Brian Doherty on Kickstarting John Galt
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.) 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." Brian Doherty visited the set in February and talked to Aglialoro about the film, which hits theaters this September.