>>>It's a lot harder to think about a solution than to complain about it, right?

That's absolutely true. And of course the time to be thinking about solutions is before the problems start.

Here's how a more experienced (not to mention competent) producer would have approached this project:

1) Unless you're adapting the novel as a miniseries (with e.g., 10 episodes), there's no way you can — or should; or need to — tell the entire story of AS. You want to create ONE standalone movie that tells the "gist" of what the novel's dramatic plot is about. So the first question is this: in dramatic terms, what is AS about? No, it's not, *dramatically speaking*, about the Men of the Mind disappearing because they are on strike. "Drama" involves conflict, and there is no conflict involved in the men of the mind going on strike. I don't remember anyone physically trying to stop them from disappearing; they simply have these conversations with a mysterious figure and decide to follow him. There's NO conflict in this, hence, there's NO drama. The "strike" events of AS are analogous to the WWII events of "Casablanca." They are the background context in which some other dramatic story involving conflict is taking place. So out of all the events in AS, which episode, or perhaps "subplot" best sums up your feelings and thoughts about the novel?

It's not an easy question to answer because there are a number of episodes that could serve as THE essential story. So we might narrow the focus this way:

WHOSE story is it? Which character travels the greatest "arc" in terms of starting out as one kind of person who seeks a goal, meets many obstacles, and ends up as another kind of person, having prevailed against the obstacles, and during which, a specific character trait is "tested"? I think it's obvious: I think it's Dagny. It's her story. AS is not about a strike, or John Galt; it's about a businesswoman who runs a railroad.

Now we focus this even more: what does Dagny want? What's her main goal?

Again, there are several contenders, but I think the one that best answers to the needs of being "drama" — which involves a conflict of wills with antagonists who oppose the hero's goal — is the building of the John Galt Line.

Now, there may be other choices for all of these, but had the producers narrowed the focus of the film to Dagny's desire to build the John Galt Line — JUST THAT — and spent some screen-time actually exploring and developing that entire episode, there would have been "cinematic breathing room" for developing her character more, developing her involvement with Rearden, developing Rearden more, developing the poisonous relationship he had with his wife, etc., and instead of these ciphers stiffly moving around on screen standing around talking to one another, there could have been some real character development, but the GOAL of the main character (Dagny) would be narrower and more focused. And as for the Men of the Mind disappearing when Dagny needed their help for her Line, that could be handled in the same way as people disappearing in "Casablanca" because the Gestapo had picked them up: simply a horrible part of the background context in which the main story is taking place, but something that needs no more explanation because THAT WOULD ENTAIL MAKING ANOTHER MOVIE, AND TELLING ANOTHER STORY, JUST ABOUT THAT.

Now this means that the entire character of John Galt as an actual human being, of course, is axed from the picture. Galt has no conflicts anyway, so he's not a very interesting character, nor a very plausible one. For the sake of the picture, lose him. You could lose the entire science-fiction aspect of the film, too, by axing the static-electricity motor because, again, that would be telling a different story.

See, if you want to include Galt and his motor, then axe the John Galt Line sequence and tell a story about a businesswoman who needs to find the man who built this motor. That, too, could be a more narrowly focused story, but then the producer and the writer(s) have to stick to telling THAT and not a whole bunch of other stories at the same time.

You can get away with that in a novel, because it isn't generally the plot, or character traits that unify long novels but the THEME; so long as a subplot expresses the theme of the novel, it will appear integral to the story. Screenwriting, however, is VERY different from novel writing, and requires much more of a selective focus. Dramatic writing requires establishing a goal for the main character ("a goal", not "many goals"), positing the question in Act I: will our hero achieve this goal? then throwing a bunch of obstacles in the way of the hero to test his or her resolve in achieving the goal, as well as to test a particular trait ("integrity", "honesty", "shiftiness", "resourcefulness", "hatred of conformity", whatever) that concisely defines that character.

That means, of course, when writing a screenplay adapted from a novel, that one must sit down and before starting to write, one has to make some very hard editorial decisions: basically, WHAT TO LEAVE OUT.

Then, at least, you'll have something that is recognizably a "movie" rather than a transcription of a novel into a photoplay.

Needless to say, such a process would also obviate the need for a compliance office like David Kelley, since the writers would now be focused on telling a concrete story by means of concrete actions, with a single concrete goal for its lead character, rather than "teaching a philosophy to an audience," which is what Kelley, et al., seemed to have in mind. As I mentioned in another post, the writers needn't worry about the theme of Atlas Shrugged. By focusing on a much narrower story (e.g., just the struggle to build the John Galt Line, which could very easily be a dramatically satisfying 2-hour movie), the theme will emerge on its own just be presenting the character, her main traits, her choices in behavior and actions, the kinds of obstacles antagonists throw at her, and the wan in which she responds to those obstacles.

The theme will be there. You don't have worry over telling it explicitly.

If you really do want to send a message . . . go to Western Union.

>>>The first movie did not have a big enough marketing budget.

Nice scapegoat. Blame the budget. Little known secret: ultimately, the commercial success of a movie is determined by WORD OF MOUTH, not advertising and marketing. The old French film, "A Man and a Woman" had no marketing budget; it spread only by word of mouth, and played in theaters for something like a solid year.

Small films like "Twelve Angry Men" had little or no marketing budget because they had little or no production budget, period. It was a successful film and became a classic because the writing, casting, and directing were all excellent.

>> there have been any number of movies that were much worse stories poorly told that sold better.

And many movies that had even smaller production and marketing budgets that sold better . . . because they were better movies and people talked about them a lot.

>>>On ASII, suffered from the same issue AND the change of actors,

Well, but that's part of what I mean. The whole project appears to have been done in a very amateurish, even haphazard way. If you're going to do something downright dangerous for the life of the film, like split it into 3 parts with a year or two of production in between each part, then you had better spend LOTS of time up front, before any lensing, to get the writing tight, the casting perfect, and the directing imaginative and daring (good grief, I can't tell you how often I winced every time there was a scene in AS-I in which the actors would simply speak their lines to one another, doing nothing but standing in front of one another. Do people in real life even do that? No, not really. I mean, don't you DO SOMETHING when you speak to someone else: tie your shoes; light a cigarette; straighten papers on the desk; put money away in a safe . . . something? anything? Some of the most wooden, acting-class-level directing I've ever seen in feature film. It was a filmed version of the audio-book version of the novel.)

Instead, the producers seem to have been very cavalier about the whole thing from the get-go: "If it doesn't work in Part I, it's no problem! We'll just fire everyone and recast the whole lot of them! The audience can't help but notice, of course, but they'll accept it, because in our opinion, the story of Atlas Shrugged is bigger than any particular casting choice" (I believe Harmon Kaslow even said something almost identical in a Reason Magazine interview some time ago). My opinion: utterly irresponsible of them to approach the project in this manner.

>>>there were constraints on contractual issues, which may have contributed.

Big deal. This is Hollywood. This is movie making. There are always "constraints on contractual issues"; there's no escaping them. It's simply part of the proverbial "cost of doing business." Besides, there were no stars in the picture, so what sort of real contractual constraints could there have been? Most of these actors were dying to be in a feature film with nationwide theatrical release. No, the real constraints were the egos of the producers, who believed they simply had to get the film made and distributed — no matter what — by April 15, Tax Day, in order to make a political statement. THAT was the constraint.

By way of comparison, watch the special DVD on the production of "Gone With the Wind" that is included in the 75th Anniversary Edition of the DVD. It presents a very complete history of David O Selznick's involvement in the project. In some ways, of course, he ruined some of the film by taking some great writing by a noted playwright of the day (Sidney Howard), throwing it out, and adapting many scenes himself directly from Martha Mitchell's novel. You can sort of see his heavy-handed touch, especially in scenes toward the end that virtually "telegraph" what the climax of the scene itself is going to be. However, the really significant thing about that special DVD is the story of how Selznick came to cast just the people he did: Vivien Leigh (practically unknown in the US at the time), Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, etc. Selznick took well over a year just to decide who would be cast, and he even turned his indecision into a marketing "buzz", running contests and questionnaires in the press to see who people thought would be the leads (the novel had already been a popular hit for a few years, so people were looking forward to a movie version, and quite excited by their own notions of who should play the various leading roles). Heck, that's marketing! Even before a single frame of film was shot, there was already lots of buzz!

I mention this only to drive home the point that when making a movie, you cannot be cavalier about any part of it, certainly not the casting. You cannot say, "Don't worry. If the talent can't pull it off in Part I, we'll just cast new people in Part II."

That is utterly irresponsible.

>>>When I think of a movie, I think of an educational one.

1) All movies are educational. You just have to learn how to read them, and therefore, how to learn from them.

2) Since you've already read AS (probably many times) there's not much that a movie version could teach you that wasn't already in the book and your prior experience with it as a novel; presumably, you've already learned the lessons before buying a ticket for the movie version. Furthermore, since the consensus here seems to favor the idea of a literal transcription of the book (including, by implication, David Kelley's role as philosophical compliance officer during production to ensure the literalness of the final outcome) that pretty much guarantees from the get-go that the movie SHALL NOT (indeed, MUST NOT) contain any point of view, or hint, or suggestion, of the director's personal ideas on anything, that wasn't already in the novel and which had not passed review by David Kelley. Those were the things you could have learned something new from (that you might have rejected some new, personal, unexpected point of view from the screenwriter or the director is irrelevant. It's often as valuable to reject what we learn as it is to accept it).

Very amusing. That's the way films were made in tyrannies such as the former Soviet Union.

>>I see a movie as a learning tool, not some adventure that is over and gone in the blink of an eye.

Interesting. Rand herself preferred adventure stories that were over and gone in the blink of any eye (not to mention very light-operetta, light marches, light rinky-tink Scott Joplin rags, etc. She boasted about it, proudly calling it "tiddley-wink music."). You have very different tastes from hers. Anyway, she preferred the sense of life of stories like these over didactic education movies, and she understood how to read a film in terms of its subtext and symbolism.


>> The majority of the public nowadays views it differently.

The majority views it differently only "nowadays"? You mean, in days past, the public flocked to high-brow educational movies? I don't think so. The public always liked movies that were entertaining. That meant, even in the cases of adaptation, that the final purpose of the film was to "entertain", i.e., give the audience a good excuse for staring at a screen with flickering images on it for 2 hours without getting bored and getting up and leaving (many do that anyway, in spite of a filmmakers' best efforts to the contrary).

>>>They see a movie as an inexpensive joyride to an alternate dimension

They've got television and the Internet for that; movies are no longer inexpensive.

>>> that they may never visit, but gain the joy of seeing it come and go. Those movies can be exciting at times, but I find greater joy in something long-lasting. It is all a matter of opinion.

There was nothing long-lasting in Atlas Shrugged the Movie because you've already read the book, knew the characters, know the plot, know who John Galt is, and you already know the ending. There's nothing educational for you about watching the movie. What you were hoping for — what we all were — was to experience precisely that sort of excitement in AS as a pure adventure story; the sort of thing you dismiss as being beneath you. Alas, the filmmakers didn't pull it off because they didn't approach the project from the standpoint of making a movie; they approached it from the standpoint of presenting Ayn Rand's novel as a literal photoplay.

>>>suggest you upgrade to a PRODUCER and you can go into the meeting with Duncan Scott and tell him how to produce the movie...

The public did that already by means of the box-office. That's why the movie bombed. If Duncan Scott doesn't get THAT message, nothing I or anyone else could tell him would change his mind.