After years of toiling against a culture that refused to recognize or celebrate the value of our hero's unique gifts, there was a possible breakthrough. A chance was seized. A microphone was commandeered. The nation's airwaves were unexpectedly filled with a message about the value of selfishness, individuality, and ambition.
I'm talking, of course, about the finale of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which concluded its five-season run on Amazon Prime last week.
"I want a big life. I want to experience everything. I want to break every single rule there is," Miriam "Midge" Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) said, near the end of her final set, in a moment that effectively summed up the character's first principles over the course of the show's arc. "They say ambition is an unattractive trait in a woman—maybe. But you know what's really unattractive? Waiting around for something to happen. Staring out a window, thinking the life you should be living is out there somewhere, but not being willing to open the door and go out there and get it, even if someone tells you you can't."
It was a bit more terse than another famous speech delivered at the climax of a story that celebrates many of the same themes. Or perhaps it was a more verbose version of Howard Roark's famous declaration in The Fountainhead, after being informed that it's unlikely anyone will let him design buildings in the way he wanted: "That's not the point," he said. "The point is, who will stop me?"
Over the course of five seasons, no one stopped Midge Maisel. Not when she stormed onto the stage at New York City's famous Gaslight Cafe in a bathrobe to deliver her first impromptu set after discovering her husband's infidelity in the show's premiere. Not when she similarly broke away from an interview to deliver that monologue in the finale. It wasn't all smooth sailing in between—indeed, one of the show's strengths was its willingness to let Midge struggle, even seem to fail at times—but that's not the point, is it? The point is, no one stopped her.
More than most other shows on television, Mrs. Maisel celebrated the selfishness that is essential to success in comedy and show business at large. Midge was always a selfish character, but the show's final season leaned into that trait in a refreshing way. Rather than having her grow to be a better mother or romantic partner, or learn some self-sacrificial lesson about helping others succeed, the showrunners (Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino) put the spotlight on Midge's defining trait, while also acknowledging the trade-offs that come with it.
The final season culminated with Midge getting her long-sought-after break—a four-minute set on The Gordon Ford Show, which we're told is the highest-rated late-night program on television in the show's fictional version of 1962 America—and used various flash-forwards to leave no doubt that it was, in fact, the springboard to a wildly successful career in show business. She got there by breaking the rules and by demanding to be first in line, yes, but also by refusing to compromise on who she was.
The show's celebration of selfishness extended beyond Midge herself and did so in a way that fits with Ayn Rand's conception of the term. While there is nothing wrong—and plenty right—about putting one's own needs first, Rand emphasized that selfishness also indicated moral first principles: Being selfish means, essentially, being true to one's self and refusing to subvert the individual to the desires of others.
Throughout the show, Midge repeatedly encountered supposedly successful people whose showbiz fame was predicated on committing the Randian cardinal sin of subverting their individualism for mass appeal. First and most apparent was Sophie Lennon (Jane Lynch), a snooty Manhattanite who donned a fake accent and fat suit to perform stand-up as a crass housewife from Queens. There was also Shy Baldwin (Leroy McClain), the closeted homosexual who performed as a womanizing pop singer. Finally, there was Ford, the late-night host with a fake marriage who didn't write his own jokes or have as much creative control over his own show as he liked to think. As the lies those characters lived were peeled back, Midge (and the audience) discovered them to be—to varying degrees—pathetic, tragic, and pitiable.
Midge steadfastly refused to play that game, announcing early on that she would achieve fame on her own terms. Her comedy act was a reflection of that perspective, rooted as it was in the lived experience of a divorced Jewish mother from the Upper West Side. Her manager Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein) and real-life comic Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby), fellow outsiders who disdained the phoniness of their industry, stood alone in recognizing and encouraging Midge's unique talent.
To be sure, there was plenty of the traditional form of selfishness in Midge's character too. Her big break came after she persuaded Myerson to apply a particularly nasty form of leverage over Ford so he would break his personal rule against allowing his writers to appear as guests on his show (which is, it should be said, a very reasonable rule). By doing so, she blatantly stepped to the front of the line ahead of other comedians who toiled in the obscurity of the writers' room far longer than she did.
But the show left no doubt that she deserved the break when it came. She wasn't just the one writer in Ford's bullpen who found the right leverage to make him break his rule—she was also the best of the bunch, and therefore the one most deserving of special treatment in the show's Randian-tinged perspective. Her selfishness, in all its forms, was duly rewarded.
Still, Mrs. Maisel also demonstrated that the selfishness necessary for success is not without its trade-offs. In the fifth season's flash-forwards, we learned that Midge's strained and distant relationship with her two children continued even after both reached adulthood. If Midge's success was the result of never compromising on her individualism, then that same character trait naturally made her a poor mother, a role where self-sacrifice is fundamental. Her relationship with her parents was similarly difficult, though one might note that strained or absent family ties only reinforce the similarities between Midge and Rand's heroes, most of whom lack children or relatives who aren't portrayed as losers and leeches.
The dark side of Midge's ambition and selfishness was always part of the show's award-winning formula. Her inability to separate her real life and stage persona cost her friends and opportunities along the way—most prominently getting her canned from a tour as Baldwin's opening act after she inadvertently outed him during a set. There were lessons to be learned, but Midge never abandoned her individuality in order to set things right.
Over its five seasons, Mrs. Maisel veered into other libertarian-adjacent themes, including casting a critical eye toward the obscenity laws that limited free speech in 1950s/'60s New York City—and which Midge got arrested for violating. The final season dealt in a small way with the tragic end of Bruce's career and placed the blame for his personal decline squarely on the persecution he suffered at the hands of government censors. "I can't step foot in any club east of the Grand Canyon," he lamented at the start of the final episode. Offered Myerson's help to get back on top, he selflessly declined, telling her to use her favors on someone else. There's a hint of a moral there.
But the hero and moral center of the show was always Midge—indeed, everything in the show revolved around her—who used her talents and shamelessly seized every favor offered to her. Even in flash-forwards to her later years, we saw her tireless work ethic continue. And while Midge would surely fall short of Rand's ideals about what defines an objectivist hero—despite her propensity for delivering diatribes into a microphone—The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel left little doubt that she'd never have succeeded without putting herself first.
The post <em>The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel</em> Celebrated Selfishness as a Virtue appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Novelist Ayn Rand's tales about the havoc that assorted government planners and "looters" wreak on society are a bit turgid and overwrought for my tastes, but I enjoy re-reading the conclusion of Atlas Shrugged. After bureaucrats tighten their control over the economy, entrepreneurs quietly exit society. The entire socialist edifice comes crashing down—quite spectacularly, with the collapse of the economically crucial Taggart Bridge.
If you haven't read the book, I recommend CliffsNotes. It will spare slogging through John Galt's 60-page radio speech. Or skip the voluminous book altogether and watch the state of California. The latest data shows that wealthy people—the ones who fund our highly progressive, capital-gains-dependent budget—have now joined the exodus. "Perhaps most striking, California is now losing higher-income households," the Public Policy Institute of California recently reported.
Lower- and middle-income earners have long been fleeing to states where they can afford a house or operate a small business without having to deal with our meddlesome planners. High earners have largely stayed put given they can afford the costs. But the great climate and scenery only go so far. Anyone who watched a Capitol press conference this week might head to Galt's Gulch (where Rand's entrepreneurs fled)—or look for a realtor in Idaho or Texas.
On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new gas-price "accountability" measure that lawmakers rushed through the Legislature. Flanked by lawmakers and Attorney General Rob Bonta, Newsom vowed to end price gouging by the nation's oil companies: "California took on Big Oil and won. We're not only protecting families; we're also loosening the vice grip Big Oil had on our politics for the last 100 years."
Specifically, the legislation, authored by Sen. Nancy Skinner (D–Berkeley), grants the California Energy Commission broad new powers to monitor gasoline pricing. It requires oil companies to provide extensive new supply chain data. The law lets bureaucrats determine the proper profit margins for oil companies and "establish a penalty for exceeding the maximum gross gasoline refining margin."
Newsom originally conceived of a windfall-profits tax—similar to the disastrous policy President Jimmy Carter implemented. That tax slowed domestic oil production and made the United States increasingly dependent on imports from the Middle East. The final California law doesn't repeat that stupidity, but it imposes new costs on oil companies. It will discourage oil production and lead to higher gas prices.
Consider the official support argument offered from a coalition of environmental and social-justice groups. They argued the law will help the state "plan for and monitor progress toward the…transition away from petroleum fuels." It's part of a push to drive away the oil industry, which will—by design—reduce oil production. Leave it to California lawmakers to address high gas prices by purposefully reducing supply and increasing them further.
California does indeed have the highest gasoline prices in the nation. Those prices have fallen quite a bit in recent months to $4.82 a gallon. That's still $1.38 a gallon higher than the national average—and $1.70 a gallon higher than in Texas. Oil companies are national operations, so a normal person might wonder why those companies are so much greedier in California than they are elsewhere.
The answer isn't hard to find. For starters, California has the highest gas taxes in the nation. (We also get the least bang for our buck given the state of our freeways, but that's a separate issue.) Those higher taxes instantly make our gasoline 48 cents a gallon higher than in Texas. There's still a pricing gap, but despite officials' blathering about a "mystery gas surcharge" here in California, it's not a mystery at all.
"California's tough environmental rules mandate that gasoline sold within the state be produced according to strict formulas that reduce pollution," per a Los Angeles Times analysis. "But the gas is more expensive and difficult to produce than dirtier fuel sold elsewhere. Few refineries outside the state are equipped to produce it." The report adds the number of California refineries is plummeting and our state has no interstate pipelines, thus forcing us to rely on costlier forms of transportation.
All of those supply-restricting measures are the direct result of public policy choices. Our state has chosen to require that special formulation. California has declared as one of its prime climate-change priorities ending the state's reliance on fossil fuels. If you were an oil company, would you invest in new capacity in a state that wants you to leave? Regulators would never allow interstate pipelines.
California's progressive leaders have imposed the policies that led to our high gas prices. Instead of doing anything about them, they are bloviating about price gouging. I don't know whether many oil executives are fans of Rand, but I wouldn't blame them for quietly pulling out of California and watching our economic edifice collapse from their homes in Houston.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
The post California's Attacks on Big Oil Will Only Drive More People Out of the State appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>60 years ago today, Atlas Shrugged was published. The novel still sells 100,000 copies a year.
But not everyone will celebrate the book's anniversary. Ayn Rand is someone people love to hate. Years after her death, people still feel compelled to attack her ideas.
A recent John Oliver segment said her philosophy, objectivism, "is just a nice way of saying 'being a selfish asshole.'"
Fortunately, not all people think that way. Many young people, discovering Rand for the first time, say her ideas inspire them. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, a free market advocacy group that promotes Atlas Shrugged on college campuses, says "it's surprising how much appetite there is" for Rand's ideas. Stossel challenges him, saying, "no, college students are socialists!" Kirk responds, "They're not socialists… 60% say they think socialism is a good idea and then 70% say they don't want to pay higher taxes and they don't trust the government. They just don't understand what socialism really is."
Driena Sixto discovered Rand through Turning Point USA. "I brought to class a ton of laptop stickers that said 'This laptop was brought to you by capitalism.' Towards the end of the semester I had most of the class on my side."
Jennifer Grossman, CEO of the Atlas Society, argues that it's important to expose young people to Rand's work because "Fiction is more powerful than facts."
Facts matter more. But often it's fiction that expands people's minds and changes how they think.
Produced by Naomi Brockwell. Edited by Joshua Swain.
The post Stossel: Ayn Rand–The Author People Love to Hate appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>A little while ago, it came out that Bowe Bergdahl, the Army sergeant who walked away from his post in Afghanistan and became a prisoner of war for five years before a controversial exchange with the Taliban, thought of himself as a Jason Bourne type. That is, a super-operative who was conflicted about the country he served and capable of incredible feats of improvisational derring-do.
Well that's not the only fictional protagonist Berghdahl digs. One of the Army commanders who debriefed Bergdahl testified in ongoing proceedings:
General Dahl described Sergeant Bergdahl as a truthful but delusional soldier, who identified with John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."
A more obvious parallel is that Bergdahl, like Galt, is in big, big trouble. And while he won't get to deliver a really long radio speech, he's going to get hours of coverage via a podcast.
The military's investigation of Bergdahl found no evidence that he sympathized or conspired with the Taliban, al Qaeda, or any other battlefield enemies of the United States. Indeed, he may have suffered "more in captivity than any American since Vietnam, including beatings with rubber hoses and copper cables, and uncontrollable diarrhea for more than three years" according to a defense witness. The investigation also found that, contrary to early reports, no American troops died or were injured during an intensive 45-day search for Bergdahl, whose stories about dysfunction in his unit were also apparently unfounded.
The preliminary hearing over Bergdahl, whose 2014 release was secured via a highly controversial swap for five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, recommended that he be given a "special court-martial" which would carry with it no more than one year in military prison. That decision was reversed by a higher-level ruling and now he faces more serious charges that carry a possible life sentence:
The Army did not elaborate on Monday's decision by General Abrams, or on why he decided that Sergeant Bergdahl should face the potential for a far more serious punishment than what the two independent Army fact-finders had recommended. A spokesman for Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg noted in an email that recommendations made by preliminary hearing officers "are advisory in nature."
No date has been set for Sergeant Bergdahl's next court hearing, which will be held at Fort Bragg, the Army said. He is currently assigned to the Army's Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, the site of his preliminary hearing in September.
Critics of the upgraded charges claim that Bergdahl's situation has been recklessly politicized by Republicans, especially those running for president. There's no question that people from Donald Trump to Ted Cruz to various senators and representatives have spoken out against Bergdahl. A new report issued by the House Armed Services Committee faults Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, for misleading Congress about the terms and timing of the prisoner exchange. The Obama administration also "locked out" the Pentagon's chief intelligence officer from information about the Taliban commanders swapped for Berghdahl, according to the report.
But Bergdahl and his defense team are not exactly shrinking violets. Bergdahl's trial is the subject of the second season of Serial, a popular podcast.
Eric Montalvo, a defense lawyer for Guantanamo prisoners, told the Christian Science Monitor that Bergdahl's decision to talk with Serial while his case is being adjudicated was not a wise choice. The added scrutiny raises the stakes for military while making a conviction a slam dunk:
Bergdahl will be facing a conviction based on his statements on the "Serial" podcast, says Montalvo.
"If I were the prosecutor and I heard that, I'd be in no-brainer mode. All I have to do is roll that beautiful … footage, and we're done. He had a plan, and he executed on that plan."
Exit questions: Do you think the charges and possible penalties against Bergdahl were increased because of political pressure or consideration? Or were the initial, weaker charges the sign of a military gone soft? What is the best way to evaluate whether that's the case or not?
And what would Ayn Rand have thought of Bergdahl?
The post Bowe Bergdahl, Ayn Rand Fan? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The final installment of the Atlas Shrugged movie trilogy opens today at theaters across the country.
Go here for the official site and to find theaters near you.
Reason TV attended the Las Vegas premiere of Who is John Galt? last week. Click above to watch our report from the red carpet.
We interviewed the producer of the series, John Aglialoro, about finishing the project, Ayn Rand's continuing influence, and how to beat back crony capitalism. Take a look below:
We also interviewed Harmon Kaslow, the other leader producer on the project, about "Why the Internet Has Hollywood Very Scared." Watch here:
Reason's Brian Doherty reported from the set of "Who is John Galt?" back in March.
Read our Ayn Rand archive here.
The post Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt? Opens Today appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>"I think there is a universality, a timelessness to her ideas," says Laura Regan, who plays Dagny Taggart in the film. "Believing in one's self to working hard for something you believe in, for standing up for your own […] right to do hard work and be rewarded for it. They're very American ideals."
Reason TV was on hand to ask the actors, producers, and fans what it was like to make the movie and why they think Ayn Rand's work remains appealing decades after its publication.
Approximately 3:31
Interviews by William Neff. Produced by Paul Detrick.
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The post What We Saw at the <em>Atlas Shrugged Part III</em> Film Premiere appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The makers of the film have issued an interesting 29 minute documentary, called Atlas Shrugged: Now, Non-Fiction, containing clips from the forthcoming film Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?
Watch it here, starring, among others, Ron Paul:
a list of theaters screening the film starting Friday.
See my report from the set of the film from March.
In 2009 I wrote for Reason on the theme of the documentary, the inescapable presence of Rand's ideas in the real world today.
The post <em>Atlas Shrugged: Who is John Galt?</em> Movie Premieres Friday; See Clips in New Documentary appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Aglialoro sat down with Reason TV's Nick Gillespie to discuss the completion of the Atlas Shrugged films, their negative critical reception, and the enduring influence of Ayn Rand's thought.
An entrepreneur since his youth in South Jersey, Aglialoro currently heads up UM Holdings and has been the CEO of exercise-equipment maker Cybex. Among the companies at UM is EHE, a century-old organization that focuses on encouraging healthy living and life extension through state-of-the-art diagnostic testing and evaluations.
Along with the long struggle to bring Atlas Shrugged to the screen, Aglialoro discusses Ayn Rand's relevance and what he believes were her p.r. mistakes (5:45), his own political philosophy (7:00), the persistence of the entrepreneurial spirit (8:00), the growth in crony capitalism (10:20), and his abiding optimism for the future (16:00). (Disclosure: Aglialoro is a supporter of Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason TV.)
About 18 minutes.
Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Camera by Jim Epstein and Anthony Fisher.
Below is a rush transcript for the full interview. Check any quotes against video for accuracy.
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NG: Hi, I'm Nick Gillespie with ReasonTV. Today we're talking with John Aglialoro, he is the producer, the man, the auteur behind the Atlas Shrugged Trilogy, the third installment of which comes out on Sept. 12, 2014. John, thanks for talking to Reason.
JA: Absolutely.
NG: How does it feel to have brought the Atlas Shrugged Trilogy to completion? You bought the rights to this in 1992 and you're almost done with it.
JA: It's inspirational. It's something that I know that Ayn Rand would have wanted to do. She tried with a number of people.
[1:07]
NG: Including herself, right? She left a partly finished script—
JA: She actually wrote part of a script, part of a play. But in the end, she did not want to give up creative control–that really was a thing that prevented the movie from being made. There were a couple of producers: Al Ruddy, who produced The Godfather, one in particular. They actually had a news conference, this was back in '72 I believe, and they announced that they were going to make the movie and all that, but the creative control was a tough one for her.
NG: So, you were lucky enough to buy the rights after she had expired.
JA: It was August of 1992. So, I went to Hollywood, got into some of the studio chiefs and talked to them. Some explicitly said: "Cannot, we won't get box office."
[2:01]
NG: Was it based on the idea that the book was un-filmable, that the creative control issue was going to be a problem, or was it that they didn't like the message? Because you always hear about Angelina Jolie, or Oliver Stone, or any number of liberal Hollywood-types who love Ayn Rand, and talk about this book as huge. So what was their hesitation?
JA: I think she had two opponents. One from the left. The left does not endorse free markets, limited government. Those words scare the left, politically. So, they were in charge of making a movie and felt a hesitancy to want to do that. Now, they felt it wouldn't be a box office success. They're not idiots, they would've done it. The other side was from, I think, the right, from the religious side of the right. Right after the book was published in 1957, she got a lot of pushback on the fact that she was an atheist.
[3:07]
NG: So, tell me though how does it feel—so you finished the three movies. The first two have not been reviewed well. I mean, they have been critically kind of admonished. Box office has been pretty good, by your reckoning?
JA: No, no. No, it was trashed, as you say. Box office has been low. What has been interestingly high has been the DVD sales and the rental—the after-box office sales. Part of that suffered because in Hollywood, you put up a movie, you put up $100 million or more. A big part of your budget, $20, $30 million or more is advertising, and we had limited funds for that.
[3:57]
NG: Talk about the relevance, because you're right that this is the type of project that has a huge afterlife and it's kind of inspirational in the sense of, you know, people who read Ayn Rand and people who read Atlas Shrugged in particular, it's one of those books that a lot of people describe as life-changing, it just blows people's minds. What's the relevance of Rand to contemporary America and to people who are renting and buying the Atlas Shrugged movies?
JA: I think her greatest relevance and strength is people discover themselves, and in an intrinsic and explicit way. They say, "Wow, I'm entitled to my own life, self-interest is good." I think that's been the most overwhelming aspect of your question.
NG: It's interesting that you put it in that sense because Ayn Rand is usually talked about as the "Goddess of the Market" or whatever. But what you're talking about is something that is—can be expressed in kind of economic terms, but it's actually much more basic and fundamental.
[5:09]
JA: The Declaration of Independence—Thomas Jefferson—said: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet we're taught—at schools, universities, and churches—we're taught that self-interest is a vice. Selfishness is a vice.
NG: What is wrong with the caricature–and you see this both on the religious right as well as on the progressive left, people saying, "Well, you know what Ayn Rand is really all about is self-interest, is selfishness, it's about egoism, it's about me, me, me."
[5:49]
JA: I think Ayn Rand made a mistake: She stuck with the vernacular of the word "selfishness." So, rather than spending all the time that she did and her team–her "collective," as they ironically called them–on saying "enlightened self-interest," saying "ethical self-interest," qualifying it in some way, but to stay with that word "selfishness," it's in the vernacular as negative.
NG: You're a hardcore libertarian. Do you consider yourself an Objectivist as well?
JA: Yes, I would say I am an Objectivist slash libertarian.
NG: So, you have a political philosophy–a personal and political philosophy–that is all about freedom and individual rights. How do you take your philosophy, which is before politics, and then how do you choose how to express it in politics?
JA: Well, I express it as a libertarian. First of all, it's easier to do. The libertarian movement, libertarian thought is no longer fringe, it's out there. It expresses itself to one of two parties, generally Republicans, so I will generally vote Republican.
[7:07]
NG: You don't see any hope for the Democrats to become more free trade, more laissez-faire in terms of economics?
JA: I've got a friend, over 50 years, between 50 and 60 years, he is an ultra left liberal. He'll come back to me and say, in essence, "Markets are messy, they're untidy, and too many people are going to slip through the safety net and that's why I don't like your market capitalism thing." So, the other side, as much as they cause angst with us entrepreneur market types, they have a position that they believe in–I think it's incorrect, but they're Americans, they love George Washington like I do, and they're just wrong about their economics.
[8:06]
NG: Let's talk about economics and your business history. You started out selling snow cones. When did you first realize that you had both an interest in being and a talent for being an entrepreneur and for being a businessman?
JA: It was very young. Like so many entrepreneurs we cut lawns, I would pick blackberries in an old farm area and got permission to go through there, and I would get pints—it was a great feeling, to put out effort, work, and then be able to buy my own ice cream cone or take my girlfriend out to the movies and get some popcorn I liked that. I liked the control of that. In my old hometown Collingswood, New Jersey, I would get on a bus, take a few mile trip to an ice station, get crushed ice, a 50 pound bag, put it on my back, put it in the bus, take it back, put it on a wagon, get some flavors, and in front of the mayor's office of Collingswood, New Jersey–he allowed me on our main street–I sold snow cones. That was the beginning of it.
[9:25]
NG: What is the essence of an entrepreneur?
JA: Yeah, yeah I've thought about that. I think an entrepreneur–they have a gift for knowing what's around the corner. Risk adverse people have to get to the corner, peer around, take a look, double-check, triple-check, and then they know what direction to go. Entrepreneurs have an uncanny ability to take data, and a sense of history or pieces of current data, and make a guess. They're often wrong but they generally are right and they're paid well for whatever product or service they put on the market that people voluntarily want to buy—and that makes them good, honest, charitable, moral people, in spite of the crap people say about them. They're essentially great human beings, entrepreneurs.
[10:18]
NG: Talk about cronyism and crony capitalism. In Atlas Shrugged, it's not necessarily the poor people who are welfare–they're not the villains. It's actually the incredibly well-connected businessmen and the politicians who want to play ball with each other.
[10:38]
JA: It's probably almost impossible to get rid of cronyism. The government itself has large contracts. There's bridges to be built, buildings, military to support with services and supplies–all of this is going on and each of these companies belong to industries that hire lobbyists that get the laws and bidding contracts done in just the way they would like. So, it's easy and proper to shoot cronyism. I'm not saying you won't, that's not going to happen. But the size of government is going to create an environment where it'll be impossible to get rid of it. What we need to do, I think, just to follow up, I think we need a simple tax. I'm not saying a flat tax. I think a flat tax is a four letter word. A lot of people don't view that as the answer. But I think to get to the mountain top you have to get halfway there first.
[11:55]
NG: When you say a "simple tax," what do you mean?
JA: I mean we're not going to get a postcard. But I think we can get 3-4 pages tax code rather than a 100,000 page tax code by having some level of progressivity. So, if you make 1 million a year, you're going to pay $400,000,40%. If you make $50,000 a year, you're going to pay 8%. Again, you gotta get halfway there to the mountain.
NG: That would get rid of a lot of incentives that the government can build in–sweet heart deals the government can build in. How do you restrain spending, then?
JA: The dollar that the government gets–for every dollar of tax–what does it get, probably 60 cents? Where does the other 40 percent go? But we don't need the amount of regulation. Let's at least pick up the low hanging fruit first, let's go for that first. I think if we do that that will get rid of a lot of the cronyism, by having the tax revenues jump because you're taking the cost out of collecting money by the government.
[13:12]
NG: You also run Executive Health Exams, or EHE. A lot of your businesses are interested in this kind of quality of life, particularly physical life. Do you think the interest in life-extension–this is true self-ownership, it's your body, you'd better take care of it every bit as much as you take care of your car or your house. Does that fit in with a kind Randian enlightened self-interest?
JA: I've never thought of it in that way, but I think you're right, it's a very good observation. We take care of our minds, she says, through our ability to have independence, to choose responsibly the direction we want to go in life, and our mental sense of life helps with that. But to do that you've got to carry on a healthy life.
[14:03]
NG: And it started out and would give people exams, and kind of help them figure out what they needed to work on in order to improve themselves?
JA: I think the instincts were very good at the time because the capital, the people–not the doctors–the people who put up the capital were insurance companies and banks. And the insurance companies, in their own rudimentary way, were saying, "You can pay less insurance if we can check you out, give physical exams." That idea has value and it took off. And it's as valuable today as it was then.
NG: And in many ways more so, right? Because if you can identify a particular problem, you're much more likely to be able to fix it.
JA: Right, and not just by having expensive operations or expensive drugs. We know that celiac disease can be beaten by abstinence: Don't eat wheat-laden bread.
[14:58]
NG: Talk about the role of William Howard Taft in the Life Extension Institute.
JA: President Taft was the worst example one could have as their poster child for the Life Extension Institute at the time.
NG: Although he lived a pretty long time.
JA: He did, he did. We wrote a book at the 75th anniversary. We also just wrote a 100th anniversary book. My beloved wife Joan Carter wrote that book. She also wrote a book called The Making of the Atlas Shrugged Trilogy and helped assist with the 100th. But we wrote a 75th anniversary book and President Taft is there. He helped form this company. And I think he also helped form a sense, a judgment that checking out your body periodically is a good thing. So, with that basic idea, as the first chairman of the board of trustees, we were founded.
[16:02]
NG: Let's end with a discussion of the future. In a way libertarians, broadly speaking, a lot of people who are fans of Ayn Rand always talk about the current moment as the absolute worst possible moment to be alive. Government has never been so big and so intrusive. Things have never been so awful. You mention that Rand is really about optimism and that that optimism that she had about creating a life that you want to live gets beaten out of them, beaten out of kids. They forget the optimism of when life was ahead of them. You've just completed a major, major project—a life's project–with the Atlas Shrugged Trilogy. Do you still have optimism with what's still ahead of you?
JA: I'm absolutely optimistic. Think about what we've done in the past 100 years, 300 years, 500 years, the wars and the monarchies and the churches and battle, and look at today with the extremism. But we'll be here in a century or five centuries to the next millennium, and living will be a lot better than it is now.
[17:10]
NG: Well thank you very much, we'll leave it there. I want to thank John Aglialoro, he's the man behind the Atlas Shrugged Trilogy. He's also the chairman of Cybex and Executive Health Exams. John, thanks for talking to ReasonTV.
JA: Enjoyed it.
NG: For ReasonTV, I'm Nick Gillespie.
The post Atlas Shrugged Producer John Aglialoro on Ayn Rand's Enduring Impact appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>"Hollywood really lacks the courage to take a message like Ayn Rand's—like the one in Atlas Shrugged—and believe that there's an audience for that," says Harmon Kaslow, producer of the movie trilogy Atlas Shrugged. The third and final installment, Who is John Galt? will be in theaters on September 12.
The post "Hollywood really lacks the courage to take a message like Ayn Rand's": Atlas Shrugged's Harmon Kaslow appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Kaslow tells Reason TV's Nick Gillespie that technological advancements are leading to the demise of the liberal Hollywood's monopoly on films. "I think [the Internet] has Hollywood very scared," says Kaslow, "you now have a lot of players who can bring content to anyone on the planet."
Kaslow also discusses Rand's continuing influence on American audiences and what he hopes audiences will take away from the Atlas Shrugged films.
About 9 minutes. Camera by Joshua Swain and Amanda Winkler. Edited by Winkler.
Watch the video above, or click below for downloadable versions. Subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel for daily content like this.
The post The Internet Has "Hollywood Very Scared": Atlas Shrugged's Harmon Kaslow appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Last September, the producers of Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? launched a Kickstarter campaign that ended up raising $446,000 to help fund the final installment of the film adaptation of Ayn Rand's 1957 novel about a world driven to the brink of collapse by overweening redistributionist government. The predictable response was cheap jokes from people whose (mis)understanding of Rand only went as far as: "She's that scary chick who valorizes businessmen and the market." Detractors assumed that asking people to freely support something they valued was altruistic and therefore un-Randian.
Producer and main financier of the trilogy John Aglialoro sees it differently. (As would anyone who understands Rand, whose novel The Fountainhead is a paean to an architect whose work goes unrewarded by the marketplace.) Rand believed in the glory of trading value for value—in this case, money for a film that the giver wants to see made. Aglialoro says he's proud of the hundreds of $1 contributions he received from people who he says told him: "I want to take some value of mine and place it where I see value."
Aglialoro is a successful businessman, named by Fortune magazine in 2007 as the 10th richest small business executive in the country. The first two movies in the trilogy were financial failures, losing him millions. So what's the business sense of plowing ahead? He says his latest project isn't primarily about money, but love.
Still, "we don't know that the trilogy will not make money," Aglialoro insists. "We know Part I did not and Part II did not." The combined production costs for all three will come to about $20 million, he says. "But I believe with this third piece-it's like a symphony. The adagio, what do you get out of it? It's boring to many people. They want the crescendo."
In an effort to drum up interest and cement their connection with the audience, the Atlas production team has been very transparent, creating a "Galt's Gulch Online" for supporters, inviting dozens of donors to visit the set, and frequently broadcasting live video from set during the shoot.
Associate Producer Scott DeSapio, who runs the film's online strategy, notes the novel has sold steadily for decades and still pulls in six figures in annual sales, "and you know how high the advertising budget is for that? Zero. It sells because people talk to people. And if we can make an Atlas that a [fan of the book] will feel comfortable recommending, then we've succeeded."
I visited the set in early February. For days the team had taken over the entire old Park Plaza Hotel near Los Angeles' MacArthur Park, transforming it into the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, into the scene of a dramatic press conference, into the apartment and lab of Atlas hero John Galt, and into a torture chamber where the bad guys keep Galt trapped.
And yes, to answer a question the Atlas team is weary of fielding, they did entirely recast Part III, just as they did Part II. "The star of the movie is not the actors," DeSapio says. "The star is the ideas of Ayn Rand."
The producers are high on new director James Manera, a veteran of the commercial world. "I think that if I were asked-and I won't be!-to form the curriculum of film school [on] what do you do to be a director," Aglialoro says, "I would say the graduate side should be knowing how to do a high-quality TV commercial. They have to get a lot of information and a lot of communication, a lot of art and visuality in that 30 seconds or 60 seconds, and Jim Manera has won awards in that world."
Dominic Daniel-playing Eddie Willers, the story's representative of a decent ordinary man-says that Rand's Fountainhead, which he'd been assigned in high school, "spoke about individuality, finding one's own path and taking responsibility for your own life and not listening to people who say 'you owe it to us,' is " a message that resonated as he chose a career in the arts instead of what his parents expected. He knows that curious feelings and hostility toward Rand's work exist, and admits he's gotten "a little of that" from suspicious friends. But "I didn't have any reservations," he says.
On my day on set, I watched for hours as they filmed the scene where John Galt's speech explaining the philosophical and ethical errors that lead society to its parlous state begins interfering with a planned televised address by America's national leader. Galt's speech is famously long-had they not condensed it, that one scene alone would have taken more time than most feature-length films.
Aglialoro thinks Rand was having an intellectual "bad hair day" when she decided to valorize the term selfishness. He thinks that word blunts her message of individual achievement through freely chosen market cooperation, not "self at expense of others." Thus, he tried to make the film's approximately four-minute condensation of Galt's speech more inspirational, less condemnatory, than the novel's version. It ended (from what I could hear) with talk of how you should not in your confusion and despair let your own irreplaceable spark go out, and how the world you desire can be won.
The most orthodox of Objectivists, like the ones associated with Rand's heir and enforcer Leonard Peikoff, will likely object. Aglialoro sums up his relationship with these controllers of Rand's estate from whom he bought the movie rights: "I wish them well-we share the same ideas-and they wish us extinction."
The financial prospects of the Atlas film remain uncertain-Part III isn't out until September. But Aglialoro says he never had any doubts that he had to finish what he started, regardless of potential profits and losses. Its "purpose," he declares, "is to change people's lives for the better," by helping them realize "the opportunity and responsibility of enlightened self interest."
The post Kickstarting John Galt appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>In an exceptional post titled "Ayn Rand's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Toast author Mallory Ortberg produced a mashup of the Randian philosophy of Atlas Shrugged and the wizarding world of the first Harry Potter novel.
The results, called "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Objectivism" in accompanying art, were undeniably hilarious:
"You're a wizard, Harry," Hagrid said. "And you're coming to Hogwarts."
"What's Hogwarts?" Harry asked.
"It's wizard school."
"It's not a public school, is it?"
"No, it's privately run."
"Good. Then I accept. Children are not the property of the state; everyone who wishes to do so has the right to offer educational goods or services at a fair market rate. Let us leave at once."
Ortberg casts Harry as the all-knowing John Galt-esque Objectivist hero, while Ron plays the part of the whiny, socialist-inclined naysayer:
"Malfoy bought the whole team brand-new Nimbus Cleansweeps!" Ron said, like a poor person. "That's not fair!"
"Everything that is possible is fair," Harry reminded him gently. "If he is able to purchase better equipment, that is his right as an individual. How is Draco's superior purchasing ability qualitatively different from my superior Snitch-catching ability?"
"I guess it isn't," Ron said crossly.
Harry laughed, cool and remote, like if a mountain were to laugh. "Someday you'll understand, Ron."
Best of all: Harry doesn't care to linger over sentimental images of his deceased parents—a stance that is confusing to Ron but not to devotees of Rand:
"But they gave birth to y–"
"I made myself, Ron," Harry said firmly.
Read the full thing here.
If Ortberg intends to write more on the subject, allow me to suggest appropriate titles for the rest of the series:
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret Energy Projects
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Altruism
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Man's Triumph Over Nature
Harry Potter and the Order of the Profit-Motivated CEOs
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Bureaucrat
Harry Potter and the Deathly Public Works Project
Hat Tip: David Brin
The post And Hilarity Ensued: Ayn Rand's Objectivism, Meet Harry Potter appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>It's the film Atlas Shrugged III: Who is John Galt?, the conclusion of a trilogy of movies based on Ayn Rand's massively successful and influential 1957 novel about a world driven to the brink of collapse by statism in the supposed service of altruism.
"Someday I just want to go visit [Ayn Rand's grave] and say 'I got it done.' What a magnificent mind, what a great contribution," he says about the author whose works jolted him and helped him understand the world.
I questioned the business sense of Aglialoro's foray into filmmaking during a February interview on the set of Atlas III. The first two movies in the trilogy were financial failures, losing him millions.
"We don't know that the trilogy will not make money," he corrects me. "We know Part I did not and Part II did not." The combined production costs for all three will come to about $20 million, he says. "But I believe with this third piece—it's like a symphony. The adagio, what do you get out of it? It's boring to many people. They want the crescendo."
He is confident they still have a lot to fans of the novel to reach. He and his production partner Harmon Kaslow both say that to this day they find people heavily into Rand who still don't know this three-part film project is even happening. "We discovered of the population of people who read the book, we really haven't reached a substantial percentage of those people," says Kaslow. He praises their associate producer and online promotion maven Scott DeSapio for building an Internet community of donors and honorary producers who will hopefully be their best advertisers.
They've been as open to fans as perhaps any movie in production has ever been, creating a "Galt's Gulch Online" for supporters, inviting dozens of them to visit the set, and frequently broadcasting live video from set during the shoot. DeSapio notes the novel has sold hugely and steadily for decades, "and you know how high the advertising budget is for that? Zero. It sells because people talk to people [about the book] and if we can make an Atlas that a [fan of the book] will feel comfortable recommending, then we've succeeded."
To further prime the promo pump, they've given guest-casting appearances to what Aglialoro says are "almost 10 personalities who have TV shows or radio shows who have a million plus followers who are going to talk to their people" about Atlas III. But it won't all be grassroots promotion—Aglialoro says he's intent on making sure the hot movies this summer have on their weekend showings a hot trailer for Atlas III.
To cement potential audience connection to the project, the producers launched a Kickstarter campaign last September that raised $446,000. Exactly as they knew it would be, this was mocked by people whose (mis)understanding of Rand only went as far as "she valorizes businessmen and the market." This led many to assume that asking people to freely support something they valued was in some sense un-Randian. Aglialoro sees it differently, as would anyone who understands Rand. Her novel The Fountainhead is a paean to an artist whose work is not rewarded by the marketplace. Rand believed in the glory of trading value—money—for value—a film the giver wants to see.
Aglialoro says he's gotten hundreds of unsolicited checks in support of this project over the decades since he got the rights to make a movie of Atlas, including one for $100,000, and is still proud of the hundreds of one-dollar contributions from people telling him, he says, that "'I want to take some value of mine and place it where I see value [his movie].'"
With DVDs and streaming (ancillary incomes he says have been rising recently) and the chance that many people will wait to binge-watch the completed trilogy when it's done, Aglialoro isn't sure that he'll lose money in the end. He's even contemplating doing a 24-episode TV remake in the future, one that could close-focus on specific themes or characters in the novel in more depth such that "people who never read the book would find it very entertaining but also say, 'I got something from that, I have a better understanding of life, better values because of that.' "
Yes, to answer a question the Atlas team is weary of answering, they did entirely recast Part III, just as they did for Part II. "Do people complain when they recast James Bond or Batman?" Kaslow asks rhetorically. (Yes, many people do, but I've met few people emotionally attached to the specific actors from earlier Atlases.) "The star of the movie is not the actors," DeSapio says. "The star is Atlas Shrugged and the ideas of Ayn Rand."
I visited the set in early February, during the last week of its shooting schedule. For days the Atlas team had taken over the entire old Park Plaza Hotel near Los Angeles' MacArthur Park, transforming it into the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, the scene of a press conference by America's leader, John Galt's apartment (I saw the hero's belt and ties in a drawer) and lab, and the torture chamber where the bad guys trap Galt, among other locations. The production team was working on a tight schedule, painting hallway walls they'd just build with just hours to spare—I accidentally put my fingerprints on a still-wet wall outside Galt's quarters.
Their John Galt is Kristoffer Polaha (you might recall him as Carlton Hanson in Mad Men). DeSapio says Polaha came in understanding the nature of the Randian hero; I'm told by another insider on set that he was a fan of The Fountainhead, considering it a lifechanging experience. DeSapio says "I want every fan of Rand to hear [Polaha] say the classic Galt phrase: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
The producers are also high on their new director James Manera, a veteran of the commercial world who is also shooting a feature about Vince Lombardi. "I think that if I were asked–and I won't be!–to form the curriculum of film school," Aglialoro says, "what do you do to be a director, I would say the graduate side should be knowing how to do a high-quality TV commercial. They have to get a lot of information and a lot of communication, a lot of art and visuality in that 30 seconds or 60 seconds, and Jim Manera has won awards in that world." (Other great Americans who have expressed similar feelings about the art and significance of 30-second commercials include Stanley Kubrick and Timothy Leary.)
On my day on set, I watched for hours as they filmed the scene where John Galt's speech begins interfering with a planned televised address by America's national leader. (I also overheard a great 'only on a film set' discussion in which someone tried to assure Kaslow that in a later scene, "If you want to set the motor and the walls on fire, we can do that.")
Galt's speech is famously long—had they not condensed it, that scene alone would have been longer than most feature-length films. Manera runs his cast through what seems like just the beginning and end of it many, many times, giving direction on how quickly the leader's aides should react, where people should look. Two of the producers wonder aloud about exactly how the actors playing Dagny Taggart (the novel's conflicted heroine) and Eddie Willers (her longtime assistant), who already know Galt's voice, should properly react to hearing him break into the broadcast.
Aglialoro thinks Rand was having an intellectual "bad hair day" when she decided to valorize the term "selfishness," which he thinks blunts her message of individual achievement through freely chosen market cooperation, not "self at expense of others." Thus, he tried to make their approximately four-minute condensation of Galt's speech a bit more inspirational, a bit less condemnatory, than the novel's version. It ended (from what I could hear) with talk of how you should not in your confusion and despair let your own irreplaceable spark go out and how the world you desire can be won.
With the speech, says Kaslow, the "challenge was, you want people to feel good" and so they tried to "accentuate the positive aspects as opposed to presenting things in negative." Aglialoro mentions that "Rand had in there the mystics of the world corrupting humanity…and that would be self defeating" in getting across her message in such a tight form.
The most orthodox of Objectivists, like the ones associated with the Ayn Rand Institute (connected with Rand's heir and enforcer, Leonard Peikoff), will likely object. Aglialoro sums up his relationship with these controllers of Rand's estate as "I wish them well—we share the same ideas–and they wish us extinction." But he is sure that he can't get across Rand's message via a hopefully popular movie "by catechism. It has to be done by communication." Peikoff, from whom Aglialoro bought the film rights, has the right to see the script before shooting, but he has, Aglialoro was told, refused to read them or comment on them, merely, as Kaslow says, "cashing the checks."
On set Manera uses subtle smoke machine effects to get across the grimly decaying aura of this Randian alternate universe worn down by lack of respect for creators. As DeSapio tells me while praising Manera's direction and visual sense, "Rand hated naturalism, and it just doesn't work with Atlas. I have no question this one will be the best of the three in being closest to accurately reflecting what we [Rand fans] all wanted to see on the screen." The film is being shot entirely using a new Canon camera system called the C-500 4K.
I interviewed Dominic Daniel, playing Eddie Willers, the representative of decent, but not necessarily genius, man in the story. Daniel sees Willers as someone who slowly realizes he's been "giving his talents and ability over to people who aren't necessarily, I don't want to use the word 'deserving,' but definitely not appreciative." Willers goes through, Daniel thinks, the most wrenching change in outlook as the story progresses.
He's pleased that the movie reworked Willers' fate so he is not so much "dumped off to the side." Daniel was assigned Fountainhead in high school, and has an uncle who considers Rand his hero, and "that book spoke about individuality, finding one's own path and taking responsibility for your own life and not listening to people who say 'you owe it to us,'" a message that resonated as Daniel chose a career in the arts, not what his parents might have expected. He knows there are a lot of curious feelings and hostility toward Rand's work, and admits he's gotten "a little of that, a few friends who are like, [in a suspicious tone]: 'What's going on on set? How is it?' kind of thing. But I didn't have any reservations."
Aglialoro says he's pissed that when a previous installment premiered in D.C, "not one politician came, not one Republican or Democrat–especially the Republicans with their big mouths talking about 'I like Ayn Rand and Atlas,' not one came. They played it safe." Screw the political classes—Atlas III will premier in Las Vegas in September.
Maybe he'll make his money back; maybe he won't. This Randian businessman doesn't seem too worried about it. He finished what he started because he believed in its "purpose, which is to change people's lives for the better by [helping them] realize the opportunity and responsibility of enlightened self-interest."
The post <em>Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who is John Galt?</em> appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>As Brian Doherty noted last week, the producers of the Atlas Shrugged movie trilogy have turned to crowdfunding to gin up fan interest and some spare change for the final installment of the series.
In a new column at Time.com, I argue that sites such as Kickstarter and other marvels of the 'Net provide a whole new way of "going Galt." Here's the start:
What does it mean that the makers of the final installment of a three-part film adaptation of Ayn Rand's controversial 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged are asking for donations at the crowdfunding site Kickstarter? Isn't that the book where characters pledge to "never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine"?
To critics of the first two movies in the trilogy (released in 2010 and 2011) and of Rand's stridently individualistic philosophy, it's just the latest indicator that the author of The Virtue of Selfishness and her fans are obnoxious hypocrites. "Ayn Rand Movie Producers Beg for Money," reads a Buzzfeed headline. "Atlas Shrugged producers turn to Kickstarter for help warning others against moochers," snarks The AV Club.
But regardless of the reasons for why producers John Aglialoro and Harmon Kaslow are seeking $250,000 via crowdfunding (and we'll get to those in moment), the fact is that Kickstarter and other sites like it are best understood as today's answer to "going Galt," a concept that's central to Rand's dystopian novel. Crowdfunding uses the internet to match up like-minded people who are spread all over the place to connect and support all sorts of projects, from staging of concerts to starting businesses to just about anything you can imagine.
The post Why Ayn Rand Would Have Loved Kickstarter appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The movie's web site.
The post <em>Atlas Shrugged Part III</em> Pursues Kickstarter Donations appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>"This is what it looks like when government is small enough to drown in your bathtub, and it is not a pretty picture." She says budget-cutting Republicans threaten to transform all of the U.S. into Detroit.
What? Detroit has been a "model city" for big-government! All Detroit's mayors since 1962 were Democrats who were eager to micromanage. And spend. Detroit has the only utility tax in Michigan, and its income tax is the third-highest of any big city in America (only Philadelphia and Louisville take more, and they aren't doing great, either).
Detroit's automakers got billions in federal bailouts.
The Detroit News revealed that Detroit in 2011 had around twice as many municipal employees per capita as cities with comparable populations. The city water and sewer department employed a "horseshoer" even though it keeps no horses.
This is "small enough government"? Harris-Perry must have one heck of a bathtub.
Politicians think they know best, but they can't alter the laws of economics. They can't make mismanaged industries, constant government meddling, welfare and bureaucratic labor union rules (Detroit has 47 unions) into a formula for success.
County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina wants to stop the bankruptcy process on the grounds that state law forbids Detroit to cut government services. But how will Detroit pay for the services? Unsustainable public-sector pensions, a bloated workforce—it's all supposed to continue somehow.
Politicians on Detroit's city council aren't even willing to sell off vacant lots that the city owns, or even a portion of the billions of dollars in art in its government-subsidized museum (including the original "Howdy Doody" puppet).
On my TV show, I confronted the council's second in command about his refusal to let Detroit sell land. He says he voted against it "because the developer wants to grow trees. We don't need any more new trees in our city." The politicians micromanaged themselves into bankruptcy, and they want to keep digging.
A member of the British Parliament writes that Detroit is like the fictional city of Starnesville in Ayn Rand's 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged"—a car-manufacturing city that became a ghost town after experimenting with socialism. In the novel, Starnesville's demise is the first sign that the entire society is approaching collapse.
Detroit is already there. 911 calls sometimes go unanswered. Two-thirds of the population left town.
As usual, the politicians want to try more of the same. They constantly come up with plans, but the plans are always big, simple-minded ones that run roughshod over the thousands of little plans made by ordinary citizens. Politicians want new stadiums, new transportation schemes, housing projects.
Andrew Rodney, a documentary filmmaker from Detroit, says many bad, big-government ideas that have plagued the U.S. were tried out first in Detroit. "It's the first city to experience a lot of the planning that went into a lot of cities."
Home loan subsidies, public housing, stadium subsidies, a $350 million project called "Renaissance Center" (the city ended up selling it for just $50 million), an automated People Mover system that not many people feel moved to use (it moves people in only one direction), endless favors to unions—if a government idea has failed anywhere in America, there's a good chance it failed in Detroit first.
And if you criticized them for it, politicians like former Mayor Coleman Young called you a racist. "To attack Detroit is to attack black," Young said. That tends to shut critics up.
But the laws of economics apply to us all.
Insulated from serious criticism, insulated from economic reality, Detroit thought somehow it'd muddle through—until now. There is a big lesson, if people elsewhere are willing to learn before it's too late.
The post Melissa Harris-Perry Couldn't Be More Wrong About the Roots of Detroit's Bankruptcy appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>From their press release:
Today, Atlas Productions, LLC officially announced that "Atlas Shrugged Part 3", the third and final installment of the Atlas Shrugged movie trilogy, has been officially greenlit with principal photography to begin later this year…
Aglialoro's company produced and distributed Parts 1 and 2, and has set a USA theatrical release for Part 3 in the Summer of 2014. Parts 1 and 2 are now currently available on DVD and internet download.
Producer Harmon Kaslow said, "Our number one goal with Part 3 is to pull the prescient message of Atlas off of the page and project it clearly onto the screen. Ayn Rand drew incredibly sharp archetypes with stark backdrops. Our goal with Part 3 is to bring these characters to life as accurately as possible and celebrate Rand's message."
The first two films featured different casts and director, and no actors or director are yet announced for Part Three.
Hollywood Reporter on the announcement:
"The message of Atlas Shrugged is far greater than any particular political movement and our intention is to convey that message as clearly as possible," Kaslow tells The Hollywood Reporter. "We are ultimately confident that we're going to have absolutely no direct impact on the looters already entrenched in Washington. We are however equally as confident that if we let Atlas speak for itself, we can have an impact on the voters that put them there."
Production and marketing budgets for the first two films were between $10 million-$20 million apiece, and the third will be made and marketed for less than $10 million…
As with the first two films, Part 3 will hit theaters at a politically advantageous time—summer of 2014, just ahead of the midterm elections. Part 1 was released on April 15, tax day, 2011, and Part 2 opened in October, 2012, just ahead of the November presidential election.
Hostile jokers on the Internet who haven't bothered to read Rand and understand her as some sort of prophet of profit above all seem to find a snickering irony in these filmmakers following their muse. The entire point of her 1943 novel The Fountainhead was of the prime importance of the creative artist, who should and will do the work they want to do, whether or not the world rewards them for it. The Atlas film project, whatever your opinions of its merits, is in a very Randian spirit all the way.
My reports from the set of Atlas Shrugged Part One and Atlas Shrugged Part Two.
My reviews of Atlas Shrugged Part One and Atlas Shrugged Part Two.
The story of Rand's life and impact is told in my book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.
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]]>The post Third Installment of Atlas Shrugged Gets the Nod appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Atlas Shrugged Part II: The Strike, the second installment of a film adaptation of Ayn Rand's classic novel, was released splat in the middle of election season. And the onscreen tale of an overweening and desperate government stealing from and hobbling productive industrialists certainly felt timely. The movie's TV ad campaign even explicitly asked whether it would sway the outcome of the election.
But at a Los Angeles screening of the film, one of its producers and lead financiers, John Aglialoro, stressed in his pre-film remarks that neither side of the left-right divide can uncomplicatedly embrace Rand's philosophy. Both the conventional left and right, Aglialoro said, espouse altruism, which Rand saw as a great moral evil. (Rand used the word "altruism" not in its colloquial sense of behaving benevolently but to mean, in her words, the notion that "man has no right to exist for his own sake…that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty.") Still, the filmmaker understood his movie's potential for ginning up anti-government (and likely anti-Obama) emotions and he urged the right to make room for Randians in their coalition, despite their atheism, which often alarms religious conservatives.
Atlas II is tonally aimed at a right-wing audience, the sort of people who thought Mitt Romney was right-on when he dismissed nearly half the country—those who are "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it." Romney didn't use the Randian term "looters and moochers" for that now-famous 47 percent, but he might as well have.
The film features Fox News' Sean Hannity in an as-himself cameo arguing Atlas' theme, as the government tries to confiscate metal magnate Henry Rearden's amazing alloy, Rearden metal. Rearden, Hannity insists, is "a hero, an innovator, a job creator" and the "Fair Share" law hobbling him "is more big government" and "will result in failure." But as he rose to national prominence, Mitt Romney's vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan still chose to retreat from his reputation as a Rand fan.
Given the care with which Rand raveled her tale, it's surprising that Part II is fully understandable with zero explicit recapping; some smooth bits of dialog early set up the world in which railroad chieftain Dagny Taggart (Samantha Mathis) and metal master Hank Rearden (Jason Beghe) are very nearly the last competent industrialists in a world rendered dysfunctional by a government-caused sclerosis, with economic policy decisions based on cronyism and justified in the name of fairness. People of ability—musicians, scientists, other industrialists—are mysteriously disappearing, to the immense frustration of Taggart and Rearden. Still, they feel bound to keep doing their best no matter how much their government or culture disrespects them.
Rand's heady, nightmarish fantasy of a world run according to the principles of state-enforced equality doesn't lend itself to naturalistic or colloquial humor. Rand's characters are archetypes of ideas, and the more the actors try to make them seem like real people the less powerful the themes and actions feel. When Rearden mutters an ironic "catchy" after he's told the government will rename his alloy Miracle Metal, it weakens the steely core of the character. Fans of the novel will similarly be discomfited when Francisco D'Anconia (Esai Morales, in the movie's most consistently delightful performance) offers Rearden the too of-the-moment quip, "How's that working out for you?"
Beghe gives Rearden a gravelly imperturbability, like an industrial crime boss, which works pretty well when he defies a government kangaroo court with a brave declaration of his rights as a creator. But Beghe fails to convey that this man is not just angry but tortured by his misunderstanding of what true morality means in a world where creators are abused. The Atlas filmmakers have gone out of their way to talk up Taggart as one of the great iconic heroines of 20th century literature, but Mathis isn't given much of a chance to sell super competence or steely heroism. She is by turns peeved, annoyed, or surprised by events around her. Her big action moments are grabbing a map to re-route a train line in an emergency and crashing a plane.
The movie reduces Rand's message to the Tea Party–friendly one: government economic management and stealing from the productive are bad. There is one hat tip to Rand's deeper defense of reason and rationality, which underlay her hatred for altruism and statism: A smarty-pants young liberal is lecturing Rearden about how one mustn't get trapped in rigid principles, and Rearden snaps back that you can't pour steel without rigid principles.
But the entire novel, in its way, is about the terrors that can arise from seemingly innocent or merely "philosophical" beliefs. Atlas II features Rand's most wild and vivid dramatization of this point—a spectacular train crash—as its climax. In the novel, the scene derives its power from brief glimpses into the heads of many different passengers to show how their irrational or altruistic or statist beliefs snowball into the series of mistakes that cause the wreck of their own train. A film simply can't duplicate that breathtaking patchwork. Onscreen, a single arrogant and supercilious politician bears all the weight of the scene. The train wreck feels like an ordinary crash caused by a single mistake, not the inevitable culmination of centuries of bad philosophy.
No one expected Atlas to make it to the big screen totally intact. But this film is a labor of love for its makers regardless. Atlas Part II had double the budget and debuted in more than twice the theaters of 2011's critically drubbed Part I. It also has an entirely new cast and a beefed up screenwriting team. Its core audience will probably forgive its flaws in their eagerness to love it as well. The film is professionally polished and does what it sets out to do, within the unavoidable limits of its form. But it will likely not change any minds or lives the way Rand's source material can and does.
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]]>ReasonTV correspondent Kennedy spoke with Mathis and other cast members at the film's Hollywood Premiere on Oct. 5 to find out how they connected with their characters and the themes portrayed in the movie.
Atlas Shrugged Part II, the second of three films based on Ayn Rand's controversial 1957 novel, hits theaters nationwide on Friday, October 12, 2012. (For more information on the film, go to http://atlasshruggedmovie.com)
About 3 minutes.
Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer. Camera by Paul Detrick.
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]]>Last night, I attended the world premiere of Atlas Shrugged Part II (you can see our Reason.tv video of the event at this link, and embedded below the fold).
So how was the movie? At the screening, the universal reaction (one I share) was that it was much better than the original. Snappier dialogue, better actors, more believable villains, none of those odd, breathless cable-news reports about the laying of train track. Feels more relatable to our current moment (even winkingly so, with some of the protest signage, Fox News commentary, and famous-for-D.C. cameos). With the caveat that I've never finished the source material, I found both The Money Speech and Rearden's Defense to be well-edited highlights instead of buzz-killing cinematic soliloquies. And Esai Morales can sabotage my mines any day of the week!
Unscientific prediction: If you liked the first, you'll love the second. If you winced empathetically through I, you will be able to relax much more for II. If you loved or hated the deadline-beating original, you'll be feeling extra doses of the same.
Two other early reactions, beginning with David Weigel at Slate:
[The] casting change definitely works. Rearden has to deliver the big speech of Part II, when he's called in to a star chamber for selling his metal to a friend and violating the government's new "Fair Share" law. (In the novel, it's the "Equalization of Opportunity" law.) […] Onscreen, Rearden/Beghe boils this down into a short defense of "job creators." And it works! The Rand-curious audience wants to stand up and cheer for this hard-working, word-chewing businessman who's just trying to pour some damn metal.
But that really is the high point. We get two action scenes—a plane chase and two trains colliding in the "Taggart Tunnel"—but the fullness of Rand's message can only be delivered through boardroom scenes and phone calls and meetings in Washington. Most of these scenes are deadly. Your fun, as a viewer, may come from an impromptu game of "hey, it's that guy!" The chairman of the Taggart board—Biff from Back to the Future. The "head of state" (not president)—Ray Wise, the evil dad from Twin Peaks. The talkative security guard—funny enough, that's Teller of Penn & Teller, protecting her from people waving "We Are the 99%!" signs.
And Jordan Bloom, at The American Conservative:
It's not like the filmmakers do anything interesting in terms of storytelling or visual style—the aesthetic is a weird mash-up of steampunk and retrofuturism, I guess because both go well with trains, and its epic pretensions remove any responsibility to surprise the viewer.
Ultimately "Atlas Shrugged Part II" is a didactic film […]
Bottom line: If you're preaching to the flock, this choirboy expects a better sermon.
Here's our report from last night:
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]]>Reason's Matt Welch was on hand for the movie's world premiere in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, October 3 to ask viewers why they thought Rand's ideas about individualism and free-market capitalism remain so popular—and yet so embattled—in contemporary America.
Among the people Welch talked with are John Aglialoro and Harmon Kaslow, producers of Atlas Shrugged; John Fund of the Wall Street Journal; William Dunn of the Reason Foundation; Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks; David Kelley of The Atlas Society; Fred Smith of Competitive Enterprise Institute; David Boaz of the Cato Institute; Carla Gericke of the Free State Project; and Mary Katharine Ham of Hotair.com.
About 3 minutes long. Produced by Joshua Swain with help from Amanda Winkler.
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]]>Go here for Reason's voluminous coverage of Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, and related topics.
And go here to watch Reason TV's playlist of Rand-related videos.
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]]>ReasonTV visited the set of Atlas Shrugged Part II, the second installment in the new film adaptation of Ayn Rand's epic 1957 novel. The movie is set to hit theaters on October 11, 2012.
About 1.30 minutes. Shot by Sharif Matar and Tracy Oppenheimer and edited by Joshua Swain.
Read Brian Doherty's account of the filming here.
Check out Reason's ever-growing playlist of videos related to Ayn Rand and the continuing interest in her life and work. The videos feature interviews and commentary from Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Yaron Brook, David Kelley, Robert Poole, biographers Anne C. Heller and Jennifer Burns, and many more.
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]]>"It's a poetic moment that today [February 2, 2012] Ayn Rand was born 107 years ago and we are greenlighting Atlas Shrugged: Part II," announced producer John Aglialoro at Reason Weekend 2012, which was held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Aglialoro was joined by his partner Harmon Kaslow in making the announcement.
Filming is set to begin in April and the movie will hit theaters this fall, before Election Day. "In October," said Kaslow, "hopefully we'll have people from Reason, from FreedomWorks, people who believe in what this book represents, [standing] in front of the…theater to tell people not only how important the movie is but what they're going to do in November and hopefully effectuate some positive changes."
The official Part 2 trailer is online here.
About 3.30 minutes. Filmed by Anthony Fisher and Joshua Swain; edited by Swain.
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]]>See Reason.TV's latest Atlas film coverage:
…and read my May Reason magazine feature on the making of the movie.
A list of theaters where you can see the movie.
The post Rand Geek's Dream: Hear <em>Atlas</em> Characters Speak…to You! appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Atlas Shrugged Part 1 see it in theaters April 15th!!!
"Who is John Galt?"
On the week Atlas Shrugged Part 1 hits the theaters, Reason.tv goes behind the scenes to speak with the people both on and off the silver screen to explore the mysterious question that haunts the world of Ayn Rand's epic, Atlas Shrugged.
Approximate length 3 minutes. Produced by Hawk Jensen, Senior Producer Ted Balaker, Camera by Alex Manning, Zach Weissmueller, Austin Bragg. Edited by Hawk Jensen.
Music by Jason Shaw @ Audionautics.com
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To see Reason.tv's exclusive behind-the-scenes video of Atlas Shrugged Part 1 go here.
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]]>Many actors and producers have talked about adapting Ayn Rand's classic Atlas Shrugged for the big screen, but 53 years after its publication no one has dared tackle the ambitious project—until now.
Reason.tv heads to the set of Atlas Shrugged Part One to offer viewers a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of this most anticipated film.
Director Paul Johansson (One Tree Hill) and Grant Bowler (Lost, True Blood, Ugly Betty), who plays Henry Rearden, discuss the perils, pressures, and pleasure involved in telling the epic tale of a society where the "men of the mind" go on strike and refuse to contribute to a collectivist world.
Produced by Ted Balaker and Hawk Jensen. Camera by Austin Bragg and Hawk Jensen. Production support by Sam Corcos.
Music: "Eu Nao Sabia" by Anamar available from Magnatune Records.
Approximately 5.3 minutes.
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