Friday, April 8, 2011

Re: 'Atlas Shrugged': First Movie to Target the Tea Party

Can't wait to see it, and, perhaps, kill it (or not)

What kills me is the folk, self-described liberals, who cliam if you
are so much as interested in it you suck.

That puts the D in D-umb.

No offense, Nominal9

If te worst thing Ayn made ya do, is think...she be good by me.

On Apr 7, 5:35 pm, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>    --------------------------
>
> [image: The Hollywood Reporter] <http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/>
>  'Atlas Shrugged': First Movie to Target the Tea Party
>
> 6:03 PM 4/6/2011 by Paul Bond
>
> *share*
>
> ·                                 *Comments
> (11)<http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/atlas-shrugged-first-movie-targ...>
> *
>
>  138
>
> *[image: Leading Role]*
>
> *Courtesy of The Strike Productions*
> About 9 million adults are active Tea Partiers, and 45 million support the
> movement, a CBS/New York Times poll says.
>
> *Atlas Shrugged**, a novel in which society's most productive citizens
> choose to disappear, was published in 1957, and filmmakers have spent nearly
> every year since trying to adapt it. They finally succeeded, and the first
> part of what's planned as a trilogy comes out April 15. If you didn't know
> that, it's likely you're not a member of the Tea Party.*
>
> *It was probably only a matter of time before Hollywood tried tapping the
> e-mail lists and social networks of the giant political movement, as
> distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures and filmmakers including co-producer
> Harmon Kaslow have for Atlas Shrugged: Part 1.*
>
> *Despite years of cinematic interest and high hopes for stars and funding,
> the film was made for less than $10 million, with Taylor Schilling — who
> appeared on NBC's short-lived Mercy — playing protagonist Dagny Taggart.*
>
> *By Hollywood standards, the marketing budget is tiny, so word-of-mouth from
> Tea Partiers sympathetic to the film's message is crucial to its success.*
>
> *The film is also the perfect test case to see whether such an effort can
> work because Ayn Rand's novel extols free markets and entrepreneurialism and
> excoriates government coercion and overtaxation, values that unite Tea
> Partiers. In fact, rallies invariably feature signs that mimic the book's
> opening line: "Who Is John Galt?" Another common sign at Tea Party rallies
> asks, "Is Atlas Shrugging?" If Hollywood can't persuade this demographic to
> support Atlas, it might as well write off the Tea Party as a marketing
> source.*
>
> *About 9 million adults are active Tea Partiers, and 45 million support the
> movement, a CBS/New York Times poll says. The makers of Atlas have been
> working to get organizers to insert mentions of the film into the millions
> of e-mails that go out to the faithful, and Tea Partiers have obliged. Many
> have also attended screenings and are satisfied that the movie adheres to
> Rand's principles of objectivism, individualism and self-responsibility.*
>
> *One recent e-mail to Tea Partiers in California, for example, alerted
> members of upcoming Freedom Rallies. But it also included a link to the
> movie's trailer, the name of the local theater that has booked the film and
> the line, "Mark your calendars for a celebration of capitalism."*
>
> *Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, an organization that predates the
> Tea Party but has become aligned with it, has attended five screenings and
> recommended the film through an e-mail sent to 1 million Tea Partiers, many
> of whom forwarded the message to others on different lists, and so on.*
>
> *"That's the power of the Tea Party," Kibbe says. "The people with the best
> e-mail lists are the local leaders. Our job was to push it to those
> leaders."*
>
> *He uses the word "job" loosely because no money changed hands. "It's all
> done from the bottom up through a viral network on a volunteer basis," he
> says.*
>
> *Adds Kaslow, "They have a very efficient means of communicating via e-mail,
> and it seems to be working well for us."*
>
> *Kibbe has also pushed the movie to users of FreedomConnector.com, a social
> network for Tea Partiers that was created by FreedomWorks and is promoted by
> Fox News star Glenn Beck.*
>
> *Atlas** might be the first feature marketed through the Tea Party, but it
> probably won't be the last. "If there is a movie that connects with the
> ethos of the Tea Party, I'm going to push it out to them," Kibbe says.*
>
> *The movie should connect, though it is devoid of the heavy-duty ideological
> speeches. Instead, there are one-liners that will jump out at Randians but
> could fall flat with the uninitiated, who might wonder why they invested 90
> minutes in a mystery that doesn't have much humor or action and ends on a
> cliff-hanger.*
>
> *As in the book, dishonest bureaucrats sell to gullible voters "The
> Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog Rule" and "The Equalization of Opportunity Bill" as
> altruistic pieces of legislation designed to even things out but which
> actually make things much worse. Those who back big labor unions and agitate
> for government handouts, bailouts and intervention are society's moochers.*
>
> *The movie is set in 2016 as oil spills, pirates, high gas prices and a bad
> economy dominate headlines. The bad guys talk of "social progress" and
> businesses being made to "lend a helping hand." One hero, in contrast,
> describes himself as "someone who knows what it's like to work for himself
> and not let others feed off the profits of his energy."*
>
> *But while there's lots to whet the appetite of Tea Partiers, getting them
> in theaters is another matter. The film will open Tax Day — not chosen at
> random — on 200 screens, unless the distributor sees a sudden surge in early
> bookings.*
>
> *Beyond e-mails to Tea Partiers, producers have sent the film to
> conservative commentators John Stossel, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity,
> hoping they'll mention it favorably on their TV and radio shows and prompt
> consumers to ask their local theaters to book the movie. It's working. Radio
> host Neal Boortz, for example, recently tweeted: "You want Atlas Shrugged
> shown in your city? Here's the website to make your wishes known.http://tinyurl.com/WeWantAtlas."<http://tinyurl.com/WeWantAtlas.>*
>
> *The film was directed by Paul Johansson. Some might find it off-putting
> that the director, known for his work in television, voted for Barack Obama.
> But John Aglialoro, the businessman who financed, co-wrote and co-produced
> the movie, didn't ask Johansson about his politics.*
>
> *"I read it when I was 17, and it changed my life," says Johansson, who also
> appears as the shadowy John Galt in the film. "It gave me permission to be
> who I am. It taught me that it's OK to stand alone and not be part of a
> group."*
>
> *Lots of Americans might agree: A 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and
> the Book-of-the-Month Club determined that Atlas Shrugged was the
> second-most-influential book in history behind the Bible. The next three
> works of fiction on that list — To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the
> Ringsand Gone
> With the Wind — have already become Hollywood blockbusters. Don't expect
> Atlas to replicate that sort of success, though. Aglialoro needs only to
> make some money with it, or the subsequent two installments will be scrapped
> and the novice filmmaker will abandon other projects on which he's working.*
>
> *"If it bombs, I will not make another movie," he says.*
>
> *The first installment of Atlas was 44 years in the making because Rand and
> Hollywood couldn't agree on how to bring the book's 1,168 pages to the
> screen.*
>
> *Through the years, big names have attached themselves to film or TV
> versions, but the film was made without A-listers and is being distributed
> by a Utah-based indie with an affinity for political and religious themes.
> *
>
> *"Talent agencies were not sending us many of their top people," Kaslow
> says. "I don't think it was political. We just suffered a credibility issue
> because everyone knew that a lot of well-known people had already tried to
> get this movie made."*
>
> *Aglialoro, who paid Rand's heir Leonard Peikoff $1.1 million for rights to
> Atlas in 1992, ended up rushing it into production to prevent them from
> reverting. He beat the deadline by two days; Peikoff lost faith in the
> filmmakers over 19 years and said through a colleague that he fears the film
> doesn't sufficiently reflect Rand's philosophy.*
>
> *Reviews suggest otherwise. "There is not a moment where an honest fan of
> Rand could say that the makers of this film just didn't get it," wrote Brian
> Doherty at Reason.com.*
>
> *Johansson expects a passionate reaction to the film. "If we had the perfect
> script, perfect actors and unlimited money, we'd still be under a microscope
> because of the source material," he says. "It's like holy text to some
> people."*
>
> *A Long History of **Atlas Shrugged** Heroines**
> At one time or another, these actresses were discussed to play Dagny Taggart
> *
>
> *Atlas Shrugged** makes its way to the big screen April 15, though in more
> modest form than originally envisioned. That's because many attempts at
> big-budget treatments of the 1,168-page book fizzled.*
>
> *Ayn Rand was trying to develop her 1957 novel into a miniseries or film
> around 1972, and she expressed a desire to have Fritz Lang or Alfred
> Hitchcock direct. Rand died 10 years later after completing less than half a
> script for a nine-hour teleplay, according to Jeff Britting of the Ayn Rand
> Institute.*
>
> *Perhaps the most notable attempt at a movie came from producer Albert
> Ruddy, who was attracted to the project just after releasing The
> Godfatherin 1972. The deal blew up when Rand demanded veto rights over
> editing.
> *
>
> *During the late '70s, Rand worked with producers Henry Jaffe and his son
> Michael to create an eight-hour miniseries for NBC. Rand imagined that
> Raquel Welch or Farrah Fawcett would play heroine Dagny Taggart, but the
> project was scuttled when the network named Fred Silverman its president in
> 1978, according to Anne C. Heller, author of Ayn Rand and the World She Made
> .*
>
> *Philip Anschutz tried and failed, as did Baldwin Entertainment Group.
> Lionsgate gave it a shot, with a script rewritten by Randall Wallace, the
> Oscar-nominated writer of Braveheart; insiders say he also wanted to direct
> the movie. The deal fell apart when Angelina Jolie chose to star in Clint
> Eastwood's Changeling instead, then got pregnant in 2008. The recession
> didn't help.*
>
> *Others who discussed playing Taggart on TV or film include Sharon Stone,
> Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Julia Roberts, Cate Blanchett, Maggie
> Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley. In the end, Atlas Shrugged: Part I was made
> for less than $10 million, and Taggart is played by relative unknown Taylor
> Schilling.     *
>
> * *
>
>  image002.jpg
> 111KViewDownload
>
>  image001.gif
> 2KViewDownload

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