Below The Beltway

Robert Bidnotto, editor of The New Individualist, has a post up chock full of details about the still-possible project to bring Atlas Shrugged to the big screen.

First, Bidnotto describes how the latest incarnation of the project came into being after the idea of doing a Lord Of The Rings style trilogy was dismissed as both too costly and too impractical for a novel like this:

With a miniseries and a trilogy off the table, the producers engaged Randall Wallace, who scripted the impressive epic film Braveheart, to write a new script. Wallace didn’t bother to look at any previous writing effort. Starting with a fresh, independent view of the novel, he set out to capture its essence at feature-film length. According to people who ought to know, Wallace did some ingenious integrating of plot elements to condense and mesh the most important scenes, and to convey the philosophical elements in action and dialogue rather than long speeches by the characters.

A moment’s reflection will reveal why this approach is the only plausible one for a single feature film. First, long speeches take up too much screen time and detract from the action. Second, in a speech on the printed page, there’s no visual element that intrudes on the reader’s concentration on the words. The reader can speed up, slow down, skim, reread passages he didn’t grasp, pause, or put the book down to take a break. A film permits no such distractions and interruptions, and meanwhile, the screen must be filled with something happening, or else the movie would grind to a halt.

But what? To simply add visual references to each point made during a long speech by a character would transform a fictional drama into a didactic thing that would look and feel like a narrated documentary. It would be preaching at the expense of art — “telling” rather than “showing,” which is a fundamental violation of Rand’s own basic canons of fiction.

How long will the film be? The producers suggest that they prefer to come in at something under two and a half hours. They cite audience boredom as a worry; a more likely issue for them is commercial: How many times the film can run in a day? The longer the film, the fewer showings during the day, thus the lower the box office receipts. However, a number of us implored the producers and directors to expand the running time up to three hours. We argued that any number of great films (e.g., David Lean’s masterpieces, Patton, etc.) ran longer than that and were great commercial successes. It’s hard to imagine anyone leaving the theater as Atlas roars towards its apocalyptic climax. And if it’s a great film, fans will return to the theaters repeatedly.

The great concern, of course, is that the script will leave out so many of the the essential elements of the novel, and will be dumbed down to such an extent, that it will be merely a shadow of it’s former self. Given how things usually go in Hollywood, that is quite honestly the most likely outcome; movies about ideas are usually those that are reserved for serious Oscar contention; they’re released at the end of the year in limited locations and never really given the hype that a blockbuster would get.

As Bidnotto notes, though, whether this turns out to be a great film, or even a merely good one, will depend on the director, Vadim Pereleman, about whom he notes the following:

From what he told the small, late-night group of fans, he’s aims to film in a “distinctive visual style.” Intriguingly, he also envisions it as a “period film” and a “fable” — although he didn’t specify what period (past or future), nor clarify exactly what he meant by “fable.” I don’t think that he meant an other-worldly fantasy, but perhaps an “alternative history” — a tale set in, say, the 1950s “as it might have been,” had there been a John Galt around to lead a strike of the producers. These are tantalizing hints.

I don’t think the time frame of the story, past or future, will be essential to its plausibility, success, or consistency with the novel. Rand herself set the novel in a kind of temporal limbo, though supposedly in the foreseeable future. My own idea had been to set the film in the future, depicting a reversion from a previous high-tech society to primitivism. In other words, something like Mad Max or Blade Runner, where the world of computers and airlines and satellites that we now know has gone backward toward tribalism and anarchy. In this vision, railroads and steel would be shown as re-emerging, more-primitive technologies, replacing the advanced transportation systems and materials whose infrastructures have collapsed. But there are more ways than one to skin a cat, and I’m confident that Perelman will do something that will be internally consistent and compelling.

Perelman has his own strong views about the novel. He is not intimidated by the source material, or by the opinions of Rand fans and consulting experts. That’s both good and bad. He believes in himself and his vision, and he’s stubborn about it. Does that mean he might not be willing to listen to people who know the material better than he does, and go off the rails at points? Only time will tell. If the film project has a vulnerability, it may be the same quality that will get it made: Vadim Perelman’s sheer stubbornness.

While I remain hopeful, when I read stuff like this, I think “Heaven’s Gate” or “Ishtar,” both of which were huge bombs.