Asymmetrical Information

You will, of course, get Google searches for years for "hot Objectivist nude scenes".

I always thought Tom Selleck should be Hank. Pitt will do as Galt, though I would have preferred Johnny Depp.

I still want to see The Fountainhead with Rob Reiner as Ellsworth Tooey and Mike Meyers as Roark (although he'd probably look goofy with red hair. Carrot Top?).

Well, look at what Verhoven and co did to Starship Troopers.
If they can take thought proving and fun kiddy fiction and turn it into a neo-fascist parody, they can find a way to piss on Rand too.

I wouldn't be surprised if Galt turned out to be a villain in the movie, since he goes around using his charm and persuasion to get the producers of society to leave it. The 'plot' of the book is mostly an effort to track him down and stop him, after all.

My own take on _Atlas Shrugged_ is that Rand bit off far more than she could chew---and ended up sucking what could have been several great novels into AS. The whole "Twentieth Century Motors" subplot, just as one example, would have made a nifty novel in-and-of-itself---and the name of the company is so symbolically perfect.

Think Hollywood. Delete 900 pages (all the ones with any meaningful content) from the book. You're left with a big bad evil empire trying to track down a dashing hero who threatens the system and destroys it from the inside by working as a common laborer by day, brilliant anti-establishment leader by night. Bourne Identity meets Harrison Ford movie meets Denzel Washington movie. Lots of CGI, minimum of 7 big explosions, unlimited chases and shoot-em-ups. And he has to end up with the beautiful, witty, ultra-sexy protagonist Dagny.
BTW, Dagny would obviously need to be a tall redhead with some radically independent ideas. Know any candidates, Jane?

Will has hit the nail on the head, I think. My prediction: by the time it makes it to the silver screen, Galt's enemies will be large corporations that run a government that looks suspiciously like the one in power in the U.S. now. Society in Galt's valley will resemble a commune more than a captialist society, and their emblem will most definitely *not* be the dollar. In short, the movie will be an Objectivist skin strected over a mainstream leftist body. The only good that might come of it is that some young lefties might actually read Atlas Shrugged and find their views on government and society challenged.

Is there any room left for hot Objectivist nude scenes?

Well, the screewriter's first credit was "T&A Academy 2", so there's hope. But he also wrote Tomb Raider 2, which deserves an award for Most Gratuitously Boring Use of a Really Hot Actress in a Major Motion Picture.

Anyway, Hollywood managed to turn "V for Vendetta" into a screed against Bush and the War on Terror, so I haven't much hope for Atlas Shrugged.

You're left with a big bad evil empire trying to track down a dashing hero who threatens the system and destroys it from the inside by working as a common laborer by day, brilliant anti-establishment leader by night.

Subtract out the evil empire and that's a good description of Fight Club, actually.

the state's biggest crime will no doubt be stealing all the gay marriage from poor people and stuffing it into private accounts where they can't get at it

Can it be a "Comment of the Day" if it's not technically a comment?

Look for the 150-page speech to be a voiceover, done in segments over scenes related to the content. Also, look for it to be a 3-page speech with no words over two syllables.

It's too bad a young Paul Newman couldn't play Galt. Or that a middle aged Paul Newman couldn't play Ellis Wyatt.

Brad Pitt as Galt? Not as odd as it might seem. Take a look at his role in Twelve Monkeys. By the time this hits the screen John Galt will be the same role.

But no one could be better that the guy who recently did Alexander The Great. I forget his name (sometimes you win one) but the performance will remain always.

Just trying to help Hollywood make a great film.

Will wrote: "Dagny would obviously need to be a tall redhead with some radically independent ideas. Know any candidates, Jane?"

*waving hand* mm, mm, pick me, Teacher!

Actually, scratch that. I'm screaming into middle age...more cellulite-friendly than celluloid-friendly.

My vote for John Galt: the younger Harrison Ford. Dagny: the younger Sean Young. Um, obviously, I'm not following pop culture very much at all and don't know current celebs!

Also, I find Rand's novels insufferable. I can't get very far into any of them. Her "people" don't seem human to me and are entirely unsympathetic. There's obviously no devotion to fiction there, no craft; probably an interesting thesis/nonfiction book masquerading as a really bad novel.

Perhaps I'm a picky reader; my undergraduate degree is in English, studied primarily literature, at the U of Iowa, hobnobbed with the Writer's Workshop and International Writer's Workshop visiting writers, lived and breathed great and good literature for long enough to permanently sour me on icky fick.

Galt: Harrison Ford; Dagny: Sean Young, younger versions of course. Obviously I don't keep up with pop culture and who are the current hot celebs!

I am second to none in my adoration of Harrison Ford, and think that Paul Newman would have made a brilliant John Galt, but we should probably keep the discussion to actors who do not have a foot-and-a-half in the grave.

btw, obviously Liam Neeson has to play Hugh Akston.

Other casting:

Ragnar
Francisco
Dagny
Hank Rearden
Lillian
Jim Taggart
Oren Boyle
Jim Taggart's wife-whose-name-escapes-me
Midas Mulligan

nominate a slate, or just your favourites. On second thought, maybe Liam Neeson should play Hank Rearden. And what about Jude Law for John Galt, Ewan MacGregor for Ragnar? Johnny Depp for Francisco, or some hot latin star? James Spader for Jim Taggart, I hope. Or Cary Elwes.

Obviously, I need to get a life. Back to work!

Hey, the LOTR geeks are still out there, and on the lookout for something to pass the time until the legal wrangling over The Hobbit is over. Since Hollywood's going to mess with AS anyway, why not make it as Athelas Shrugged-- the quest of an Eddie Willers-like hobbit to return Sauron's rightful property, the Ring of Power, despite the interference of envious whim-worshipping elves and wizards who could never have created it themselves. (The full 90-minute palantir speech can be saved for the extended edition.)

They should do the parody, "Sewer, Gas, and Electric" by Matt Ruff instead. It's at least a tad zanier.

Whittaker Chambers wrote a famous critique of Atlas Shrugged:

"One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she seems to have in mind). When she calls 'productive achievement' man's noblest activity, she means, almost exclusively, technological achievement, supervised by such a managerial political bureau. She might object that she means much, much more; and we can freely entertain her objections. But, in sum, that is just what she means. For that is what, in reality, it works out to. And in reality, too, by contrast with fiction, this can only head into a dictatorship, however benign, living and acting beyond good and evil, a law unto itself (as Miss Rand believes it should be), and feeling any restraint on itself as, in practice, criminal, and, in morals, vicious (as Miss Rand clearly feels it to be). Of course, Miss Rand nowhere calls for a dictatorship. I take her to be calling for an aristocracy of talents. We cannot labor here why, in the modern world, the pre-conditions for aristocracy, an organic growth, no longer exist, so that the impulse toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship."

Link

All the more devastating because Chambers acknowledged that he disliked much that Rand disliked.

More to the point, how on earth could Hollywood possibly make this movie?

How could they make this movie? Easy. They make it same way they totally f*cked up Sum of All Fears, throw away the plot entirely (because Politically Correct Hollywood couldn't possibly say that "the Religion of Peace" stole a nuclear warhead to blow up Denver), claim that 21st Century "Nazis" found an abandoned ISRAELI nuke (bought from "The Great Satan", the United States) and blow up Baltimore. Sure, that makes no sense, is unrealistic, but the only people that it insults (and whose self-esteems might be hurt) are people that only exist in Fiction.

Here is Hollywood's version of Atlas Shrugged starring Angelina Jolie: Angelina (as Danny Tagart) is the beautiful President of the United Nations (as all the nations of the Earth are one.) Slowly but surely, all the men of "Government" slowly disappear (but are secretly going on strike) to protest this mysterious belief in self-determination, private secotr capital growth, and personal responsibility. Before too long, all tax paid government workers have left their jobs, and gone where??? leaving only the "private sector" and the "greedy capitalists" to fend for themselves without any governmental infrastructure. When crime runs rampant (as there are no police) and businesses are being ransacked, children are left home to get into trouble with no one to watch them as they can't go to school (there are no teachers), and society on this Communial "Mother Earth" is in mass hysteria.

A solemn Internet Broadcast by ALEC BALDWIN dones on and on at the end of the last movie describing how society is desperate for people like himself to "govern them" and to collect "taxes from them" to give them "entitlements" because the ordinary people are simply not responsible enough to take care of themselves without BIG BROTHER watching out for them to keep them fed, cared for, educated, protected, sheltered, and clothed.

How's that Jane?

Casting Atlas Shrugged has been a favorite topic among Objectivists pretty much since the book came out; I remember when Charlton Heston and Clint Eastwood were the consensus choices for Hank Reardon and Ellis Wyatt respectively. Galt has always been a tough call; these days there seems to be a general agreement that he should be played by either Pitt or an unknown. The problem with Pitt is that using him would require major changes in the plot; in the book, Galt doesn't make an appearance until about two-thirds of the way through, and you don't cast Brad Pitt for that kind of a role. Of course, if they hack it up as badly as people here are suggesting, that won't matter.

Jane,

Ewan MacGregor for Ragnar?? Pshaw. There's one person who was born to play Ragnar Danjeskold: Ahhhhnold.

How timely, I just finished a week long vacation and re-read Atlas. My pics for the cast:
Hugh Akston - Anthony Hopkins
Ragnar - Matthew McConaughy
Francisco - Antonio Banderas
Dagny - Charlize Theron
Hank Rearden - Joaquin Phoenix
Lillian - Ginnifer Goodwin
Jim Taggart - Philip Seymour Hoffman
Oren Boyle - Michael Gambon
Jim Taggart's wife-whose-name-escapes-me (Cherryl Brooks) - Brittany Murphy
Midas Mulligan - Robert Duvall

Of course, casting a movie like this is impossible, and my faith in the studio system is low that this will in anyway resemble the novel, but it was a fun exercise.

Ewan MacGregor for Ragnar?? Pshaw. There's one person who was born to play Ragnar Danjeskold: Ahhhhnold.

Yeah, but Ahhhhnold would have to give up his governator role to do that -- seem to recall he told his wife he would stay out of acting if he went into politics, and somehow, I don't think it would be wise to go back on a promise made to anyone with Kennedy bloodlines.

Amazing that people are still quoting that conservatives are still quoting that Chambers review admiringly, as if it's actually a well-argued takedown. I guess when you're a "trad" opposed to "defecated reason," the fact that there's no real logic in the review and is in fact one extended straw-man argument is a GOOD thing.

I like Vince Vaughn or Will Ferrel for John Galt. Either one could turn it into the comedy that it really is.

Let the zanyness commence!

IMDB.com has already added this movie to the database. They have the first movie being released in 2008.

Why don't we just call Atlas Shrugged Bragelina part II?

I keep seeing James Woods as Hank Rearden, except that now, he looks a bit
too old. Ditto Rutger Hauer as Ragnar Danneskjchzkptold.

Antonio Banderas as Francisco D'Anconia feels like such a lock, that I
almost want to try someone different.

Renee Zegweller or Gwenyth Paltrow as Jim Taggart's wife, Cherryl Brooks.

Billy Bob Thornton as Eddie Willers. (ha!)

Patrick Stewart as Dr. Robert Stadler.

Hank Azaria as James Taggart.

Hillary Clinton as Lillian Rearden.

Crispin Glover as Philip Rearden.

Dule Hill as Quentin Daniels.

claim that 21st Century "Nazis" found an abandoned ISRAELI nuke (bought from "The Great Satan", the United States) and blow up Baltimore

Well, the Nazi part is silly, but Clancy's original did feature a lost Israeli nuke made from US fissionable material...

But your prediction of how Atlas Shrugged will come out is probably pretty good.

Some of my cast preferences, from a recent comment at Vodkapundit:

Dagny: Jill Hennessy--perfect look for the role (read the first scene with Dagny on the train for a description), and can act. Will probably be too old for the role in a few years.

Hugh Akston: Sean Connery. C'mon, every group of world-changing heroes deserves to have Sean Connery as their elder statesman. This role should be his until he keels over.

Jim Taggart: Alec Baldwin--because the role will make him look ugly and suffer a lot. Plus, his lines will be in a language he understands and believes in.

Kay Ludlow: Now *here's* the role for Angelina.

Dr. Floyd Ferris: William Atherton. No further comment necessary.

Antonio Banderas as Francisco D'Anconia feels like such a lock, that I
almost want to try someone different.

How about Adrian Paul of Highlander fame?

Only a terrible director can do perfect justice to Rand's terribly bad novel. I nominate Uwe Boll, of House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark fame. Tara Reid would make an excellent Dagney.

Oh, and Verhoeven's neo-fascist parody of Starship Troopers? About eleventy billion times more entertaining than the novel.

Ragnar's gotta be Val Kilmer. Always pictured Mel Gibson as Ellis. If they can bring Joaquim de Almeida circa 1987 back, he could play Francisco (but JdA circa 2006 is probably a little to raggedy). George Clooney as Floyd Ferris. Sean Penn as Wesley Mouch. Chris Klein as Rearden's Wet Nurse. DeVito as Orren Boyle of course.

I am that man from the NYT forum and have kept tabs on you, Randroid.

that's great news that they're making this movie. I started reading alas shrugged and before I got around to finishing it I managed to wreck my car and lost my copy due to enchroaching ditchwater.

I never have bought and finished that book, but now I can find out who the hell is john galt.

Although I have been a fervent admirer of A.S. for decades, I am (somewhat reluctantly) opposed to making it into a movie. Why? Because there is no way any semblence of its ideas could be crammed into such a limited vehicle. My own preference for a dramatic presentation would use the model of the original BBC television production of The Forsyte Saga of many years ago: 26 hour-long episodes, over as many weeks, to more closely enable the development of its plot, ideas and characters. Obviously, that would never happen, but I just thought I'd mention it.

[reads Bruce's comments and nods]

Atlas Shrugged would be ideal for either a mini-series or a 13-22 episode television series on HBO or another such premium movie channel. Of course, finding such a channel that isn't run by someone ideologically hostile to Rand and her works might be a tad difficult.

[another nod to Bruce]

Something like Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, perhaps?

Or did they convey much the same message?

[in case you missed it, or need a refresher, I turned up this: http://www.retroweb.com/prisoner.html ][Sorry, I don't know how to turn that into a link]

Bill Clinton IS Wesley Mouch

Do facts matter to you?

It's a sixty-page speech, you bloody twit. You could look it up.

56 pages, in my 35th anniversary paperback copy. It's also--by Galt's own admission--three hours long. Even Steven Seagal would fall into a twitching heap trying to recite it verbatim. Presumably, the speech will be made into some sort of montage, with appropriately triumphant background music.

Hollywood does not always mess up these things.

For example, I Robot twisted Asimov's idea into what can be read as an anti-nanny state parable.

If if you've read any Ayn Rand, you have to read the Atlas Dined parody . . .

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?noframes;read=30975

"He knew he could possess [her], that she would say yes, and that for that reason he could never ask. That instead he must destroy her, for he was a man of Reason, and he knew, as did she, that it was the right thing to do.

As for Hollywood making movies of Ayn Rand novels, it's already been done! 'The Fountainhead' was made into a movie in the late 40's with Gary Cooper playing Howard Roark. I watched about 5 minutes of it once, I think on TCM, and changed the channel because it was boring, even though I really like Gary Cooper, and besides, what present day actor is as cool as Gary Cooper? If Gary Cooper cannot save 'The Fountainhead' can 'Atlas Shrugged' really be non boring no matter who they get?

I sort of liked 'The Fountainhead' too, though I sort of had a similar reaction to it that Whitaker Chambers did, agreed about the 'bad' guys, disagreed about the 'good' guys. I always thought a humourous sequel to it could be called "Howard Roark and Dominique Francon get married and have three daughters who are now teenagers and Roark recants on 90% of the stuff he thought when he was younger".

Thanks for clearing up the 'Jane Galt' stuff. I always thought that it was from the incessant proverbial question asked in 'Atlas Shrugged' as to 'Who is John Galt?' and one was supposed to wonder just who was this international woman of mystery was who's nom de plume was Jane Galt. One could say 'Jane Galt' is to 'Megan McArdle' as 'Batman' is to 'Bruce Wayne', though Ms. McArdle never played her secret identity that close to the vest and that was part of the charm. Alas, the reasons for things are always more prosaic than one imagines.

I arrived late to work because I sat at my computer thinking about "Atlas Shrugged" the movie for too long.

Thoughts:

That IMDB has the film on its site means nothing other than someone in the bizz wants people to start talking about it, create buzz, etc.

I don't understand why Angelina Jolie wants to play Dagny as she is just the sort of person Ayn Rand would find offensive, if not repulsive. Who hear really believes she got through the novel... maybe Brad just explained what it was about and she nodded her head, responded "Cool."

Does Hollywood get that Rand's philosophy is in direct opposition to their shallow Liberal politics? Maybe Clint Eastwood (Libertarian) is secretly funding this project.

While watching "The Aviator" (2004) I got the impression that Howard Hughes, or rather, the Howard Hughes story as told in the movie, was a better dramatization of Rand's ideas set against those of the world than those presented in her books (but make no mistake, I think her books are great).

I think the last act of Atlas Shrugged would make a great Action movie/thriller. I think the rest of the story would play too slow.

However, I think "The Fountainhead" could be done really well if the dialogue got a make over so that there was a lot more subtext and a lot less hitting things on the nose... ha ha, I just had this thought:

What if... what if Brad Pitt thinks he is very much like Howard Roark and believes that Angelina is very much like Dominique: the woman who wants the world to go to hell/fall apart because, secretly, she doesn't like most (thoughtless/irrational) human beings. Nah....

A second thought on The Fountainhead... that book is just waiting for someone to steal (how ironic) its ideas and do a more comical version that DOES NOT BETRAY OBJECTIVISM. Remember that IKEAish scene in "Fight Club" where Edward Norton is going through the products that make his apartment perfect... some of that could be going on to take a building from a work of art into a piece of shiet with just the right (wrong) modifications.

Lastly, crap this is too long. Sorry.

H-E-R-E

pisses me off making spelling mistakes and what not...

Dagney = Anne Hathaway
John Galt = Kevin Costner
Francisco = Benjamin Bratt
Eddie Willers = Christian Slater
Hank Reardon = Tom Selleck
Lillian Reardon = Megan Mullaly
Philip Reardon = Sean Hayes (who would go well with Mullaly)
Reardon's Mother = Doris Roberts
James Taggart = Joaquin Phoenix
Hugh Akston = Gene Hackman
Midas Mulligan = Rip Torn
Oren Boyle = Philip Seymour Hoffman
Betty Pope = Laura Linney
Bertram Scudder = Laurence Fishburne
Balph Eubank = John Leguizamo
Cherryl Brooks = Brittany Murphy
Ellis Wyatt = Randy Travis
Ragnar Danneskjöld = Hulk Hogan (seriously)
Richard Halley = Donald Sutherland
Dr. Robert Stadler = Morgan Freeman
Dr. Simon Pritchett = Alan Rickman
Mr. Thompson "Head of State" = Jeff Bridges
Wesley Mouch = Matthew Perry
Ben Nealy = Sean Penn
Claude Slagenhop = John Travolta
Frank Kinnan = Raymond J. Barry
Dan Conway = Matthew Broderick
Dick McNamara = Eric Stoltz
Mort Liddy = Andy Dick
Mr. Mowen = James Gandolfini
Paul Larkin = Matt Damon
Quentin Daniels = Jon Heder
Wet Nurse (Tony) = Giancarlo Esposito

Ideally, if I could pick any one from any time, I would have a Young Sam Shepard play John Galt, Kathleen Turner (from "Body Heat" days) play Dagney, Sam Elliot to play Hank Reardon, and James Mason to play Hugh Akston.

You realize, MichaelW, that at least half the characters you listed wouldn't make it into the movie, not even if they made it a 12-hour miniseries. But if we're going to cast the minor players, there's one you left out: Tinky Holloway, described in the book as a "rat-faced tennis player." Gotta be Stanley Tucci.

You realize, MichaelW, that at least half the characters you listed wouldn't make it into the movie, not even if they made it a 12-hour miniseries.

Just coverin' the bases ;^)

But if we're going to cast the minor players, there's one you left out: Tinky Holloway, described in the book as a "rat-faced tennis player." Gotta be Stanley Tucci.

Agreed. Good call.

While I share the concerns of many on here that hollywod will ruin the movie by making it "leftisit" I do look forward to the trainwreck scene. CGI should have some fun with that. Yes, I know this is a petty concern compared to things like oh... a decent scipt that keeps to the point of the book.

While I share the concerns of many on here that hollywod will ruin the movie by making it "leftisit" I do look forward to the trainwreck scene. CGI should have some fun with that.

Railroad companies just aren't what they used to be. They aren't nearly as important as they might have been in the 1950s.

In order for this movie to have a meaningful plot in 2008, I'm thinking Dagny Taggart (Angelina Jolie) will NOT be the President of some Trans-Continental Railroad company, but instead, CEO of a company like Microsoft. Or CityGroup. Or Disney. Or General Electric. It would have to a company of that magnitude (that worked in industries that rule today's private sector) in order for the plot to make sense.

So I am not so sure there is going to be a train wreck with massive CGI effects. There might be a plane crash or two.

The trainwork still works... the film just has to take place in the fifties... and it should. Atlas doesn't need a contemporary setting to be relevant, in fact, no good story does...

Although, if the film took a few jabs at our current airline industry (which has some of the worst run companies in the world), more power to 'em.

Train WRECK... bah

"Hollywood does not always mess up these things.

For example, I Robot twisted Asimov's idea into what can be read as an anti-nanny state parable."

Except that an eeevil corporation made the robots, so it's actually an anti-nanny-corporation parable. That's perfectly acceptable to left/liberals, as is an anti-government diatribe if the .gov in question is run by conservatives (let alone by that group of totalitarian socialists known as "fascists", because leftists are blissfully unaware of how close fascism & Naziism came to their own doctrines).

All these people who can remember every minor character in Atlas Shrugged are beginning to weird me out. Please tell me you all just read the book for the first time.

Yes, I read it more than once, and the ideas I picked up from it were well worth my time, but as a story, I've slept through much better stories told by a third-rate preacher in his sermons. Rand's major characters are barely more than cardboard cutouts voicing the various sides of a debate. Why in heck would anyone remember the others?

There is one Ayn Rand work that is readable as a story rather than a parable, and darn it, I cannot remember the name. That's a slim book set in an unnamed country very closely resembling Soviet Russia in the first years after the Bolsheviks took over. I suspect it came from her experience rather than her imagination - and it's as crushing a rejection of Communism as you'll ever read, too.

can those of you who suggested antonio banderas for francisco please remember that the character is not just some attractive, shmoozy latin man, but a brilliant prodigy who happens to also be hot. physical descriptions are not quite as important as power of character.

i like many of these suggestions, especially liam neeson as hugh akston. i personally had pictured david strathairn in the role, but liam fits it well too.

i don't like brad pitt as john galt. i think he'd make a good ellis wyatt though.

i just started working on my list, but i would tentatively name: johnny depp as my john galt, jennifer connelly as dagny, joaquin phoenix as eddie willers, laura linney as lillian rearden. i can't think of an appropriately-aged henry rearden. were he younger, chris cooper would be my choice. i would also like to see kevin spacey, philip seymour hoffman, and bradley whitford as some of the looters.

p.s. we the living

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