Who is John Galt?
53 years after it was first published the epic novel, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is finally becoming a movie.
And why did it take 53 years?
“Atlas Shrugged” is one of the longest novels ever written, estimated between 550,000- and 650,000 words (the average novel is only about 80,000 words), close to 1200 pages of small font print. But not only is the novel long on words but it is also epic in scope. The subject matter is weighty to say the least.
The film had to start shooting by June 14, 2010 or the rights would revert back to the estate of Ayn Rand, starting the negotiations all over again.
So with a cast of unknown actors and an untested director, the filming has started.
With a $5,000,000.00 budget, anyone who has read the book must wonder if it is even possible to do the work justice on the big screen.
The actress chosen to play Dagny Taggert seems to sweet-faced to play the railroad tycoon, she doesn’t have the look of the hard-nosed executive, yet the actor playing “Hank Reardon” seems to fit, so far…..And Francisco, John Galt and the others are, of course, even though cast, yet to be determined how well they fit. And then of course, with a novel this big it would be impossible to please most of the people as we all have the different visions. And times have changed, will the cigarettes with the dollar brand still be a large part of movie in the year 2010?
The film will be broken into 3 parts to coincide with the three parts of the book. The first film will only cover the first part of the novel. To finish this epic work will require a trilogy, 3 movies, and of course, probably great success from the first one to start.
The last part of the book features a speech by John Galt, which rumor has it takes 5 hours on the audio version of the book. Makes you wonder which part they will remove….(actually on second thought the speech could use some editing…..who would listen to a 5 hour speech in real life?)
Having read the book, twice…..I’m not sure that a movie can do it justice.
However, in these times of political turmoil, the timing may be just right for the message of the movie….I would suspect the tea-partiers would think so anyway.
Even so, based upon some current events, Ayn Rand’s theories are much less black and white than she would have us believe…
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