Excerpts from a new interview with Vadim Perelman at Box Office Mojo:
Box Office Mojo: Are you one of the men of the mind?
Vadim Perelman: Yes. [Pausing] I am. That’s my way in [to Ayn Rand’s novel]â??where I am right now and where I started, I had to be [a man of the mind]. That’s what my mom told me when she read Atlas Shruggedâ??because she knows I have to have a door to get in [to adapting a literary work] and that’s what she said: “look at your life.” To [live under communism and] have no hot water and come to Hollywood with 14 dollars and not a single contact [and succeed]â??that’s only due to my individualism and my entrepreneurial spirit. I mean, I’m not changing the world. But maybe I am.
Box Office Mojo: Would you go on strike?
Vadim Perelman: If I was feeling victimizedâ??yes, I would.
Box Office Mojo: How does having survived a childhood in Soviet Russia affect your work?
Vadim Perelman: I left with my mother when I was 14. That was 1977. [The communists] were letting [some] Jewish people out for public relationsâ??also because there was a wheat shortage. I remember that [U.S. President Jimmy] Carter and [Soviet dictator Leonid] Brezhnev struck some sort of deal and I remember thinking: we are worth a couple of loaves of bread. It kind of made me who I am. There was a lot of death in my family. That definitely has an effect on my work; it made me stronger. …
Box Office Mojo: The novel is written in three parts. Did you consider producing Atlas Shrugged as a trilogy?
Vadim Perelman: I don’t think it would hold up as a trilogyâ??remember, [J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary series] Lord of the Rings was written as a trilogyâ??but there isn’t enough climax after each part in Atlas Shrugged. …
Box Office Mojo: Is moneyâ??as Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shruggedâ?? the root of all good?
Vadim Perelman: I have a great quote from Ayn Rand that I actually believe: “If there’s a more tragic fool than the businessman that does not realize he’s an extension of man’s highest creative spiritâ??it’s the artist who thinks that the businessman is his enemy.” That should be on the masthead of your Web site. So, that answers your questionâ??and that’s from Atlas Shrugged.
See the full interview for much more about the Atlas movie as well as Perelman’s other movies.