'Atlas Shrugged:' Is it really the movie Hollywood doesn't want you to see?

If you regularly watch Fox News, as I do, you've probably heard all about "Atlas Shrugged," the new movie version of the iconic Ayn Rand bestseller that opens in 300 theaters this Friday. (Yes, on tax filing day, which must surely be a sly Randian joke.) The party line at Fox is that "Atlas Shrugged," as host Sean Hannity put it, is the movie "liberal Hollywood doesn't want you to see." In fact, it's the movie's own marketing hook. If you do a Google search for the phrase "the movie Hollywood doesn't want you to see," the first thing you find is the film's Facebook page.

Of course, it would be more accurate to say that "Atlas Shrugged" is the film Hollywood didn't want to make, but that doesn't have quite the same forbidden fruit zing to it. As my colleague Rebecca Keegan has reported, the film was actually in development at Lionsgate, with Angelina Jolie attached to a script by heavyweight writer-director Randall Wallace. The project fell apart, though not because of any liberal plot. The film's financier, John Aglialoro, wanted a more faithful version of the book, which even many of its admirers will admit is something of an unlikely commercial property. Agliatoro eventually handed the filmmaking reins to "One Tree Hill" actor Paul Johansson, who had never directed a feature before.

So Aglialoro is essentially distributing the film himself. He's already had tastemaker screenings for such influential conservatives as Big Hollywood's Andrew Breitbart and House Speaker John Boehner. But will moviegoers flock to a film just because its backers say it's a film Hollywood liberals didn't want them to see? After all, didn't that scheme work pretty well for Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which cast Gibson as an embattled outsider whose film had been turned down everywhere in la-la-liberal Hollywood?

Of course, to embrace that narrative, whether with "Passion of the Christ" or with "Atlas Shrugged," you'd have to be willing to conveniently forget that 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest studios in town, is owned by -- ahem -- conservative kingpin Rupert Murdoch.

With "Atlas Shrugged," you'd also have to ignore the reviews, not just from those pesky liberal critics who would never give Ayn Rand a fair shake, but from P.J. O'Rourke, perhaps the most distinctive conservative cultural critic of our time. Even though he's a die-hard fan of Rand, O'Rourke admits that the movie is a stinker. As he writes:  

"Atlas shrugged. And so did I. The movie version of Ayn Rand’s novel treats its source material with such formal, reverent ceremoniousness that the uninitiated will feel they’ve wandered without a guide into the midst of the elaborate and interminable rituals of some obscure exotic tribe. Meanwhile, members of that tribe of 'Atlas Shrugged' fans will be wondering why director Paul Johansson doesn’t knock it off with the incantations, sacraments and recitations of liturgy and cut to the human sacrifice. ... The movie’s acting is borrowed from 'Dallas,' although the absence of Larry Hagman’s skill at subtly underplaying villainous roles is to be regretted. Staging and action owe a debt to 'Dynasty' — except, on 'Dynasty,' there usually was action. ... In 'Atlas Shrugged' Rand set out to prove that self-interest is vital to mankind. This, of course, is the whole point of free-market classical liberalism and has been since Adam Smith invented free-market classical liberalism by proving the same point.  Therefore trying to make a movie of 'Atlas Shrugged' is like trying to make a movie of 'The Wealth of Nations.' But Adam Smith had the good sense to leave us with no plot, characters or melodramatic clashes of will so that we wouldn’t be tempted to try."

I think what P.J. is saying, in the nicest possible way, is that maybe the trashy Angelina Jolie version of the movie wouldn't have been so bad after all.

-- Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Paul Johansson at a HuffPost Comedy event at the Roxy Theater last February in West Hollywood. Credit: Angela Weiss / Getty Images

 

Comments

[Mike]

Ayn Rand had some nice turns of phrase, but she was hardly a great novelist. If the right wing is hoping to score points with her stuff, they'll find her a hard sell for the current socially conservative base. The only one of her turgid books I was able to finish (in high school) was her Russian Revolution melodrama, "We, the Living." In it the heroine dreams of escaping to Paris where she's heard that there are nightclubs where chorus girls dance stark naked. (I saw that show years ago in Paris -- they weren't STARK naked; they had on high heels. lol) She was hardly a social conservative, except she hated gay guys, but I think that was more personal than political. The usual reaction that a woman has to gay guys when she's hit on one too many of them.

[michael]

I read Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead. You don't have to make up conspiracies to explain why the books haven't been made into successful movies. They are horribly written books that are nearly unreadable. Plot, characters, and what passes for dialogue are all atrocious. The "philosophy" Rand was pushing is simplistic, dangerous, and highly offensive, besides being completely divorced from reality.

[ar]

I'm a proud Liberal - and I love the book. No, I don't buy the philosophy behind it - although there are a few valid points to it that I would agree with. But the overall premise is greatly misplaced in my opinion.

However, it's a truly great story, one that I can hardly put down even after reading it many times. I love the original ideas, the depth of characters, the interplay of all the different characters, and how the whole thing comes together. There are parts to it that are just too long (the big speech is way, way too long for example), but overall I love it.

Just because I don't agree with the philosophy doesn't mean I can't enjoy a good book. It is sad to see how closed minded people are these days - on both sides of the political spectrum.

[Puck]

Atlas Shrugged?

So will the public.

[John Galt]

Anything is better with Angelina Jolie.

Chris, you are confusing Fountainhead with Atlas Shrugged.

[Michael]

Tax Day is (for some reason) April 18th this year. So there is no irony that Atlas Shrugged opens on what is not tax day this year.

The first thing I wondered was, if they are being really true to the book, do they retain the incessant smoking and worship of cigarettes, to the point where they have gold dollar signs printed on the filters? In the book, the cigarette is a sign of freedom or something, I can't remember. It may play well because of Mad Men, though for the wrong reasons.

I finally reached my limit with Rand when I found out she never admitted a connection between smoking and Cancer, even to the point of getting lung Cancer herself and saying it was an individual concern between you and your doctor.

Give me a break. This was a Russian Jewish woman who wrote novels to learn the English language and acclimate herself to our culture, which she recreated in her mind from movie posters. After she hit it big by striking archetypes in the American psyche, she then had a personality cult created upon her and started believing she was actually a philosopher when actually she was hypnotically seducing youth into a self contained cult of beliefs, many of which were not in the least bit rational or connected in an actual philosophical hierarchy.

I feel bad for her personal hubristic tragedy, which went against her sense of life as being light and gay, like a post WWII movie. She was really not that light and gay herself. And unfortunately, her books had a huge impact on our culture. It could only happen because a huge portion of Americans are more common than sensical. And despite Rands incessant belief that human beings tend to be envious of the successful, Americans actually worship the rich because they are deluded into thinking they could be rich as well. They don't worship the rich because of their integrity, because wealth and integrity, though not incompatible, are not generally linked.

[lark]

This version is the 'save' that allows Jolie to escape the wrath of her non-glibertarian fans.

[Patricia]

Ayn Rand fans are socially naive idealists who don't accept or understand the people who are outside of their ideology.

They place so much extreme faith in the lone individual because they tend to be introverts who don't deal well with the social aspect of life, period.

They tend to demonize anything "social," because they feel most comfortable when they're by themselves.

[tyler]

I have a hard time believing people who say they've read Atlas and Fountainhead, and then go on to say how terribly written, hard to understand, offensive, and boring they both were.
Nobody would read 2000 pages worth of of novels that they hated that much.

[tom]

The most boring-tedious-shallow book I ever read. I will not see it. I did however see Rango, which has a much more coherent story & much more fully developed characters.