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Atlas Shrugged Part III Greenlighted

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2013/02/06/atlas-shrugged-producer-shares-insights-and-a-surprse-that-awaits-in-atlas-iii/

According to this interview with John Aglialoro, Part III is going ahead as planned. There's a little detail buried in there that seems designed to get tongues wagging, but doesn't strike me as a big deal at all. Aglialoro says there will be a scene that's not in the book, where Dagny goes into St. Patrick's, which is of course across the street from the Atlas statue in Rockefeller Center, and a priest talks to her. Shrug.

A concern I have is how they're going to do the adaptation, especially "Act I". In the book Part III starts in the valley, and there's not much in the way of action for quite a while. I'm afraid audience interest will sink like a stone for lack of tension.

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http://www.forbes.com/sites/billfrezza/2013/02/06/atlas-shrugged-producer-shares-insights-and-a-surprse-that-awaits-in-atlas-iii/

According to this interview with John Aglialoro, Part III is going ahead as planned. There's a little detail buried in there that seems designed to get tongues wagging, but doesn't strike me as a big deal at all. Aglialoro says there will be a scene that's not in the book, where Dagny goes into St. Patrick's, which is of course across the street from the Atlas statue in Rockefeller Center, and a priest talks to her. Shrug.

 

 

Interesting... Wasn't there a priest character planned in AS (or maybe TF) but then was left out of the novel?

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Interesting... Wasn't there a priest character planned in AS (or maybe TF) but then was left out of the novel?

In her journals, planning FH's cast of characters, she lists a "preacher",. This is how she describes him:

A man who tries to save the world with an outworn ideology. Show that his ideals are actually in working existence and that they precisely are what the world has to be saved from.

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In her journals, planning FH's cast of characters, she lists a "preacher",

Also, in the cast of characters she's planning for AS she lists the following:

The priest (medieval name), who is the last of the strikers. He withdraws the moral sanction from the world of parasites. (He represents that last stand for pity.)

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If you want to know what Christians will make of this
olive branch you need to look no further than the hateful Paul Ryan. He puts it
so exactly:



I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces
human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my
worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology
to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas, who believed that man needs divine help in
the pursuit of knowledge. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.



http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/26/ryan-now-rejects-ayn-rand-will-the-real-paul-ryan-please-come-forward/

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I have just viewed the first 2 movies in the series. A bit of a disappointment if I'm honest, and a bit of a clunker that none of the actors from the first carried over to the second. It's just too damn big a work to bring down to so little screen time. Even the vignettes are significant, but have to be abridged to cut it down to size. Shame. Would have made a great 12 part series and probably for not much more outlay since the plot is character rather than set intensive.

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Interesting... Wasn't there a priest character planned in AS (or maybe TF) but then was left out of the novel?

Father Amadeus was his name. I think it was James Taggart' s priest, if I'm not mistaken.

He was:

Peikoff: "Father Amadeus was Taggart's priest, to whom he confessed his sins. The priest was supposed to be a positive character honestly devoted to the good but practicing consistently the morality of mercy. Miss Rand dropped him, she told me, when she found that it was impossible to make such a character convincing."

From the Forbes article:

And here is where Aglialoro plans his surprise, a scene that does not exist in the book that he nonetheless hopes to include in the third part of the film trilogy. He believes that our troubled times require an alliance between champions of reason and free market capitalism and conservative religious practitioners, for without such an alliance both causes will be lost.

“Most people have a respect for spirituality, maybe even a yearning. There must be room in Objectivism for charity and benevolence. Remember, Rand struggled with the character of the priest, who appeared in early drafts of Atlas Shrugged but didn’t make the final cut. I am going to put him back.”

It’s not much. But it will be a gentle repudiation of the militant atheism that characterizes many Objectivists. Will purists raise a ruckus?

I don't think this is a good idea. At all.

Why doesn't she say something to him immediately for him referring to her as, "my child"?

Like: "I'm not your child, get away from me creep!"

If the producer is in fact just saying this scene as a trial balloon, let's make fucking sure we pop it!

TAKE HIM OUT! DON'T PUT HIM BACK!

No room for charity crap!

Read or listen to Tara Smith about charity, generosity, etc. Don't make room for it in this movie!

https://estore.aynrand.org/p/180/virtues-or-vices-kindness-generosity-charity-mp3-download

Chapter 10 in her excellent book Ayn Rands Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist

Edited by intellectualammo
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“Most people have a respect for spirituality, maybe even a yearning. There must be room in Objectivism for charity and benevolence. Remember, Rand struggled with the character of the priest, who appeared in early drafts of Atlas Shrugged but didn’t make the final cut. I am going to put him back.” 

I think it's pretty arrogant that someone who never made a movie in his life, saw fit to start out with Atlas Shrugged. As for that person now deciding to make modifications to it, I don't have a name for what that is.

 

He should put some elves in, too. Maybe a couple of wizards and a flying elephant. Couldn't make this project any worse than it already is.

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  • 2 months later...

The Atlas Shrugged movies suffer from what I call the "Dune Syndrome". You have a fabulous novel (or series of books) with the insurmountable obstacle of encapsulating so much rich detail and deep meaning.

>>>The Atlas Shrugged movies suffer from what I call the "Dune Syndrome".

 

Otherwise known as **bad screenwriting.**

 

"Dune" at least had a director (David Lynch, I believe) who had done some highly imaginative work in the past — a little weird, maybe, but imaginative. AS-1 and AS-2 were both ploddingly directed; the sort of thing one often sees from 1st-year film students (or inexperienced directors).

 

By the way, I understand that the original director of AS-1 — Stephen Polk — had been summarily fired two weeks before production. In a trade journal, he claimed that the producers used many of his ideas and never game him credit (nor was he paid) and that he was considering litigation. I don't know what came of this, nor do know if AS-1 would have been any better had he directed it. Just thought this was an interesting detail about the production.

 

>>>You have a fabulous novel (or series of books) with the insurmountable obstacle of encapsulating so much rich detail and deep meaning.

 

I disagree that it's insurmountable. "Gone With The Wind" is a fabulous (and long) novel that was successfully made into a good movie; "The Grapes of Wrath" was a very good movie (despite being lefty); "How Green Was My Valley" was turned into a good film; "Ben Hur" was made into a good film; "Spartacus" was made into a good film; "Paths of Glory" was made into a good film; "A Clockwork Orange" was made into a good film; "Doctor Zhivago" was a good film; etc.

 

To adapt a novel into a film requires that the screenwriter, first of all, locate the **central story** in the novel and ONLY focus on that in the screen adaptation. It's a matter of selection, because a novel — especially long, epic novels — usually have more than one story-line going on, so the screenwriter must choose which of all those possible stories he's going to tell. This means that many of the interesting and colorful subplots and "cameos" that might appear and disappear in the course of a novel must be omitted in the screen version. Screenwriting is much more narrowly focused than novel writing, because a novel is generally unified by means of the theme, while a screenplay (like a short story) is unified by means of the protagonist's main character-trait; an overriding need, want, or desire of the main "driver" of the story, that is constantly challenged and tested by various obstacles thrown in his or her way. Each time the protagonist overcomes (or succumbs) to an obstacle, the plot is advanced: the plot spins out of the character's main trait.

 

So one doesn't really "transcribe" or merely "adapt" a novel to a screenplay. One must literally **translate** from one medium to the other. This sort of translation was not done by the various screenwriters of Atlas Shrugged, who seemed intent on simply transcribing events from the novel to the screen, and whose overriding concern — given that they felt the need to hire a "philosophical consultant" like David Kelley — was **Objectivist Correctness.**

 

There were also many missed opportunities that would not have escaped the attention of more competent producers. For example, the character of Richard Halley, the composer, is suddenly (and pointlessly) introduced to the audience in Part 2, when no inkling of him was broached in Part I. Why should the Part 2 audience care who this guy is if they are seeking some sort of story continuity with Part 1 from the year before? Additionally, aside from the fact that the music Halley was performing in his piano recital bore no relation to the sort of overt 19th-century romanticism a la Rachmaninoff that Rand admired and no doubt had in mind (after all, Dagny was capable of humming or whistling Halley's music, and could even identify it stylistically when someone else hummed or whistled it), weren't the producers aware of a previous work like David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago"? The score to that film was composed by Maurice Jarre, and he used a Wagnerian technique known as the "Leitmotif"; i.e., certain melodies would be associated with certain characters; thus there was the famous "Laura's Theme", which would be orchestrated in various ways, and modified in various ways, according to the progression of the story. Couldn't the producers of AS have suggested to their composer to write "Dagny's Theme" and "Rearden's Theme" and "Galt's Theme", which would then find their way into the piano recital of Richard Halley, so that there was musical UNITY between the music as it is heard by the characters within the story world, and the underscore, as it is heard only by the audience? It seems like an obvious thing to do. Instead — aside from a generally forgettable and very generic-sounding soundtrack — Richard Halley's piano music sounded like a mixture of Gershwin and Prokofiev. I have no problem with those two composers — in fact, I like the music of both — but if the music in the story-world of Atlas Shrugged is supposed to be "hummable" and explicitly romantic — as a healthy counter-wave to the cultural decadence and corruption portrayed in the novel — was that actually a good choice by the film composer and the producers? I don't think so.

 

I also don't understand what the point was of bringing in the character of Cherryl in Part 2, or the Leonard-Peikoff-looking "Wet Nurse." They serve important functions in the novel but have no place in the movie as late in the storytelling as Part 2. Except for those who have read the novel, the typical movie-watcher experiences them as arbitrary additions who simply "appear" in the story, and who don't function to move the plot along (again, they work well in the novel because in that context they are colorful manifestations of the **theme**, and **theme** is the "glue" that holds novels together).

 

It will be interesting to see what the screenwriter does with these two characters in Part 3. I suspect they will simply disappear as fast they originally appeared . . . or perhaps they won't be seen again at all.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I, for one, actually loved the first two.  But I watched both before reading the book so I had no idea what I was missing.

(incidentally, I was forced  to read the whole book immediately after seeing Part II.  "My name is John Galt," roll credits. . .  "Curse you, Hollywood!!!!!")

 

As for deliberately altering it. . . If he wants to then he should change the name and sell the movie as his own idea.  You don't edit the thoughts of someone who's too dead to say otherwise; if not then, really, Thomas Jefferson was a Communist and Moses was an atheist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jan/05/censoring-mark-twain-n-word-unacceptable

 

If someone starts "upgrading" my ideas after I'm dead, please shoot them.  It's not even about the subversion of reason to faith in that suggestion; it's about letting the woman's legacy speak for itself.

 

Would have made a great 12 part series and probably for not much more outlay since the plot is character rather than set intensive.

That's brilliant.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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LOL! I especially love the fact that Aglialoro wrote in his own blog interview that he would not bother making Part 3 if Obama was elected to a 2nd term because it would prove that the country was too far gone down the road of collectivism and that no change was possible. Then he makes a recent YouTube video called "Atlas Shrugged Part 3 Production Diary" in which he claims he's going ahead with production of Part 3 because "this time, the movie's for us" — "us" meaning, Objectivists. Sounds to me as if he's resigned himself to the idea that Part 3 — with the same production team as Part 2 — will fail with the general public and with the professional critics, just as Parts I and 2 did.

 

Someone claimed on YouTube that Aglialoro changed his mind about producing Part 3 because he's still optimistic that the country can be changed away from collectivism. But if that were his reason, why would he also claim that the movie is for "us"? If the movie is for "us", i.e., the few hardcore Objectivists who will watch and like the movie under any circumstances, then obviously he expects very few people from the public to watch the movie. But if he expects very few people from the broader public to watch the movie, how will it be able to change the country?

 

How can an unwatched movie change the country?

 

And, just out of curiosity, I still want to know why the first director chosen for Part I, Stephen Polk, was summarily fired two weeks before shooting? At the time, Polk claimed that he would litigate, because he accused Aglialoro, Kelley, et al., of using ideas he had come up with for the shooting of the film without paying him or giving him credit. Perhaps the critical failure and box-office failure of Part I made Polk think twice about doing anything public (like suing) that would associate his name with a failed project.

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I, for one, actually loved the first two.  But I watched both before reading the book so I had no idea what I was missing.

(incidentally, I was forced  to read the whole book immediately after seeing Part II.  "My name is John Galt," roll credits. . .  "Curse you, Hollywood!!!!!")

 

As for deliberately altering it. . . If he wants to then he should change the name and sell the movie as his own idea.  You don't edit the thoughts of someone who's too dead to say otherwise; if not then, really, Thomas Jefferson was a Communist and Moses was an atheist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/jan/05/censoring-mark-twain-n-word-unacceptable

 

If someone starts "upgrading" my ideas after I'm dead, please shoot them.  It's not even about the subversion of reason to faith in that suggestion; it's about letting the woman's legacy speak for itself.

 

That's brilliant.

 

>>>As for deliberately altering it. . . If he wants to then he should change the name and sell the movie as his own idea.

 

That might have had better results, both artistically and commercially.

 

 

>>>You don't edit the thoughts of someone who's too dead to say otherwise; if not then, really, Thomas Jefferson was a Communist and Moses was an atheist.

 

Nonsense. It's done all the time. Sometimes the result succeeds, sometimes it fails. The writer of the original work (e.g., a novelist) usually hates it, of course, but so what? Movie-making is essentially "the director's art", not the writer's (even though a movie, of course, absolutely requires a great "blueprint" or screenplay). That's why often writers SELL the film rights to their books: they can make lots of money up front; if the movie succeeds, it often leads to even more sales of the book; if the movie fails, it often has no affect on the sales of the book at all (for example, the failure of the film version of Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities").

 

What prevented Parts I and II from being successful in every way were the fat egos of the production team members, combined with their shocking lack of filmmaking experience and ability. And when the free market comprising the ticket-buying public rejected the film, the producers (including the Objectivist Compliance Officer, David Kelley) stupidly asserted that it wasn't their fault the movie died; it was the public's fault, compounded by the critic's fault! 

 

Alas. Movie critics have very little influence on the ticket-buying public, just as literary critics have very little influence on the book-buying public. If critics actually had such influence, then the novel "Atlas Shrugged" would have been the same kind of commercial failure as the film. What caused the success of the novel was: word-of-mouth.

 

What killed the film was: word-of-mouth.

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>>>You don't edit the thoughts of someone who's too dead to say otherwise; if not then, really, Thomas Jefferson was a Communist and Moses was an atheist.

 

Nonsense. It's done all the time.

 

Red Wanderer just admitted to me that he doesn't actually exist; he's the chatbot that could've passed the Turing test if he hadn't mentioned the user's mother.

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  • 8 months later...

The cast for Part 3 was just announced. Below is the press release, I can't imagine anyone objecting to simply copying and posting it here:

http://blog.atlasshruggedmovie.com/2014/01/atlas-shrugged-part-iii-goes-into.html

Atlas Distribution Company announced today that "Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?" went into production on Monday, January 20th. The movie's release is slated for September 2014.

The movie trilogy follows the three-part structure of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, "Atlas Shrugged." The dystopian story takes place in a not-so-distant future with the nation's economy approaching collapse. While overreaching government regulations persist in strangling the country's few remaining entrepreneurs, society's most productive have mysteriously disappeared.

At the helm of Part 3 will be seasoned award-winning Director Jim Manera who will be accompanied by Cinematographer, Gale Tattersal who previously worked as Director of Photography on Hugh Lowry's House M.D. as well as Tom Hank's From Earth to the Moon.

"It's very fulfilling for all us to be finishing the trilogy. Atlas Shrugged has impacted so many lives and we’re extremely proud to be bringing the final installment to the screen. The team we've assembled is nothing short of stellar. Part 3 is without question going to be the best of the trilogy." said Producer John Aglialoro.

Atlas Distribution Company also announced today that the much anticipated role of John Galt will go to Kristoffer Polaha, an accomplished actor who, prior to working on Atlas, was profoundly influenced by Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead." Kris has been in a variety of television shows including Ringer (CW), alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Life Unexpected (CW). He will next be seen in a regular role alongside Rainn Wilson in Fox's new show, Backstrom. His feature credits include a supporting role in Devil's Knot, opposite Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth.

The role of Dagny Taggart, heroine COO of Taggart Transcontinental, will be played by Laura Regan who has appeared in the AMC hit Mad Men as well as the movie Unbreakable with Bruce Willis.

Producer Harmon Kaslow said, "We've always known that finding the right actor to play John Galt was going to be a huge challenge, but as soon as Kris walked in the room and said 'Hello', we knew we found him. Kris is John Galt. We couldn't be more pleased. Laura and Kris already have great chemistry together. Atlas fans everywhere are going to be blown away."

Rounding out the cast of "Atlas Shrugged" heroes are acclaimed actors Joaquim de Almedia as Francisco d'Anconia, Eric Allen Kramer as Ragnar Danneskjöld, and Rob Morrow as Hank Rearden, as well as a host of other veteran actors.

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