Soob

I own and have attempted The Fountainhead (written prior to Atlas Shrugged,) to no avail. The weight of her pinnacle novel is either to much or my attention span is simply too short.
The subsequent and still alive movement in her "name" seems one part too ardent, one part too cultist in form for my tastes. Almost a contradiction to her principles.

At any rate, popular culture has chased Rands best known novel in an effort to, somehow, divine two hours of cinema from a 1200 page novel that ends in a 30 page character oration. What began with "Godfather" producer Albert S. Ruddy might well end with "Braveheart" writer Randall Wallace.

The challenge, Wallace said, was immediately tempting. As for how he is distilling Rand's novel to a two-hour screenplay, Wallace insisted he had the material under control and was on course to deliver a draft this month.
"I can pretty much guarantee you that there won't be a 30-page speech at the end of the movie," he said. "I have two hours to try to express what Rand believed to an audience, and my responsibility is not only to Ayn Rand, but to the audience, that this be a compelling movie. More people will see the movie than will read 'Atlas Shrugged.' And the movie has to work."

Capturing an historic event (Braveheart) in loose, heroic terms is one thing. Accurately capturing an ideology imbedded in fiction is another. I wish Wallace the best of luck but do not hold out much hope that he'll effectively realize (although Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggert seems interesting) the elements that made "Atlas Shrugged" what it became. Two (or three or four) hours simply isn't enough to answer the question:
"Who is John Galt?"

Sometimes a book is simply the only means to effectively encompass a story.

An interesting sidenote: 1964 Playboy interview with Ayn Rand. Courtesy of GoldenHawk.