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Category: Ayn Rand

Happy 107th Birthday, Ayn Rand

2 February 2012

On this date in 1905, Ayn Rand was born. She escaped slavery in Soviet Russia, came to America – to New York City, then Chicago and Los Angeles and back to New York City, where she died in 1982 – and wrote screenplays, best-selling novels, newspaper columns and plays consumed by millions. She challenged the world and her philosophy, Objectivism, has since advanced throughout the West and among intellectuals, thanks to the efforts of the Ayn Rand Institute and, in particular, its founder, Leonard Peikoff.

I knew when I first read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as a teen-ager that the world can be and ought to be as wonderful as Ayn Rand imagined and anyone who thinks her 1957 epic is strictly a dark prophecy of a nation in decline needs to think again. Atlas Shrugged is foremost an inspiring story of man at his best and it also offers an enriching philosophy for living on earth. Rand, who understood and fled Communism, saw that America was in deep trouble. Having seen the rise of the New Left first hand, and having been the recipient of its worst ideas, I also sensed, even 30 years ago, that the country was headed toward dictatorship. As I studied Objectivism, reading Dr. Peikoff’s philosophy books (The Ominous Parallels and Objectivism), attending lectures, courses and conferences, and engaged in what was really the first application of Objectivism to politics, a premature attempt to save medicine as a profession (in which some good was accomplished), I confirmed the worst. With the state-sponsored seizure of Elian Gonzalez, the Islamist attack on September 11, 2001, Black Tuesday, and today’s impending economic collapse, I must accept the fact that America is coming to an end, as Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff warned for decades.

But today brought good news. I’m not talking about the announcement that a second installment in a low-budget film series adaptation of Atlas Shrugged will be directed by Duncan Scott, who co-produced the restored film adaptation of We the Living, and released this fall (though with Scott on board, it may be an improvement over Atlas Shrugged, Part 1). Thanks to one of Objectivism’s new intellectuals, Tore Boeckmann (editor, The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand), I learned that Leonard Peikoff’s forthcoming new book, The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West are Going Out, is being published this fall and is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Dr. Peikoff’s book is based on his final course, which I wrote about here, and I have every reason to think his third book will enlighten those who move the world. There are other reasons for encouragement, too many to mention, in several works – plays, exhibits, books, podcasts, movies, and I include my own work – by those influenced by the genius of Ayn Rand, including those who make no claim to be Objectivists. There isn’t much time to spare the United States of America, as far as I can tell, but her philosophy of reason, individual rights and egoism is making progress in changing the world. To which I can only say: Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand, in the name of the best within us.

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Movies, Philosophy

Movie Review: Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged

18 January 2012

Surprisingly, there’s a lot I don’t like about the new Ayn Rand documentary, which I watched with a sold-out audience, including friends who worked on the 84-minute film, at a special screening at the ArcLight Hollywood last night. Because I know many of those who appear in or worked on it, I wanted to like every second of Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged and there is much to like in this movie, which I enjoyed as an experience of seeing Ayn Rand on the big screen again. By the time we see what relevance Rand’s epic novel has to today’s dark times, there are many good points, read directly from her 1957 Random House bestseller and contrasted with well-chosen works of art depicting opposing ideas. But the good points get bogged down in an overbearing movie.

With a booming male narrative, breakneck pace and incessant score, the independent documentary is better suited to the intimacy and immediacy of television. Writer and director Chris Mortensen achieves amazing results given the ground he has to cover in this short time frame. There’s just too much material crammed into the movie, which covers the truly prophetic Atlas Shrugged, set in what novelist and philosopher Rand called the day after tomorrow and dramatizing America collapsing under a corrupt establishment of government regulators and their favored businessmen who prey on individual achievement. Nothing wrong with being ambitious, but the unfortunately named Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged, which at its worst plays like a bombastic infomercial, delves into the book’s history at the expense of explaining key connections to today’s events.

The film relies too heavily upon two discredited Rand biographers, Jennifer Burns and Anne Heller, both of whom wrote deeply flawed accounts of Rand’s life in 2009, though they don’t repeat their worst errors or transgressions here. Presumably, they’re included for balance, the lack of which was a criticism of Michael Paxton‘s excellent Oscar-nominated 1997 documentary, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, but this effort is best when it sticks to people who know and grasp Rand’s life, art and ideas, such as former Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) director Mike Berliner (editor of Rand’s Russian Writings on Hollywood and Letters of Ayn Rand) and current ARI President Yaron Brook. What most Atlas Shrugged readers know, that reading Ayn Rand makes you feel awake and alive and achieves a sense of weightlessness, is left to Burns for observation. But neither Burns nor Heller has much credibility on the subject.

A steady stream of scholars and students and businessmen capably discuss Rand’s ideas and the students’ insights are most effective in demonstrating the relevance of Atlas Shrugged. The most prophetic points are in abundant evidence and the discussion of the tunnel scene is particularly clear and compelling. However, Objectivists will want to know where is English literature professor Shoshana Milgram, who has lectured extensively on Rand and her greatest literary influence, Victor Hugo, or philosophy professor Robert Mayhew, who has edited several volumes on Rand’s courses and writings, or Rand’s heir, Leonard Peikoff? Each of them has produced outstanding material about Atlas Shrugged. General fans of the book may simply wonder at the absence of literary scholars in a film about the power of a novel.

As propaganda for an exceptional book that runs over a thousand pages, contains larger-than-life themes that challenge the dominant ideas of our times and tells the unforgettable story of the mind on strike, Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged partially succeeds. Among the assets are images of Ayn Rand in rare footage, including the author at a press conference with the film’s comic relief, a colorful movie producer named Al Ruddy (The Godfather), who pitched a movie version of Atlas Shrugged to her until she pitched it back (and did he drop the ball). Other footage includes scenes from the first cinematic adaptation of Rand’s novel, last year’s unsuccessful Atlas Shrugged, Part 1, and a rarely seen clip from President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell speech, in which Ike essentially warned about encroaching total government control of industry. So there is plenty of good, insightful material here, and Mortensen’s judgment can be impeccable, but there is too much of it, it is too imposing, and, as usual, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, which has remained in print, sold over a million copies and should be read and studied by every rational man and woman, deserves better.

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Movies, Philosophy, Random House

MSNBC Gets Ayn Rand Wrong

21 July 2011

Microsoft’s media venture with NBC Universal’s NBC News, MSNBC, is at it again, propagandizing for the Obama administration and distorting the news, which it does nearly full-time with its roster of former Democratic Party operatives (Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell), most favored former government spouses (Mrs. Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, who never discloses that fact), and lying Christian preachers such as its new host, the Reverend Al Sharpton. Now, they’re lying about Ayn Rand.

In yesterday’s broadcast of the cable news channel’s Rachel Maddow program, the hostess, who had railed against Tea Party Republicans for refusing to compromise with the Obama administration, calling the nation’s imminent so-called default an “apocalyptic deadline”, interviewed an old Washington Post journalist named E.J. Dionne and promptly missed her cue by mispronouncing the name Ayn Rand. The pompous hostess makes a habit of snorting and sniffing her way through all sorts of other people’s mistakes, so one would think she would be more careful. It’s Ayn, pronounced like the word mine, not Ann as she stated. Then Ms. Maddow proceeded to let her guest completely misrepresent Rand and her famous novel, The Fountainhead. In the video segment, linked here in its entirety with the errors contained at approximately 14:00, Dionne falsely stated that the 1943 novel by Ayn Rand is her first. The Fountainhead is not her first novel. That was We the Living.

Dionne, in a set-up segment which was clearly discussed if not rehearsed in advance, proceeded to falsely assert that, in The Fountainhead, when the main character doesn’t get his way, he “blows up a building”. Wrong, E.J. Dionne. Not only is the insinuation that the novel’s protagonist, architect Howard Roark, cavalierly acts on a whim when he doesn’t get what he wants, a total misrepresentation of the novel; to state that Roark “blows up a building” is to distort the plot and theme of Rand’s literary masterpiece, a bestseller still in print which has sold millions of copies and is taught in schools across the country. What E.J. Dionne (and Ms. Maddow and MSNBC by refusing to correct these errors) fail to grasp is that it’s his building, in every sense, and that’s the point of the novel. Roark created the building, contracted for its exact design and construction on simple, narrowly defined terms and one basic condition, and it is essentially his to destroy.

Expecting the lowest standards of journalism from this corrupt media outlet, which I have defended, even praised, in the past, is too much. Errors and distortions are routine in MSNBC programming (Dionne’s error originates in his commentary in the similarly slanted Washington Post), though welfare state and status quo advocate Dionne’s failure to grasp the concept of property ownership comes with the territory. It took eight months for Newsweek to correct MSNBC pundit Howard Fineman’s smear against Ayn Rand following my blog post about his mistake. With any luck and the help of an MSNBC or Post intern or executive with integrity and a mind of his or her own, Maddow’s and Dionne’s attempt to disparage Ayn Rand and the Tea Party movement won’t stand uncorrected that long. Don’t count on it and get used to the lies and distortions. The rich and powerful intellectual fusion of the press and the state, best exemplified by MSNBC, more than state-sponsored NPR and PBS, knows that they’re fighting the philosophy of Ayn Rand. The contest is just getting started.

[7/24/2011 Update: No response to my request for a correction from E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post]

[12/08/2011 Update: Still no response to my request for a correction from E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post]

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Journalism, Literature, News, Politics, Television

Movie Review: Atlas Shrugged, Part 1

30 March 2011

Atlas Shrugged Part 1 poster The roughly 90-minute Atlas Shrugged, Part 1, scheduled for release in selected cities on April 15, is neither a work of art nor a travesty. It is as good or bad a movie as one has reason to expect.

The movie, based on the first third of Ayn Rand’s masterpiece about the mind on strike, Atlas Shrugged, is fast, flip, and claustrophobic. In a complex story rich with cinematic potential about those who produce incalculable value in oil, metal, and railroads, dramatizing drilling, sparks, and friction ought to come easily. Here, in an arc about the creation of the John Galt Line, a stunning achievement in the face of government control which fuses energy, material, and transportation, the action is muted, diminished, and downsized. There’s a distinct lack of suspense.

There’s also a lack of sexual tension, which is crucial to the relationship between handsome steel industrialist Hank Rearden (Grant Bowler in the best performance) and his attractive railroad customer, businesswoman Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling in an uneven portrayal), who dares to order his breakthrough Rearden Metal for the new line she’s planning to build. The first third of the novel belongs to them; here, it’s a slice of business life. Thanks to Ayn Rand’s ingenious integration of plot and theme, it’s an interesting slice but, even with an effective recreation of Dagny’s claim on a bracelet, it’s been drained of sexual excitement. Amazingly, because this is integral and hard to miss, there’s no pervasive sense of loneliness, either, as Dagny Taggart takes on her monumental task. Some of the most moving scenes in the novel involve Dagny’s Herculean struggle to create something new and exciting in spite of everything dragging her down; her solitary moments in a back alley office, watched by a shadowy figure, are nowhere to be seen. What she tries to do is her answer to the sense of impending doom and her bond with Rearden is part of her reward. Neither her loneliness nor her presumed liberation are properly pictured here.

In one scene, Dagny feels the world closing in and reaches out to Rearden, looking for an answer. It’s one of the film’s best scenes, conveying the depth of her struggle against injustice and some unseen, unidentified evil, and there are other good scenes, too. The world’s creators mysteriously disappear in this broadly futuristic version of 2016, in which aviation has been downed, decent people are left begging for government handouts, and society is falling apart with only a few titans left to produce while corrupt bureaucrats and businessmen rise to power. Among them are Dagny’s brother (Michael Marsden), Hank’s wife (Rebecca Wisocky, nailing the part), and others who take some perverse pleasure in tearing apart what’s good. Sounding like the latest Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama directive, or the latest anti-capitalist diatribe or sermon from the college-bred liberal or the Bible-thumping conservative, they give the movie its sense of realism and relevance to today’s world and Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 is focused in a certain sense on them. Ayn Rand’s ability to account for philosophy and envision the future is nothing short of astonishing and the picture eerily taps her startling forecast of America’s demise. Other fine moments depict when Taggart Transcontinental meets Rearden Metal, with the sun-kissed train curving through the meadows and mountains, and Dagny’s and Hank’s discovery of what’s left to rot in an abandoned factory in Wisconsin.

The mystery of the movie is why the mind is going on strike (if and when it is), and what lies at the root of what destroys, and moves, the world. And, in depicting a novel which brilliantly deconstructs and dramatizes altruism, the idea that one has a moral obligation to help others, Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 reduces her radical rejection of this idea to a line about “stupid altruistic urges” which doesn’t come close to Ayn Rand’s philosophy, let alone express her bold, exalted alternative: the virtue of selfishness.

So, the first movie adaptation of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is lacking; the script appears to have many fingerprints and some serious problems, the production apparently faced enormous challenges of rights, budget, and schedule and libertarians appear to have held more sway over the movie than Objectivists, leaving the world’s foremost authority on Ayn Rand’s ideas and work, Leonard Peikoff, out of the loop. But A is A and the fact that this movie was made, is, in today’s tragically disintegrating culture, an achievement. Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 ultimately does not have reverence for the 1957 novel, but it’s as though it doesn’t know how, or why, and it tries. If we lived in a society in which Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was understood, accepted, and applied to everyday lives, we wouldn’t be stuck in the sludge that surrounds us, and a mangled movie adaptation would not feel like an accomplishment. But we are and it does, and that’s that, so see the independent, low-budget film version known as Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 for what it is, and know that you are catching a mere glimpse of something deeper, more mysterious and meaningful, which portrays man at his best. See the movie, but only if you read the book.

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Movies

Trailer for Atlas Shrugged: the Movie

11 February 2011

Here’s the trailer for Atlas Shrugged, the movie. My thoughts were posted here. The final version has been slightly edited from what I saw, but it’s basically the same.

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Movies

Happy Birthday, Ayn Rand

2 February 2011

Today is Ayn Rand’s (1905-1982) birthday. So, I decided to check out the new movie version of the first part of her 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, in earnest (more on the film, which I have not seen, later). I spent some time with the picture’s screenwriter, co-producer Brian Patrick O’Toole, who is adapting the novel for the screen. Having seen a sneak preview of the trailer for the movie, scheduled to open in select theaters on April 15, I must say that this low-budget effort looks better than I had expected. Exciting enough for the uninitiated, substantial enough for Objectivists and Ayn Rand fans, the trailer opens with a man named Midas Mulligan, met by a shadowy figure who has something important to say. From there, we see skylines, speeding trains, and men of steel (including Ellis Wyatt, Hank Rearden, and, of course, Dagny Taggart), and the action and drama never let up. The trailer looks crisp, clean and polished and wraps with the question: Who is John Galt? A tag-on teases “…Ask the Question.” This is the world’s first movie about Ayn Rand’s epic theme, the mind on strike, and, though it is impossible to gauge a movie’s merits on the basis of a trailer, for what it’s worth, I’m impressed.

Another movie trailer, the two-minute trailer for the 1949 cinematic adaptation of Rand’s third novel, The Fountainhead, which she adapted for Warner Bros., wrongly refers to the story’s mediocre architect Peter Keating, as “selfish.” But a DVD feature, The Making of The Fountainhead, included with the erroneous trailer on the disc’s extras, gets Ayn Rand’s ideas right in an informative account that makes a solid companion to what is rightly called a unique and hugely entertaining movie.

Anthem stage Rand’s second novel, Anthem, has been adapted for a comic book (or graphic novel) by Charles Santino with illustration by artist Joe Staton. Anthem: The Graphic Novel ($15), published this week in trade paperback, is the first ever illustrated novelization of any of Ayn Rand’s work. Anthem was also adapted by Jeff Britting for the stage in Austin, Texas, where it was apparently a resounding commercial and critical success. Rand’s unsung first novel, We the Living, was pirated in fascist Italy in 1942 for what became an outstanding screen version. I reviewed the movie for the Ayn Rand Institute’s newsletter, Impact, here.

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Culture, Movies, Visual Arts

100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand

10 November 2010

From 1996 to 2003, Scott McConnell conducted a series of interviews with dozens of people who met, worked for or with, and/or knew Ayn Rand (1905-1982). The new trade paperback, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand is the result. This long-anticipated volume, a project of the Ayn Rand Archives (full disclosure: several of my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances including McConnell are among the participants), is an important addition for anyone interested in Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and creator of Objectivism.

100 Voices is an ambitious work about a literary and philosophical genius but it is a collection of interviews about Rand and the content should not be taken as fact or biography. Here, we read that Rand sided with Gen. Douglas MacArthur over President Harry Truman, thought Walt Disney’s animated features were too cute, met Senator Joseph McCarthy, found something to like about former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon, visited the Playboy Club, and entertained Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable at her home. There is more, both from those who did not like her and (mostly) those who admire her. The 600-page-plus edition covers her early Hollywood years through her last days in New York City, when she apparently considered going back to Hollywood to finish a script for Atlas Shrugged. Drawbacks include overly scripted questions and an occasional dead-end interview. The interviews were conducted by Archives researcher McConnell, now a documentary filmmaker, with everyone from Rand’s dentist to Fountainhead co-star Patricia Neal. Most exchanges occurred via telephone and it shows in the transcripts, which come off rather clipped, with short, general questions, what seem like heavily edited answers, and not a lot of conversational back-and-forth. For example, Miss Neal, interviewed in 1997, answers “[s]he was very friendly” when asked what Ayn Rand was like and that particular interview is less than four pages. McConnell notes that each person interviewed (or an heir) approved of each interview. I came across minor errors and inconsistencies, which McConnell acknowledges in advance in the preface. Rand fans may already be familiar with much of this material.

There are multiple rewards, including the stories of the Florida family that hosted Miss Rand during her attendance of the historic Apollo 11 rocket launch at Cape Canaveral in 1969, and ordinary, middle class Americans seem to have the most consistently fond and insightful memories of Ayn Rand. These are personal and business recollections of Rand at work, at play and, occasionally, in crisis, at various stages of her extraordinary career, so there are tales about everything from her visits to the doctor’s office to her visit to West Point, and that alone makes this book worth reading. 100 Voices is an unprecedented collection of never-before-published interviews with those who knew the 20th century’s most challenging thinker including her friends, family, and associates, actress Raquel Welch, architecture photographer Julius Shulman, writer Mickey Spillane, actor Robert Stack, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, and the late financial journalist Louis Rukeyser, who interviewed Ayn Rand for his television program months before she died. These 100 voices talk about Ayn Rand’s thoughts and actions on everything from her cats to psycho-epistemology and Immanuel Kant and their answers, comments, and claims make one want to delve deeper into her novels, short stories, plays, lectures, and ideas.

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, New American Library

Robert Mayhew Interviewed

13 October 2009

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Robert Mayhew, a philosophy professor and prolific editor and author, about Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living (1936). He discusses the book, its urgently relevant theme of the individual versus the state, the movie version, and his thoroughly engaging Essays on Ayn Rand’s We the Living. This is the first of three exclusive interviews about this classic work of literature planned for publication on the site. I aim to post interviews with Ayn Rand Institute archives manager Jeff Britting, who wrote an Ayn Rand biography and co-produced the Oscar-nominated 1990s documentary, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, and Duncan Scott, who co-produced the restored film adaptation of We the Living, made in Italy in 1942 and reconstructed with Ayn Rand’s cooperation.

Read the interview with Dr. Mayhew here.

Permalink | Posted in Ayn Rand, Books, Interviews, Lexington Books, Oxford University Press, Philosophy

He’s Just Not That Into You, Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interview

6 February 2009

He's Just Not That Into You

Amid the bad news—and the Senate is reportedly assembling to approve the largest spending package in American history, a disgraceful piece of legislation—including hundreds of thousands out of work, I was predisposed for a light picture show. The vacuous He’s Just Not That Into You hit the spot. The romantic comedy, featuring an ensemble cast led by Ginnifer Goodwin and Justin Long, is a plotless, interconnected affair. Relatively young people do scenes in mini-monologues—several to the camera, breaking the wall—about relationships. Though it is trite, cloying and a pinch brighter than an episode of Love, American Style, it beats watching Congress and the White House decimate what’s left of American capitalism.

The multiple member cast includes Goodwin as a desperate female who learns from barkeep Long that men mean what they say (hence the title). The most involving couples are played by these two, Jennifer Aniston and Ben Affleck and, showing self, home and marriage as works in progress, Jennifer Connelly (nicely spinning her Little Children character) and Bradley Cooper. This trivial movie represents what might be called imitation romanticism and there is no excuse for some of the script’s trash but some of it’s insightful and—despite what pompous Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert says—the happy endings are plausible. One, in particular, delivers a Valentine’s Day reminder that happiness can be found in being alone. I found things to like here, with an old-fashioned, big city feel (the setting is Baltimore, Maryland) made of cubicles, coffeehouses, and gigantic neon signs for American business.

Of course, as soon as I heard that Scarlett Johansson was in the picture, I knew her voluptuous body would be featured in half the movie (it is), and I brought ear plugs in case she’d successfully negotiated a contract in which Warner Bros. was required to let her sing (see my post about her album on 22 August 2008). Thank goodness this was not permitted, though she has a singing scene in which her voice is not heard (or I blocked it out). But they sent the soundtrack and I am sorry to say she won that battle, hacking up Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye” and sending children and dogs running for cover. The rest of the CD, with tunes by The Black Crowes, R.E.M. and a smattering of mid-range artists I’ve never heard of, is mediocre and the best tracks—The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” and Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”—have been around for a while. Most songs from the movie are forgettable.

A better buy is a new paperback from Lexington Books, Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed, which I’m reading in spots. The 270-page edition includes 32 interviews with Ayn Rand (1905-1982), a 1999 radio interview with Leonard Peikoff as an epilogue and an index. Between 1962 and 1966, she conducted a series of radio broadcast interviews for Columbia University on certain subjects and these are especially interesting, particularly her thoughts on the American Constitution and law. Here, at last, are transcripts from her two 1967 appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson—a glimpse of the author of Atlas Shrugged at her peak—and interviews by CBS News’ Mike Wallace, NBC News journalist Edwin Newman and the late financial reporter Louis Rukeyser. Now if only someone will publish her interviews on NBC’s Today Show, with Tomorrow’s Tom Snyder and with talk show host Phil Donahue. Reading what the self-proclaimed radical for capitalism had to say is more captivating, and urgently relevant, than ever.