Dub_James wrote:I can tell you this; if it were a Leftist novel, whatever the merits of how the movie turned out, you could be damn sure they'd get their message across in a way that was convincing to the average person, and blindingly obvious to the true believers.
In that area alone, perhaps, the Left is vastly superior to the Right.
If you want to send a message, use Western Union. - Samuel Goldwyn, co-founder of MGM
This is why any movie, left, right, libertarian, scientology, whatever, blows dead whale penis
when it's all about the propaganda.
This is why Sergei Eisenstein and Leni Reifenstahl are studied, but mocked, because at least they understood the craft along with the message, but they still came down on the side of the message when in doubt.
Real estate is about location, location, location.
A movie is about story, story, story.
People who forget this make piles of dogshit like
Batman and Robin.
People who remember it make
The Dark Knight.
Same idea, but one has a story, and one just has a few hundred million worth of parts vomited up onto the screen.
(And speaking personally, WTH, at least the checks cleared...)
A quick check of BoxOfficeMojo will reveal which approach works.
The fundamental problem with all the Randian offal that's been made is they're all worried about keeping everything in, as though the malignant little dwarf were possessed of papal infallibility, either in life or now.
The problem isn't that there's no one who can do justice to the bare bones of the story in
Atlas Shrugged; it's that there are 40000 freshman in screenwriting class who could. But until this thing passes from copyright and into the public domain, no one will get the chance, because of the masturbatory fervor with which the minions of the dead author slavishly guard The Legacy.
Nobody had to write in Good vs. Evil and Freedom vs. Tyranny to make
Dark Knight, or
Lord Of the Rings, or
Avengers, or 20 other movies with pretty hardcore right-wing views, yet those messages leak from every bit of them. But first, they had to write a story that people would watch for 90 minutes. The theme comes out of that, it isn't something you put in. And the major decision in making a good movie is what you throw away, not what you keep.
Atlas Shrugged is
maybe one 90-minute flick.
If somebody like Spielberg, Scorsese, or dozens of others labored over it, it would be to tell the essential story without one bit of extraneous self-masturbatory crap, which would necessitate throwing 99% of the book into the trash (because most of Rand's writing is endless repetitive self-masturbatory crap), and distilling it down to its concentrated essence. You make a movie three times: When you write the story, when you film the story, and when you edit the film.
The people who played around with
Atlas Shrugged never did the first one, or the last one, and keep palming off the middle step, done over and over, except succeedingly worse each time, as if the first and last elements aren't the critical ones. The result of that approach speaks for itself.
The Left isn't better than anyone at this, they just mostly have adult supervision - mostly - and no shortage of people who realize that they're in a movie
business, not a
movie business.
You want to be rich and famous?
Take
Atlas Shrugged, distill the story arc to 3 minutes, talking.
That's called a
pitch.
Write it up as a (max) 10-minute synopsis.
That's called a
treatment.
If you can get someone's interest up with that, write it up in Hollywood screenplay format. Keep only the necessary characters and plot elements and dialogue from the book. And bring it in at 90 pages. Not 89, and not 91. 90.
That's a
first draft.
Then have someone, not a friend, but someone you trust
and who knows WTF they're doing, critique it.
Then fix what they find fault with.
That's a
re-write.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
When you can't make it any better or tighter you're done.
That's a
final draft.
Now you're ready to go shopping for someone to make it.
(I just saved anyone $100,000 and three or four years of film school. You're welcome. If you actually do what I wrote above
one time, you're well ahead of 90% of the writers in Hollywood. Yes, really. It's that bad. And if you have
one finished screenplay, you vault over a crazy huge number of wannabes.)
Oh, but the reason neither you nor anyone else has ever done those first five things?
Because they don't own the
rights to the story, and won't until 2049, 70 years after Rand croaked, which is the current extent of copyright.
(Of course, just about the time that span seems to be about to start dumping Walt Disney's stories into public domain, that corporation lobbies to get copyright extended another span, which may happen again, around 2035 or so. Go figure.)
So you can wait until 2049 (I'll probably be dead, so IDGAF), or you can take a 2x4, and try and explain this to the dipshits who hold the keys to the Randian legacy. And try and beat some sense into them to not only cut the rights loose, but give up creative control of them.
This is why Thank God for Peter Jackson, who could get the Tolkien people to unclench their fists, and trust someone. And then not fuck them over, but rather gloriously just the opposite.
We got
Lord Of The Rings, and now
The Hobbit, and he's got something like $100M, which isn't a bad gig if you can land it.
JustinR wrote:All movies can be condensed into a three minute HISHE episode.
3 minutes is weak, but tolerable.
Better:
30 seconds. With bunnies.