The Rocky Mountain News has reprinted the Wall Street Journal article we mentioned earlier this week titled “The Reel Life of Phil Anschutz.” From the article:
For a brief time, Anschutz and Baldwin were excited about the prospect of filming Ayn Rand’s epic novel Atlas Shrugged. They snapped up the movie rights for more than $200,000 in 2003, only to discover that the 1,075-page book’s sprawling nature, long speeches and many subplots made it an extremely problematic film project. Anschutz insiders say it’s an open question whether they will press on.
The entire article is worth reading, if only for a close look at one wealthy man who believes Atlas belongs on the big screen. From the intro:
Some people know Phil Anschutz, co-founder of Qwest Communications International Inc., as a hard-charging financier who has amassed a $5 billion fortune in oil, railroads and telecommunications. But a very different side of him emerged two years ago, in a late-night phone call.
The call was to Angelo Pizzo, a Hollywood screenwriter known for creating the movie Hoosiers in the 1980s. Anschutz had hired him to help craft a $30 million inspirational film about soccer’s World Cup. Crews in Brazil were about to film a scene of the U.S. coach exhorting his underdogs in a locker-room pep talk. Even though Anschutz had seen the script many times, he was bursting with ideas about what needed to be in that speech.
“Phil wouldn’t stop,” Pizzo recalls. ” ‘Tell them, This is about pride,’ he said. ‘When we go out there, nobody knows who we are, but this is how we will remember ourselves for the rest of our lives.’ He wasn’t just making this movie to entertain people. He desperately wanted it to teach young people about how to deal with life.”