I mean, if you saw the play Les Miserable without the music, and then with the music, you may go in there saying, ‘oh hell, I would never want to see that great book in a musical.’

Right because Victor Hugo and Ayn Rand should definitely be considered as similar.

Victor Hugo’s death on 22 May 1885, at the age of 83, generated intense national mourning. He was not only revered as a towering figure in literature, he was a statesman who shaped the Third Republic and democracy in France. More than two million people joined his funeral procession in Paris from the Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon, where he was buried. He shares a crypt within the Panthéon with Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola. Most large French towns and cities have a street named for him. The avenue where he died, in Paris, now bears his name.

A heavy smoker, Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974. Although she had long opposed government assistance programs, she wrote that it is perfectly moral to accept Social Security and Medicare, given the coercion used to collect the resources for such programs and the widespread impoverishment that results. Consistently with the advice she gave others, Rand accepted such payments for herself and her husband. Several more of her closest associates parted company with her, and during the late 1970s her activities within the Objectivist movement declined

A musical! What a fabulous, FABULOUS idea! If they play their cards right, maybe they can get Franz Liebkind to do the book and music. He has experience with turning. . . erm. . . controversial characters into lovable musical leading men.

I presume yakety sax will be the soundtrack.

Maybe we can get Julie Taymor to stage it on unreliable guy wires, with songs by Bono and The Edge — except with no workers’ comp this time.

SteveM wins the intertubes for today.

The only way to make Galt’s speech entertaining: epic pie fight.

The producers released that clip on purpose?

An insufferable prick comes home to his insufferable prick of a wife and a bunch of insufferable pricks they call friends. Everybody apparently hates each other. His friend asks for a donation in the most insufferably prickish way imaginable.

If Henry Reardon kept his eyes closed and giggled at inappropriate times, this could be a big-budget remake of The Room.

Holy shit–this is too damn funny. It sounds like something from the Spinal Tap world.

“Galtspell!” (Shameless swiped from Allan, who left that comment at another degenerate snark kiosk.)

Muppets. Janice as Dagney, Kermit as Reardon, and Gonzo as Galt.

Other than the plot, characters, dialog, cast, acting, direction, editing, set and music, what was wrong with it?

Oh, and the lighting. But let’s not nit-pick.

OK, I know you were just going to be a bit silly with your suggestion, but, really, I say, Hold on a minute, cuz I really think you’ve got something here.

Let’s say we take the pie fight and make it an analogy. Like, say, it would be about how liberals don’t have the stomach for what it takes to make it in this world. So, in the pie fight, they would be throwing up a lot. Then, maybe, as Galt enters the scene, after a massive barrage of pies by his supporters drowns the liberals, all the vomit would part, like Moses and the Red Sea.

At this point, I’m just blue-skying it, but help me out a bit more, cuz I really think you’ve got something here…

Am I the only one having trouble with the concept of an Objectivist chorus? I mean, anyone singing harmony is a looter, no?

OK, I think you’ve got a point, but I think there’s a way to deal with it.

Each member of the chorus will sing his/her part alone, one after the other. This demonstration of individualism would be more in keeping Galtian ideals anyway. Whuddya think?

I just ran that passage through Google Translate and set it for Bullshit -> English, and I got this:

6. Have you decided how you’ll tackle John Galt’s epic speech in part three?

That piece of shit? I haven’t got the first fucking clue.

Zzzzzzzzzz

I heard if you put on Dark Side of the Moon it syncs up perfectly with Atlas Part III. Or maybe it was Milli Vanilli’s All Or Nothing. Either way, the hills will be alive with the sound of boredom.

Shruggin’ In The Rain really, really needs to be on ice. I.e., literally, as an ice-skating ballet-drama.

Disclaimer: I always link to that video whenever someone tells me that prog is a genre deserving of less than utter contempt.

A huge tent, lots of clown costumes….

I mean, if you saw the play Les Miserable without the music, and then with the music, you may go in there saying, ‘oh hell, I would never want to see that great book in a musical.’

He’s right. That’s how I felt about Les Miserables, that’s how I felt about Oliver, and that’s how I still feel. And in those cases, I hadn’t even read the great books, I’d just seen great previously-made movies. But this guy doesn’t have to worry about David Lean or Richard Boleslawski or Frederic March or Charles Laughton or Alec Guinness, although the shades of King Vidor and Gary Cooper may color his cinematic reveries. But I doubt it. I really do.

All I know is that it won’t be complete without:

“I am just a simple architect
no romance do I seek
I just wanted forty million dollars
for my plans I drew last week

Oh what’s an architect to dooooooo”

and

“I can draw, I can draw, I can sinnnngggg!”

Chills. I get chills.

I don’t know guys, I just remember when I saw LOTR* part 1 I thought to myself that it would be really fresh if part 3 would be a musical. Maybe in a casino. Maybe in a mountain retreat. Great minds and all that with John Aglialoro. Needless to say, like millions of others I was severely disappointed.

*Lord of the Rings for any of you not up on the cool lingo. And no I never managed to get past the first chapter of the books.

But wouldn’t it be cool to see Dagny come out in her Brunhilde horns and (to the tune of Die Valkyrie) screech:

Looters and moooochers,
Looters and moooochers,
Looters and MOOOchers,
Piss of and DIE!

OK, I guess not.

I’m more interested in Part 2, which I understand will be 3-D Claymation, put together by thousands of Thai children.

The oldies band Flash Cadillac used to do “audience requests.” They’d ask the audience to shout requests for songs, and then they’d play all of them — simultaneously.

This site/thread should be called “Atlas Shrugged: The Snarkening.”

One of the more horrifying things about Randfans is that they think her books are anthropological reporting. Personally, I wish they’d just actually go Galt. I’ll even let them use all of the roads, regulations, and municipal goods they scorn, one last time, if they promise to go away and not come back.

Well, if the chorus is going to be TRULY Objectivist and Randian they’d all sing in whatever key they chose to sing in, whenever they chose to begin singing. And in whatever tempo felt right. It makes for an interesting sound, you know…

I was discussing all this with a Libertarian once who actually thought that the example of plumbing made a good case for Galtian independence. I take care of my plumbing in my house, he said, and you take care of yours. He thought that was a good illustration of how no collective resources were necessary at all.

It’s as if someone blocked up the sewer and water main connections to their brains, so everything just backs up into a stagnant sea of stupid.

Marion @ 27: There was a songbook for the Mahavishnu Orchestra that had one song where the solo was to be taken in a key determined by the astrological sign of the person improvising.

They included a chart, Virgo was D, Scorpio was Eb, and so on.

Hopefully, he’ll include Ayn Rand’s recently discovered muse-ical showstopper. That little masterpiece (scored for kazoo’s)was originally offered up to ‘The Music Man’; atlas, they shrugged it off. Working titles were “Just Kidding” and “Do as I Say, Not as I Do.” Some say it was autobiographical and her most important contribution to the narrow musical genre of fantasy fables.

I suppose he’d also mine and extrude his own copper tubing? Mine and smelt the tin and lead for solder? How about the electrical? Will he be building his own entrance and circuit breakers, light fixtures, recepticles, and bulbs? I suppose he could fell his own tress for the timber, but making clapboards and shingles by hand are a bitch. Being self sufficient is an admirable goal in life…but most Galtians I know can’t hit the nail head with a hammer, 9 swings out of 10. Libertarians talk a good game, but they are the most interdependent people on the planet. If they truly had to survive independently and rely on their own skills, I think most would be surprised how quick they’d fail.

And here’s the irony point (at no extra charge): If government were to evaporate tomorrow, guess which following group would have the best chances of long term survival – the rugged individualists (aka Galtians, libertarians, or my preferred label, anti-socialists) or their hated arch-enemies, us collectivists/socialists?

I liked the original better, just wish it had vampires.

And zombies!

Ah, a Billy Jack for the tea party set.

If they add leggy super models and Shakira’s ass, I’d call it a winner.

It actually looked more like the English garden party set to me — I kept waiting for the butler to announce that the Earl of Throckmorton had just arrived…

This movie, along with the entire Wingnut Welfare circuit, disproves the Free Marketeer’s whole argument. The erstwhile “producer” made a ton of money making exercise equipment, so he bankrolls a movie with that money, let along a trilogy, with these pathetic attempts at movie-making. It will flop because it is so horrendous. That “firmer” interview is so unintentionally funny that it’s hilarious. The “Market” will reject this crap so completely, yet they will keep getting made.

Cue the whiny “Hollywood Liberals killed the movie” excuses in….3….2….1…

The SNL skit with Lord & Lady Douchebag and their peers.

Now can somebody explain to me the difference between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged? I can never remember which is which.

I kept waiting for the butler to announce that the Earl of Throckmorton had just arrived…

This Earl?

The story is actually a lot better than that.

Aglialoro is the CEO of Cybex, which makes commercial exercise equipment. While he’s been moonlighting as a film producer his primary employer has been spinning into the ground. Cybex had to recall 19,000 treadmills in 2008 because of controllers that caused the motors to speed up suddenly. Last year they were on the wrong end of a $66 million liability judgment when one of their weight machines tipped over paralyzing a physical therapist.

Shareholders in Cybex (CYBI), the Galtian heroes of his own Randian epic, have taken a double-wetsuit screwing at the hands of Aglialoro. Share price has fallen from $7 to $0.75 in the last four years, and are down ~75% since Aglialoro became CEO in 2001. Cybex has been a dog even if you factor out the 2008 market meltdown. Since the NASDAQ (Cybex’s exchange) bottomed in March 2009 the exchange as a whole is up 115% and Cybex is down 25% in the same period. That’s right, their share price is lower today than when everyone wondered if we were heading into Great Depression Part Deux.

For this, he was paid a half-million dollars in 2009.

But the key number from Cybex related to Aglialoro’s motion picture ambitions is this: $12.8 million. That’s the market cap for the entire company. Aglialoro owns about 40% of the shares according to 2010 filings. Unless he’s made a boatload of money on the side in the last 20 years, his worth is in the range of $5 million, give or take real estate and personal debt. (His shares were worth $36 million in 2007.)

There isn’t going to be a musical third act to Atlas Shrugged because they’ll never make Part Two. Aglialoro won’t be able to afford it.

I can’t believe they will let this film (or Red Dawn) die, not when we’re all so close to the Wingularity. Anything associated with conservatism gets money thrown at it, particularly if its failure could cause loss of face (look at PJMedia, the Tuckington Post, etc). The only reason they haven’t made this already is Rand’s atheism.

Maybe they can take up a collection from like-minded Gulch dwellers. Really show the moochers and looters how to do it by mooching funds from gullible individualists.

In the clip the needy charity does not want Hank Rearden listed as a donor.

This is strangely similar to the post Citizen United world where so many political organizations are shy of listing their donors.

The Fountainhead was a fun movie with Gary Cooper.

So I wonder. In the alloted time of the movie, how much time will the characters be shown working, being that they are the “producers”, as opposed to sitting around in upscale ‘parties’ drinking cocktails and as the director hinted, using their massive intellect to place bets in a place where the house always wins.

OK, I finally watched the clip. The production values were decent, but the acting was beyond wooden, tending towards Reardon metallish. If this scene were supposed to make us feel sympathy for the Reardon character, it failed. I found myself agreeing heartily with the people who were slagging on him for being inconsiderate of his wife’s feelings. The last bit where the ‘progressive’ token is saying that his organization didn’t want Reardon’s name on the check … totally unbelievable. Progressive causes like money from wherever. Dickhead money spends just as good as saint money. And WTF is the issue with making the guy wait until the morning? Reardon is too fucking high and mighty to write his own checks? He doesn’t have a checkbook in in his expensive drawing room?

You can’t blame the acting when the script is a cross between a comic book and a very special episode of Dynasty. As it must be, given the original material.

My grand synthesizing moment in contemplating Atlas Shrugged came when I realized that everyone in it–protagonists, antagonists, bit players, Dagny, Henry, Galt, walk-ons, extras, “Judge Narragansett,” etc.–EVERYONE is an asshole.

You heard it here first.

Atlas Shrugged is about assholes and trains. The Fountainhead is about assholes and architects.

I’m beginning to detect a theme….

Today, almost everything can look decent. Even the shitfest The Room looks good (I assume the blog here knows about that movie). So it all comes down to the aesthetic, and the aesthetic here is horrible.

The acting is pretty terrible, and the dialogue is really cheesy and stupid (Rearden’s wife is the worst, in both performance and dialogue).

The only thing I think is good is the actor playing Rearden (Grant Bowler is his name, and he’s a New Zealander). He’s got good presence, but he’s just given crap dialogue to work with. Grant has an attitude of “why did I do this film? Oh, yeah, I have to work for a living”.

Honestly, I thought the performance of the actress playing Reardon’s wife was as intended by the director. They wanted her to appear dull and unsympathetic, and she tried her level best to deliver. I’ll blame that one on crap dialogue and direction rather than the skill of the actress.

And while I thought the lighting and sets were competent enough, a lot of the other elements are pretty amateurish. The cuts seem to alternate between abrupt and lazy. When they go to a reaction shot, it looks like the person having the reaction wasn’t even in the same room with the other people [which is often true in movies, but most movies create a more convincing illusion]. Leaving aside the crappiness of the script, it’s still overall pretty poor.

And maybe they could do the iPad/iPhone game, Plants vs. Zombies, as the background.

Can’t wait can’t wait can’t wait!!! I’ll do nothing to help its box office numbers, but when the DVD is price reduced, I’ll be there faster than the Taggert Ltd (or whatever the hell it’s called). “The Fountainhead” is still my A-is-A, number one, giant king beaver double calcutta parlay chain reaction favorite bad movie, but I’m hopeful that this masterpiece may knock it off its pedestal; and by the time parts 1 through 15 of the entire honking grotesquerie are available, it will provide hours and hours and hours and hours of rich, deep belly laughs. Yum!

I wonder how soon they’ll be selling the rights to this thing, so it can be put on by high school drama clubs and community players in all those fly-over towns.

I’m sorry, but in our Brave New Teatard World, all HS drama clubs are canceled unless the production includes FlagshirtJesus riding a dinosaur.

The reason nobody loves them is because they’re geniuses, who work too hard! But those damn liberals will pay! A equals A, muthafuckas!

If its going to be a musical the name should changed to, “Springtime for Galtler”

Just when I had forgotten about this epic bit of mediocrity about to be unleashed, I’m driving around (lost) trying to find a customers’ house I drive past ‘John Galt Rd.’

Then this post comes up…

It’s a goddam conspiracy, a conspiracy of assholes, I tells ya…

If you drive past “Shakira’s Ass Scenic Viewpoint” please post GPS coordinates, stat!

You know, Mel Brooks could have had a field day with this stuff. And Gene Wilder as John Galt would have been brilliant. And we’d have avoided ever having to take Ayn Rand fiction seriously.

Meanwhile, sixty comments later, it dawned on everyone that no one had seen Tbogg since Friday.

Ahem. I’m Inspector UncertaintyVicePrincipal of the Yard, and I’m afraid I must ask that none of the commenters leave the room. I mean all. Leave. Not leave, stay. I must ask that everyone remaining leave the….

I’ve never “seen” Tbogg.

Should I be worried/frightened/rigid/sullen/anxious/gleeful or just hungry and a bit sleepy?

Oh, and it’s not Friday anymore?

“rigid”?

And here is Ayn Rand’s “collective” described to a “T.”

“Lord and Lady Douchebag!”

Hormone-laden beef products affect different folks differentially. Your results may vary/waver depending on stuff. If a train leaves New Hartford at 6 and you’re rigid after 4, but not less than 12, don’t bother consulting a physician unless turbidity has occurred.

That’s how the Rx label read.

What, there’s already something out there that beats Red Dawn as the ultimate unintentionally hilarious right-wing schlockterpiece?

And if by some miracle he attracts a sugar daddy like David Koch to prop him up enough to keep his company and his movie-mogul ambitions alive, we get to point out (yet again) that right-wing ideas need to be propped up with gobs of wingnut welfare in order to thrive. (Hell, Rush Limbaugh succeeded only because his backers were willing to literally give the show away to programming- and cash-starved rural stations looking for cheap airtime filler — and even then it took a number of years and a few tens of millions before he started to catch fire sufficently to break into the bigger markets.)

snerk heh heh!

This clip is crying out for MST 3000 treatment.

The Cinematic Titanic guys (aka the original Misties minus Mike Nelson, who I hear is a wingnut anyway) would do it.

All that’s missing are some bassets lounging around on the floor.

This clip is crying out for MST 3000 treatment.

YES!! Or perhaps a live-blogging/snark viewing in a FDL movie “salon.” A la Sharktapus.

Now can somebody explain to me the difference between The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged? I can never remember which is which.

Here’s a simple visual aid. (Atlas Shrugged is the one with choo choo trains.)

For true believers, they sure felt free to mess with stuff. “Henry” Rearden? Oh, please, it’s “Hank.” Every time I re-read it, I change his name in my mind to “Crank Rearend,” which makes his gay scenes with other industrialists more believeable. And the bracelet was supposed to look like a little bicycle chain. Was that so hard to do?

My suggestion for the monolog would be to do like they did with the theological discussions in The Name of the Rose: turn them into background music. In this case, they could have him drone on while we, the audience, get to see something entertaining. I’m thinking we could just watch a fly crawling around on someone’s coat, stopping to wash its wings, and so on. Or maybe just use the opportunity to show every nook and cranny of the set. It would make those ninety pages just fly by!

Music? Please! There’s only one suitable music for Rand: Gilbert & Sullivan! Where else does every character explain himself or herself at length, warts and all, without becoming excruciatingly boring? (I include Gilbert because it would take his skill in wordplay to do justice to such a gallery of willful, self-describing eccentrics.)

In 3-D with scratch-n-sniff cards?

That’d be fuckin’awesome!

thank you.