a different thought about AS3 and Dagny
I just attended AS3 the 3rd time and I finally, FINALLY had a piece that had been bothering me go "click" inside my head.
I was one of the people who said "why so much driving around in the gulch? What's going on? I've seen a tree, I've seen lots of trees, enough scenery already!"
What I saw last night was Dagny regaining the joy in her own life - she went from "Certainly not - I'll pay my own way!" to open, smiling, meeting people and talking with them at the market, walking through the woods with John, talking in front on the fire - and I saw the joy of a child eagerly discovering things. I saw her soaring joy, which had been bending while she was "in the world", spring back and start to support her again.
It was glorious.
Thank you again.
I was one of the people who said "why so much driving around in the gulch? What's going on? I've seen a tree, I've seen lots of trees, enough scenery already!"
What I saw last night was Dagny regaining the joy in her own life - she went from "Certainly not - I'll pay my own way!" to open, smiling, meeting people and talking with them at the market, walking through the woods with John, talking in front on the fire - and I saw the joy of a child eagerly discovering things. I saw her soaring joy, which had been bending while she was "in the world", spring back and start to support her again.
It was glorious.
Thank you again.
Still, it was a bit overmuch. This is the part where, literally and metaphorically, Dagny is 'carried through scene after scene'.
Jan
The viro movement arose in the violent collectivist New Left of the late 1960s and 1970s. See Ayn Rand's article on the Anti-Industrial Revolution in her anthology Return of the Primitives (formerly the New Left and the Anti-Industrial Revolution) where she nailed the essence of the movement long before most people knew what was going on.
The viros have been ideologically inspired by the Ecology movement founded by an Hegelian inspired biologist in 19th century Germany. It reified 'ecosystems' into organic wholes and envisioned a society ruled by bureaucrats called 'scientists' whose permissions were required even for what we regard as normal activities of human life. They were obsessed with man's impact on 'ecosystems' and opposed industrialization. The back to the land movement of the early ecologists was incorporated by the Nazis and the early Green movement.
The viros today are using the power of the National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Forest Service, and more state agencies than you can count to deny private property rights and impose progressively more government land 'ownership' for preservationism and social controls.
The 'environment', is your surroundings, i.e., everything. They are an ideological movement for collectivist control of the environment, i.e., everything, and therefore everyone. Normal people can appreciate scenery without going berserk and becoming ideological nature-worshiping, misanthropic nihilists posing as concerned only about 'pollution'. The viro movement is much worse and much deeper than abusive EPA regulation.
Jan
The juxtaposition between her dystopian life in NYC and the simple beauty of life in the valley is an important element to the movie experience and the understanding of Dagny's journey and the entire point of the book and the movie. Life can be simple and straightforward -- learn, choose, produce, and to everyone else -- get out of our way!
In a 1980 interview she said the movie (in the form of a TV series) "will make the ideas more vivid. More dramatic. Literature, a book, is very abstract art, probably the most abstract art. And a television show would be the perfect vehicle to concretize the meaning of the book's events. Not philosophical teaching so much, as the overall, what I call, 'sense of life', the basic abstraction of the book. To tell people what kind of world it would be. not tell them. Show them."
So she saw a movie as complementing the book, bringing out the basic sense of life through illustrating it in action, not a different form of presenting the book.
There were several attempts to produce a movie with different people and there has never been any indication that she wanted the entire AS Galt's speech read in a film which she saw as a way to "show" and "not philosophical teaching". Creative control over what was used from the speech in what way is not a demand to put that whole speech on film.
I don't remember if any of the attempts at a movie reached the point of directing shooting, let alone anything near the point of Galt's speech where a director, as opposed to pre-production planning, would argue about it. You would have to know the context before accepting an accusation like that from an angry detractor.
The various short speeches are another matter, and maybe she did not want someone taking something out she wanted included. She had good reasons for what she wanted included, based on both her philosophical integrity and Hollywood experience; unlike the typical directors with different goals and standards. I haven't seen the script she wrote for the first third of AS; that would tell us a lot about what she was doing with dialog from shorter 'speeches'.
TheMysterian said "I think Ayn Rand's insistance on including Galt's entire speech was a major factor that kept the movie from being made for so long" and you agreed with him, saying "Yes she did".
It would not be possible to read a speech for 4 hours in a movie. The idea is preposterous, and so is the accusation that Ayn Rand held up the movie demanding it. None of it is remotely plausible. Does it make any sense to you? This is how malicious, anti-Ayn Rand rumors are started and spread and you shouldn't be misled into having a part of it.
There were several attempts to produce AS with different major producers and the key issue was always over control of the script, not including a 4 hour speech. The final deal that was in fact underway for a miniseries with NBC required that if Ayn Rand did not approve the script after working with them on it she would correct it herself. The project was was well underway but was killed in 1977 when Fred Silverman took over NBC and cancelled the project because he didn't like it. It was not over including a 4 hour speech in a movie.
Likewise for a previous major promising agreement she thought she had in 1972 with Albert Ruddy, who very much had wanted to produce AS. She publicly announced that she had sold the rights while retaining the right of approval of the script, stating that "for almost fifteen years, I had refused to sell Atlas Shrugged except on condition that I would have the right of approval of the film script". Ruddy reneged on the agreement. Ayn Rand did not walk out because they wouldn't include a 4 hour speech in a movie.
That claim is contrary to anything Ayn Rand said or Ruddy said in his previous interview in which he described how they had agreed on how much the novel would have to be cut back and what the story would be. The studio would not give her control over the script regardless of speeches or anything else. Ayn Rand did not want or demand a 4 hour speech. It had nothing to do with holding a movie up for decades over reading a 4 hour speech in a movie.
This is what Michael Jaffee, the NBC producer who was working with her on the agreed on project, with her in control of the script, said about constructing the story for the movie:
"The principle issue was that you were not going to be able to make a movie of Atlas Shrugged and include everything from the book. There just wasn't enough time; it would take thirty hours. She, in fact, sat down and read the entire John Galt speech and timed it. It was four hours and twenty minutes or something, so she knew you weren't going to take three nights on TV to read John Galt's speech. So she said, 'You have to find a dramatic equivalent for that. But I am going to edit that speech for you, so don't worry, and I will get that speech down to three to seven minutes. I'll have to do it; no one else is equipped to do that.'"
"I was always fond of talking about reducing the speech because everybody says, 'Oh, everything's sacrosanct.' Well, things are sacrosanct, but she was smart and thoughtful about what things to make sacrosanct."
There was no split over her "wanting the whole speech" and no such demand held up the movie for decades. The key issue in the negotiations was always final approval of the entire script, which she insisted on and got in the NBC project until Silverman came in and killed it because he didn't want the project. Jaffe: "When Fred Silverman took over the network, he hated the project, so he cancelled it."
Whatever Rudy said in the Prophesy film you shouldn't be helping to spread the story that Ayn Rand prevented the movie from being made over such a preposterous accusation as her demanding a 4 hour speech, or anything remotely like that, in a movie.
Personally, after about two hours, I can go into 'left-brain overflow' with just about any kind of inputs. And I've got some OCD!
I really enjoyed the entire movie. They capture all the essentials of the book.
Cheers,
Bob