Author: TeamAtlas

BY FREDERICK COOKINHAM

The Hudson Theater preview for the Atlas Shrugged movie included many comments from not only the producers, but also the screenwriter and many others involved behind the scenes. Here’s a full report.

On December 7th, producers John Aglialoro and Harmond Kaslow and The Atlas Society hosted a $100-per-ticket preview of the Atlas Shrugged movie at the 107-year-old Hudson Theatre, off Times Square. This is where Shaw’s Man and Superman had its U.S. premiere in 1905 — the year of Ayn Rand’s birth. A little Shavian irony.

Atlas Society Chairman Jay Lapeyre introduced David Kelley, who spoke on the core philosophical values of the book that had to be in the movie — mainly the theme of “the mind on strike” — though so much else was changed. Kelley described the disappearance of industrialists in the story, “going Galt,” as “a sort of secular Rapture.” The 150 to 200 attendees chortled.

Aglialoro was the man of the hour. He choked up a bit, thanking his comrades in his 18-year quest to get the movie made. He got an appreciative laugh when he announced that the film will premiere in about 100 theatres in thirty cities on April 15th — tax day!

 

Grant Bowler and Taylor Schilling as Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart

Then the preview rolled. It was eight minutes long, including the start of the movie, and the rest cut from about twenty scenes, somewhat like a trailer.

 

There is Galt, in shadowy profile, hat brim down, approaching Midas Mulligan on a dark, rainy street.

A properly sleazy, pouty-lipped Jim Taggart pulls rank on the straight-talking Eddie Willers, disregarding Eddie’s warning of disaster. Ellis Wyatt vents at Dagny.

The real-life Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado is stretched to an impossible tenuousness by the film’s visual effects wizards. “There haven’t been shots of railroads in American movies like this in a long time,” said the Second Unit Director, Mike Marvin, who had taken the shots on rail lines from Chicago to McCoy, Colorado.

Dagny sees a de-railment on TV and hurries to the office, where she argues with Jim. Dagny goes to see Rearden about Rearden Metal rails. Jim and Wesley Mouch conspire. “If we want to bring Rearden down, we have to do it from the inside.” The tempo of the cuts increases. The music gets more tense.

Rearden calls Dagny about a motor he has found, and another character explains the epochal significance of the motor, smiles mysteriously, and says “Who is John Galt?” A title appears: “COMING IN APRIL.” Fade to black.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal quizzed the panel on the making of the film. Fund mentioned meeting several freshman Congressmen in recent days who have read Atlas and, in the case of Nan Hayworth of Westchester County, NY, entered politics largely because of it. Her parents fled socialism in the UK. They went Galt.

Mike Marvin said he wanted to out-do Unstoppable, the current Denzel Washington movie about a runaway train, “with its $100 million budget. I was looking for the David Lean shot, like the train scenes in Dr. Zhivago.”

Hank and Dagny at Rearden Metal

The Post-production Supervisor, John Orland, described the cleaning up that still needs to be done before the film is ready to be printed and distributed. There were signals visible in the clips that indicated where a visual effect or sound effect or music needs to be added. The music in the clips we saw was temporary.

Elia Cmiral, Czech writer of the score for Ronin, will compose the Atlas score. Brian O’Toole, the screenwriter (with Aglialoro), explained that he had recently re-read Atlas to write for a computer game called “Bioshock,” which is based on Atlas.

All in the audience were excited that the producers had shot Atlas with the digital “Red Camera,” the latest technical wonder, which shoots a picture at twice the resolution theatres can show. It means they can blow up sections of the picture to twice the size without losing resolution, and use only part of the shot if they don’t want to use all of it — in effect, editing without editing. They figured Atlas deserved the best. “The Red Camera is the Rearden Metal of cameras,” said Orland.

Fund asked Aglialoro what he wanted the audience to think as they leave the theater. “I want the audience to learn that they deserve to run their own lives,” he replied.

Asked why they added the Galt-Mulligan scene, which does not appear in the novel, Aglialoro explained, “We needed to create a presence of John Galt” in this first part of the trilogy, or the audience that has not read the book will be confused and won’t like the film.

Parts Two and Three should come out at about one year intervals.

He wanted to premiere the film on February 2, Rand’s birthday, but he found that he would have to self-distribute, as well as self-produce, so that pushed the timetable back to April.

Fund wrapped up the panel by predicting that Tea Party groups will rent theaters and bring in supporters to watch the film together. The panel did not ask for questions from the floor, although that must have been the original plan, since there were microphones set up in the aisles, as usual for Atlas Society events.

The clips were run a second time as people drifted out to the lobby for refreshments. The $500-a-ticket crowd had an after-reception and the rest had our own.

 

The Taggart Transcontinental seal

The devoted fan of a novel is wise to lower his expectations before watching any film made from it. This period piece, written between 1945 and 1957, has been reconceived for 2010, as was inevitable. One clever thing they did, to smooth that anachronism, was to have a TV newsman explain that the airlines had all collapsed in bankruptcy, thus reviving railroads as the vital form of transportation.

But the film also posits a total cut-off of Middle Eastern oil, and that is one of the difficulties that will result from anachronizing a 53-year-old story. In telling the story, it was important to Rand that no foreign power seriously threaten the United States. For the premise of the world economy being brought down by a strike of mainly American industrialists to make sense, the United States must reign supreme, unchallenged economically or militarily, or the story would get too complicated and unbelievable.

That situation did prevail (economically, at least) in the 1950s, and that is one example of why the movie should have been done as a period piece. Once you change one premise, you must change every premise, and the story falls apart.

Language has also fallen apart since 1957. In the clips, Rearden says to Dagny, “It is us who move the world, and it’s us who will pull it through.” The “us” should be “we.” It is “we” in the novel, and all the screenwriter had to do was copy it. But apparently he found it necessary to dumb down the language from 1957’s English to 2010’s pidgin. (UPDATE: Apparently this was a change by the actor, not the screenwriter, and is going to be fixed in post-production.)

We can hope, though, that this will not be the only Atlas movie ever made. The remake king is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, which has been made into a film 37 times, according to Guinness.

John Aglialoro’s great achievement is not that he will have made the only Atlas movie, but that he has made the first. If this movie does not get pigeonholed by history as merely Tea Party entertainment and an anti-Obama recruitment device, then it will kick off an exciting new chapter in the spread of the Ayn Rand phenomenon. Twenty Eleven will be fun.

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Frederick Cookinham gives New York City walking tours, available through CenturyWalkingTours.com — including four on the subject of Ayn Rand and six of Revolutionary War sites.  He was interviewed at the Atlasphere in 2005. He is the author of the book The Age of Rand: Imagining an Objectivist Future World and has also written articles for The New Individualist, Nomos, Full Context, and The Pragmatist.

BY RICHARD GLEAVES

Last night John Aglialoro showcased a ten-minute clip from the new Atlas Shrugged movie for an exclusive audience in NYC. Here’s a detailed description of what we saw — and what it portends for the final movie.

Last night I attended the Atlas Society’s sneak preview of the Atlas Shrugged – Part 1 movie — the same preview discussed in the Atlasphere’s recent interview with Producer John Aglialoro.

At the event, the preview was preceded by some notable comments from Aglialoro and others; but the centerpiece of the event was, unmistakably, the ten-minute clip from the film itself.

So how was it?

Very good. Better than I expected. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, as you’ll see from my many nitpicks below. Based upon the preview we saw, however, I think this movie will do credit to the novel and to the characters.

Let’s walk through it bit by bit. This is based on my memory of two viewings, plus some detailed notes.

The opening clip from the beginning of the movie was eight minutes long, proceeding from the opening sequence, through Dagny’s initial conference with Jim and then leaving to see Rearden in Philadelphia to discuss the line. The clip then segued into a sort of trailer for the rest of the film.

The preview we saw had temporary special effects which had not yet gone through post production. The opening sequence also happens to be heavy on commercial stock footage and so, with licenses still being finalized, much of the first minute had Getty watermarks and the like.

The version we saw was also missing a score, which, if done right, will add a lot. They spoke of a big orchestral score and revealed that the composer will be Elia Cmiral, who scored the movie Stigmata, among others.

Opening Sequence

The film opened with a montage: “Dow Jones dropped by 4000” … “Stock volatility” … footage of man-on-the-street interviews.

There’s trouble in the Middle East, gas is $34 a gallon, the airline industry has collapsed from want of fuel, and the railroads are now carrying most passenger and freight traffic.

This montage is interwoven with footage of a train tearing through open country. The train footage is quite effective; it’s very kinetic, very thunderous.

The visual style is quite modern. They linger appropriately on machinery and industry, and the footage — of a conductor’s hands on the wheel of the train, on tinder boxes, on track rails, etc. — is very effective.

We see bits of Wesley Mouch, James Taggart, and Ellis Wyatt bickering on television over oil, industry, etc. A lot of exposition was being thrown out.

As the train hurtles past, we see a close up of a split rail on the track ahead. This train is hurtling towards disaster.

Then it cuts to footage of Congress passing the “Fair Pay” act, making it impossible to fire anyone from any company that is still making money. Ragnar Danneskjold appears in a newspaper headline: “Pirate Ragnar Strikes Again.”

Meanwhile, the train continues to hurtle towards disaster and is kicking up some thunder. The conductor sees the split rail and throws the brake, followed by a shower of sparks.

It then cuts to the exterior of a diner, where it’s raining. The graffiti on the wall reads “ON STRIKE,” which seems like a bit of a tell; but no first-time viewer would get spoiled by it, so let’s call it a subliminal hint.

Inside the Diner

A bum enters the diner, takes a booth, and starts swiping the Sweet’N Lows. The waitress asks him if he’s got any money. He says he’s got plenty. She says, “What happened to you, anyway?”

Then we see a close-up of bums face and he says, “Who is John Galt?”

On the TV screens in the diner, we see Taggart and Wyatt being interviewed: “Mr Taggart, your company is one of the few to survive in our current economic downturn, yet there have been dozens of derailments on your lines in the last year alone….”

Wyatt says, “You wouldn’t be going anywhere without oil.”

He and James bicker, and it is pretty personal in tone, with Wyatt lecturing James about how much better his father’s stewardship of TT was. Wyatt scolds him for opening a branch line in Mexico and neglecting his rails here.

Wesley Mouch is on TV talking about the crucial role of government, and how every company must lend a helping hand.

A dapper gentleman enters the diner and picks up a cherry pie. He is chummy with the waitress, saying, “Thank you, dear,” etc.

She says, “See you tomorrow, Mr. Mulligan”

Outside the Diner

“Midas Mulligan?” says a voice, as he walks in the rain.

“Who’s asking?” Mulligan says.

“Someone who knows what it is to work for himself and not to let others profit off his energy,” answers the man.

“That’s funny,” says Mulligan, “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking.”

“We’re alike, you and I,” says the man.

“Who are you?” Mulligan asks.

Then it cuts to the “ATLAS SHRUGGED” title card.

To me, this exchange seemed stilted, and I’m a bit concerned about the screenwriting — not the organization of exposition, which seems to be going fine, but with the handling of iconic moments and the rendering of Rand’s dialogue.

The end of their conversation seemed abrupt, too, with a strange little fadeout. The producers still have months of post-production left to go, however, so I hope the dialogue dub is better-acted and the glitches are worked out.

Dagny’s Apartment

We hear the sound of a cell phone ringing.

Dagny wakes up on the couch and pads in, in her bare feet, to answer her phone. For my taste, she looks a bit frumpy and “just woke up” for her first scene. But she has her apartment shades moving on a motor, which is kind of cool, and if you’re observant you’ll notice she has a little picture of Ayn Rand taped on her computer monitor.

Eddie is calling her about the wreck. She flips on the TV, sees the destroyed train, and says, “I’ll be right in.”

Thematically, I don’t feel like this is how we should first meet Dagny. Why is she at home asleep while Eddie is already in the office? Does she have to be so frumpy? (And elephants on the couch pillow — really?)

 

Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart

But let me say this before I go any further: Taylor Schilling is an excellent Dagny. That bit of good news is 90% of the battle, right there.

 

We follow Dagny through the streets of New York. She walks down a trashy street with ripped up roads, down into a subway that needs work.

There’s a bum with a sign looking for a job. Dagny stoicly marches with her briefcase down the subway platform, among the other New Yorkers.

James’s Office

James and Eddie are bickering. People are scared by the wreck and are going to the Phoenix-Durango. They reference Ellis Wyatt, who does not want to deal with Taggart Transcontinental. At one point Eddie says “For Christ’s sake” — which jumped out at me.

I found these two a little disappointing. James has got the look down, but he’s a bit stiff. Maybe the acting choice is for James to seem a bit out of his depth as a railroad president. His best moment in the scene is coldly saying, “Are you accusing me of not doing my job?”

He tells Eddie that “everyone’s expendable,” and at one point Eddie says, “Colorado is our last hope.”

Dagny walks in. “Eddie, will you excuse us? I need a conversation with my brother.” Dagny then tells James he’s “pissing off” the heart of their business — Wyatt.

In terms of the language, clearly this is not your father’s Atlas, and these little things take some getting used to. To me they seemed like touches of naturalism, of “folks next door,” which is not what we go to this book for.

But the scene is competently done, if a bit rushed feeling. Dagny is using Rearden metal, and Dagny will take responsibility. She is going to Philadelphia to finalize the deal with Hank Rearden.

It then cuts to moving trains and a “Philadelphia” title card. Dagny walks into Hank’s office and shakes his hand.

Montage from the Rest of the Film

Then, as a sort of trailer for the movie, we saw a montage from the rest of the film: Dagny has no time for James and his friends in Washington. James sits with Phil Larkin and Wesley Mouch in a restaurant, saying, “If we’re going to bring Rearden down, we should do it from the inside.”

Dagny says to Mowen, “You’ve been working with Rearden Metal for four months now; you know it’s the best material available. What’s going on?” Mowen replies, “We’ve been threatened.” “Who’s threatening you?” Dagny asks.

A man in Rearden’s office says, “The State Science institute is requesting you stop production on Rearden Metal.” Rearden says, “If you have any proof that Rearden Metal poses a threat, show it to me.”

A man on radio says, “They’re not allowing any trains into Colorado.”

Dagny sits in car, saying, “This is madness.”

Wyatt — very pissed at Dagny in her office — says, “Maybe you should let me finish speaking! I will not lower my business standards to your lousy level of incompetence.”

Hank is on the phone with Dagny — apparently calling her from his bathtub — and says, “It’s us who move the world.”

Hank says, “Remember that motor company I told you about in Wisconsin?” and talks about the prototype of a motor. Dagny replies, “It’s worth a look.” (The implication here is that they go to the factory looking for the motor, rather than discovering it by accident. This seems a bit odd, but I won’t gripe.) Then Hank and Dagny look down rows of files, for the engineer of that motor firm.

 

Rearden and Dagny at the Twentieth Century Motor Company plant

 

Hugh Akston says, “The secret you are trying to solve is much greater than a motor that runs on atmospheric electricity” — and lifts a cigarette with a dollar sign to his lips.

Dagny talks to Hank about the bridge collapsing. Dagny says to James, “If you double-cross me I will destroy you.”

There’s a gorgeous shot of the Rearden Metal bridge which looks very modern and sleek, like an impossibly delicate filament over space.

Dagny yells “No!” looking at (presumably) the Wyatt fire. Her shout dissolves over a very creepy looking man (Ferris?) smiling blankly and saying, “Who is John Galt?”

And there, the montage ended.

My Preliminary Verdict

Based on this preview, I am hopeful, but my fears are not totally dispelled. Whether the movie is really good or not depends on how they handle the stylistic disconnect between the quasi-naturalism of their storytelling technique and the stylized romantic language of Galt, etc. And that stilted exchange with Mulligan worries me. Visually, however, I think it will be excellent — even innovative.

I think it will be as faithful as a Harry Potter adaptation, which has pitfalls of its own, of course — namely that, in the rush to get everything in, you linger on nothing and so the film becomes a “greatest hits” recap of the book.

The production quality is far higher than I expected; they’ve done a lot with very little money and they definitely “get” the story. So there’s a lot to be hopeful about.

Notwithstanding my criticisms, my expectations have been raised by this preview, and I feel better than I did previously about the project. It looks professional and visually gorgeous. The casting is good, and I look forward to seeing those opening credits in an actual theater.

With Aglialoro at the helm, we could be in far worse hands, and the big picture is that I think we will have 75% or more of our dream Atlas movie. Hopefully with more money and more time for the screenwriting, the second and third parts of the trilogy will be even better, so let’s applaud Aglialoro and his team for getting things off to a good start.

We all know how difficult it has been. The most emotional moment of the night was Aglialoro’s heartfelt thanks to his crew. They made this film, from a standing start, in nine months. Coincidentally, that’s the same amount of time Dagny had for the John Galt line.

I’m a stickler for little details, though. Were it not for some of these details, I would be incredibly excited. As it happens, I may have been able to make a difference in just one detail. After the presentation, I cornered the post-production director and argued they should change the date shown in the opening sequence.

In the opening sequence, over the images of the doomed train, the date appears as “September 2, 2016.” I told him to definitely dump the “2016” or else in ten years the film will seem dated. I think I convinced him that to pin it down to a definite year is a mistake and they shouldn’t do it. We’ll see.

If — when the movie opens on Tax Day April 15th, 2011 — you see a simple iconic “September 2” appear on the screen, with no year, you will know that a lone Atlas Shrugged fan, arm-twisting a production member at a cocktail party, can still make a difference.

Publisher’s note: Want to see a lot more photos like the ones shown here? Join the Atlas Shrugged movie’s Facebook fan page. For regular updates and breaking news about the Atlas Shrugged movie, visit the Atlas Shrugged Movie blog.

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Richard Gleaves is a writer and composer in Astoria, New York.

BY MICHELLE C

Some elements of the human spirit cannot be subdued. Holocaust survivor Nava Shean’s dedication to acting, in the face of great peril, is a testament to just such strength and passion.

A girl of nine plays the part of a Japanese boy bravely facing execution in a theater show in Prague. At eighteen, she has a promising career in Prague’s Children Theater.

The German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938 bans her from acting on the stage, so she acts behind the stage, reciting the dialogue in a puppet show. Deported to Terezin concentration camp, she organizes a theater where inmates perform plays by Edmond Rostand, Rudyard Kipling, Jean Cocteau and Nikolai Gogol. The spectators pay for their tickets to the shows by food.

Throughout her life, Nava Shean remained true to her greatest passion: to be an actress, “even if I can only walk across the stage and wave a handkerchief.” Her love of acting sustained her spirit against internment, economic hardships, and intrigue and betrayal by colleagues.

 

To Be an Actress

Nava Shean was born as Vlasta Schönová in Czechoslovakia in 1919. She survived the concentration camp and in 1948 immigrated to Israel, where she changed her nickname “Vava” into “Nava” and “Schön” into “Shean.”

 

While interned in the concentration camp, Shean performed with fellow actors, musicians, and directors. They rehearsed and performed at night, after a full day of menial labor. Shean also organized a children’s theater, where she adapted the Czech children’s story Broucci (fireflies). She describes how, years later at a reunion of Terezin survivors, a woman approached her, introduced herself as “a firefly,” and told Shean:

I owe you my childhood. My entire childhood was totally erased from my memory because of the trauma of the holocaust… When I was your ‘firefly,’ this became my best childhood memory: to run around the stage and sing ‘the Spring will come.’ It was for me more than you can imagine. You created there, under the difficult conditions, great moments for the children.

Shean’s single-minded concentration on acting enabled her to transcend the ugliness and misery around her. She describes how while in Terezin, she has to work at a hospital ward of elderly women. Shean watches one woman and thinks:

I will perform this on the stage if I ever have such a role. I must register all the small details in my memory. How she is moving her hands, never lies still. Vava, you are disgusting. Rather than feel some human compassion you think about the theater? You are not human. Yes, I am disgusted with myself. I am a true actress.

After the liberation, Shean returned to the Czech stage and served as the manager of a new theater in the town of Brno. In 1948 she escaped Czechoslovakia’s looming Communist takeover, seizing an opportunity to immigrate to Israel. In Israel she overcame the language barrier and eventually performed Shakespearean roles such as King Lear’s Goneril.

As a young single mother, Shean resisted the arguments that her child’s welfare required that she relinquishes acting. Having no relatives in her new country, she found an older couple who served as adoptive parents for her and her baby daughter. Her acting continued uninterrupted.

In 1968, during the Prague Spring, Shean visited Czechoslovakia for the first time since leaving twenty years earlier. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia cut short her visit and she had to escape Communism once again.

But during that visit, she resumed a relationship cut short by World War II with Hubert Hermann, who had saved her sister during the war. Hermann joined her in Israel after eight years of fighting Communist bureaucracy. Excerpts from his letters to Shean during those years provide a glance into life under Communism and an insight into Hermann’s resistance to its stifling impact through wry humor. (“I only need to add up 65 monthly salaries to buy a Škoda!”)

The memoir, To Be an Actress, is not intellectual, but experiential. It does not preach an ideology, but shows Shean’s adherence to her convictions of dedication, hard work, and independence. There is no explicit criticism of the Kibbutz ideology, but Shean tells how she left the Kibbutz once the members voted against her continuing to act.

For her, there was never a choice between acting and economic security. She moved to the city and built her life and career on her own, supporting herself by traveling shows. In the end, Shean was an entrepreneur who established herself as a one-woman theater.

In fact, it would be wrong to say that Shean does not preach an ideology. She preaches the ideology of dedication to her greatest passion: to be an actress.

Translation note: Shean published two versions of her memoir. The Hebrew version was published in Israel in 1991, under the title Lehiyot Sachkanit, and the Czech version was published in the Czech Republic in 1993 under the title Chtěla jsem být herečkou. To Be an Actress is the translation of the Hebrew version.

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Michelle Fram Cohen is a translator, interpreter, and language instructor and tester. She hold graduate degrees in Comparative Literature and History and is pursuing a PhD which combines the two fields. She lives in Maryland with her husband and son.