out of her way to read the novel to understand the character more fully. Duncan Scott actually worked on a film with Ayn Rand herself: the editing of a bootleg filmed version of her first novel, We the Living, into something Rand would want released in America. Scott says he never experienced any of Rand’s legendary wrath during their brief period working side by side in the early 1970s, and he questions the conventional wisdom that Rand’s imperious desire for control would have made it impossible to truly finish a filmed Atlas if she were still around to interfere today. “She responded tremendously well to people who were reasonable and rational,” Scott says, “so it would depend on the people she was working with.” Though Rand felt burned to some degree by all her experiences with film—even the 1949 Fountainhead, which she wrote and made sure was shot as she wrote, was ultimately edited against her will and left her feeling dissatisfied with the final result. Rand's openness to a filmed Atlas, which she tried to write various versions of herself, from feature film to mini-series, would, Scott thinks, “depend on the people who wanted to make the film and her trust in how they would handle the property.” Scott was brought to this project partially for his decades of experience in the world of Objectivist ideas and Randian film; while he has a long career working as assistant director on non-political films, including Woody Allen’s Zelig and Sidney Lumet’s Deathtrap, he also has kept his hand in the world of libertarian and Objectivist documentary film, and is working on a huge Rand documentary now as well. On Monday, April 23, 2012, Jim McCormack <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Pamela > To: jmac1951 > Sent: Monday, April 23, 2012 1:56 AM > Subject: Atlas Shrugs - 10 new articles > > Here are the Atlas Shrugs email updates for [email protected] > > < http://users.feedblitz.com/80ba31417c6500a5353b26891284c1ff/atlas%20banner%20sleekfont3.jpg > > > It ain't over ..... > And then there was art ..... > Ezra Levant on Obama freeing jihadist Omar Khadr, murderer of American soldier > Egypt kills energy deal with Israel, key component of peace accord > Tehran Conference On Obama-Endorsed 'Occupy Movement' Focuses On Jew-Hatred > I love huh! > 100,000 British women clitorectomized UK medics filmed offering female genital mutilation > "Moderate" Indonesia: Eleven Caned for Gambling Under the Sharia > Police taser a Kuwaiti diplomat caught urinating on Tony Blair's doorstep > Has the European Jew learned nothing? > More Recent Articles > Search Atlas Shrugs > > ________________________________ > > Atlas Shrugs - 10 new articles > > It ain't over ..... > > It's the first round -- when the conservatives get a handle on the fact that a socialist is going to win, they will rally round Sarkozy. Watch. > > Sarkozy’s Second Chance > > Editorial of The New York Sun | April 22, 2012 > > “Sarkozy Loses” is the headline up on the Drudge Report over a dispatch of France24 with the early results of the first round of voting in the presidential election. It shows the socialist, Francois Holland, at around 29% and President Sarkozy at around 27%, which means the two of them will go into a runoff in which Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter, Marine, will play an outsized role. She was the big winner in the first round in the sense that her showing, at 18.5%, not only in third place but three or four percentage points stronger than the polls had been indicating just before the first round. Francois Bayrou came in at 9%, significantly lower than the 13% that had been indicated in the polls. The ragtag fringes of the right and left held no surprises. > > We’re happy to be able to report that our erstwhile correspondent in France, Michel Gurfinkiel, isn’t backing off from suggestion that President Sarkozy could still emerge with a second term. He seemed relatively alone in stressing that point before the vote, but now the wires and the various papers are echoing his line. Mr. Gurfinkiel cautions us that he’s not making a hard forecast; not all votes are counted yet. He does say the Le Pen vote will be “crucial,” as he put it in his latest telegram. He notes that the socialists have already started to woo the Le Pen voters openly. “I doubt they will succeed,” he writes. He adds that most of the present Le Pen voters are “former conservatives” who were disappointed with the classic Right. “They will not support the Left, nor suffer a Leftwing victory.” > > Plus, Mr. Gurfinkiel writes, the other Le Pen voters are “former communists or socialists” who moved right and “who see extra-European immigration as the main reason for their economic hardship and the disintegration of French society: they are not going to support M. Hollande, who says he will grant voting franchise to foreign residents.” He says that Mme. Le Pen will have a say but “doesn’t own her followers and sympathizers’ votes. If she tells them to vote for Hollande, she is dead. If she says she doesn’t take sides, most of them will understand they must prevent a Leftwing victory. If she suggests the Right is just slightly better than the Left, they will see it as a full fledged endorsement.” > > What M. Gurfinkiel is predicting is that something like 60 % of Mme. Le Pen’s voters in the first round will support Monsieur Sarkozy, while but 10 % will switch to Monsieur Hollande, and 30% will abstain. Monsieur Bayrou’s voters, he thinks, will not support the Left, as those who were prepared to do so already switched in the first round. The rest of the Bayrou voters will vote for Monsieur Sarkozy. Mr. Gurfinkiel writes that things may not yet be entirely clear. But writes he: “If I am right, we may have on May 6, in very broad terms: Hollande : 29% socialists + 12 % Melanchon + 4 % Leftwingers + 2% Le Pen + 1% Bayrou. Total : 48 % more or less. Sarkozy: 27% conservatives + 2% Dupont-Aignan + 16% Le Pen + 8% Bayrou. Total: 52 % more or less.” > > Mr. Gurfinkiel cautions us that the pollster CSA gives much better odds to Monsieur Hollande, predicting he’ll win the presidency with 56% of the vote, and ascribing to him a much better share of both the Le Pen and Bayrou votes. On verra. Two weeks of hard campaigning are still ahead of both candidates. The thing that gets us about all this is that France raised up, in Monsieur Sarkozy, a president who was more pro-American than any in our adult lifetime. He wasn’t perfect by any means. But what a refreshing change from President Chirac. It strikes us that the change was an opportunity for a dynamic American leader with a genuine strategy for Europe to make a connection, to work it, and to build some excitement. Somehow that eluded our current president. There may be good reasons for this; the French are nothing if not difficult. But if the French center is lost to the socialists, there will be those asking “Who lost France?” And what is Mr. Obama going to say? All the more reason to hope that Mr. Gurfinkiel is right in his guesstimates of the outcome of the second round. > > <http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/fblike.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/googleplus.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/linkedinflare.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/pinterest-round.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/twitter.png> > • Email to a friend • Article Search • View comments • > > And then there was art ..... > > < http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c60bf53ef0168ea900244970c-600wi > > Richard Avedon, Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent, 14 June, 1981. Gelatin silver, printed 1982 > > In my insatiable desire to feed my oft-starved but fierce passion for art! music! love! (it's why I fight the fight), I am adding a cultural open art thread on Sunday evenings. Friday night music, Saturday night cinema, and now Sunday evening art. Avedon's snake .... fruit of knowledge and so forth.... seemed an appropriate first choice. > > <http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/fblike.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/googleplus.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/linkedinflare.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/pinterest-round.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/twitter.png> > • Email to a friend • View comments • > > Ezra Levant on Obama freeing jihadist Omar Khadr, murderer of American soldier > > Levant on the enemedia's coddle of killer Khadr. Omar Khadr is returning to Canada. He is an enemy of the state, a Muslim soldier in the global jihad. He should have rotted in GITMO, if not faced a firing squad. No, instead Obama cut his sentence down from 40 years to 8 years, and then asked the Canadian government to take Khadr. > > Khadr killed Sergeant First Class (SFC) Christopher James Speer (September 9, 1973 – August 6, 2002). Speer was a combat medic with a Delta Force. Speer was awarded the Soldier's Medal for risking his life to save two Afghan children who were trapped in a minefield on July 21, 2002, two weeks before his death. > > Khadr killed an American soldier -- and Obama freed him. Muhammadan in the White House. > > Allahu FUBAR. > > <http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/fblike.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/googleplus.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/linkedinflare.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/pinterest-round.png> < http://assets.feedblitz.com/i/twitter.png> > • Email to a friend • View comments • > > Egypt kills energy deal with Israel, key component of peace accord > > More of the fallout and consequences of Obama's giant policy failures in the Middle East and beyond. The gas supply deal had been an important part of the Israeli/Egypt peace accord. Another nail in the coffin of peace, freedom, and the age of American hegemony. > > As Obama's crushing failures mount on a daily basis, expect the enemedia to hunker down and produce Goebbels-style agitprop and pro-statist propaganda at a dizzying pace. > > Egypt scraps Israel gas supply deal BBC (hat tip David) > > Egyptian officials say they have scrapped an agreement to supply Israel with natural gas. Israel received around 40% of its gas supplies from Egypt and uses it to generate electricity. > > The announcement comes after the cross-border pipeline suffered numerous sabotage attacks which cut supplies. > > Egypt was the first Middle East country to sign a peace accord with Israel, and the energy deal has been a key part of agreements between the two state. > > A statement from the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company said it was ending supplies because the terms of its contrac -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
