BREAKING: Vadim Perelman Shrugs off 'Atlas'
Well, here's some news I've been hoping to write up for a long while now ... director Vadim Perelman has officially dropped the adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, which is presumably still set to star Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart. Perelman signed on to the project last September, and as recently as April ComingSoon.net reported that the project was still a go. It may or may not still be moving forward, but I have it from the most reliable source possible -- Perelman himself -- that it will not be going forward with him at the helm.
CHUD wrote up this piece about Angelina Jolie supposedly telling MTV that Perelman was never signed to direct at all -- something Perelman finds interesting, since he had a signed contract that attached him, and Lionsgate (not Perelman, as CHUD asserts, though Perelman has done interviews about his attachment to the project) had put out many press releases announcing him as the director. Perelman was attached, and I can say with as much certainty as one can possibly have about a situation like this that the decision to step down was on Perelman's side.
While this may seem like bad news for all those Objectivists out there who were frothing at the bit to finally see Atlas on the big screen, it's great news for fans of Perelman, who directed one of my favorite films ever, House of Sand and Fog, and more recently The Life Before Her Eyes, which I enjoyed, even if 75% of my fellow critics didn't agree. I never felt Atlas was the right project for Perelman -- he's a very visual, artsy, poetic director, and Atlas Shrugged, for what literary merits it does have, is hardly poetic; it's a rationale for and description of a philosophy within the form of a novel.
So many attempts at adapting Atlas Shrugged have been tried and failed that, if I was a betting chick (which I have been known to be, on occasion) I certainly wouldn't put my hard-earned money on the film ever getting done at this point. As Eugene noted back in April, this is one book that's practically unfilmable; the book weighs in at over 1,000 pages, and John Galt's speech near the end rambles on for what would be probably two hours of film time if it were scripted in its entirety.
They'd have to cut the hell out of the speech to put it in a movie, and then there would ensue much moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth among Objectivist circles over the parts that were left out , no matter how they did it. Personally, I think if you're gonna adapt Atlas Shrugged, suck it up and do it as a week-long HBO miniseries or something, rather than butchering it entirely.
I wouldn't hold your breath for Jolie to stick around on the project either -- it's not like she doesn't have a stack of scripts sitting on her nightstand -- but, who knows? She's said to be a fan of the book, so if she wants to see it on the big screen, perhaps she'll stick around to see who the new director will be.
So, now that Perelman is off Atlas Shrugged, who would you like to see helm the project now, assuming it goes forward at all? I can't imagine that a director who's staunchly opposed to Objectivism as a philosophy would take it on, which pretty much leaves out the hard-core liberals. So who would that leave who might possibly lead the project to completion, without the end result being absolutely wretched?
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(Page 2)22. Amanda, your response in comment 18 is right on. I should have referred, specifically, to those who are "obnoxious" Objectivists. Obnoxious is a subset of "noticeable..."
Thanks...
Posted at 3:31PM on Jun 23rd 2008 by Jack Greene
23. The best director and screenwriters for this project are the men who created the Iron Man film.
I'm 100% serious. You watch that and try to tell me it's not an Objectivist film. Quoting (paraphrased due to poor memory) the villain of the film: "Tony, you think that just because you have an idea, it belongs to you."
They built one of the five best superhero films of all time. They can adapt Atlas Shrugged, and in one movie, not a miniseries, not a trilogy.
Posted at 9:04PM on Jun 28th 2008 by BlueNight
24. BlueNight:
"The best director and screenwriters for this project are the men who created the Iron Man film."
Is it any coincidence that one of the original artists for Iron Man was an Objectivist (Steve Ditko)? He also co-created Spider-Man and Dr. Strange.
Posted at 9:51AM on Aug 28th 2008 by Brian
25. I don't know who I would pick for director of an "Atlas Shrugged" film, but I think it really ought to be three films, given the size of the book. There is, after all, the precedent of the three films of "The Lord of the Rings," another massive epic with an enthusiastic fanbase.
Posted at 12:56AM on Jul 5th 2008 by William H. Stoddard
26. I really really like the idea of a long animated series. It would be abouth the only way to film such a beast and making it on a budget.
My choices would be:
Frank Miller in his debut as director.
Paul Dini as executive producer.
The drawing style would be something a la Bruce Timm or maybe Neal Adams.
Posted at 4:20PM on Jul 22nd 2008 by Gustavo Sosa
27. How could you possibly like House of Sand of Fog.
There was very little focus on the character's decision making process. And the female character who's house is taken totally deserves it - so the plot fails to set up a scenario involving genuinely difficult choices and evaluations.
Then there's simply a tragedy wacked on to the end of the movie as if the writer simplistically thinks this is somehow meaningful.
This kind of movie is why arty movies get a bad name.
If it weren't for Ben Kingsley the movie would be totally worthless.
Posted at 11:17PM on Jul 30th 2008 by Tim
28. Most Objectivists will be glad that this project is failing, from what I've seen. There is no way Atlas Shrugged could be covered in 2 1/2 hours. Galt's speech alone took ~3 hours. They'd rather have a end result that stays true to the original, than a hacked up joke that simply misrepresents everything for which they stand.
Posted at 9:39AM on Aug 28th 2008 by Brian
21. I disagree that adapting Atlas Shrugged down into a single motion picture would necessarily do "it" a disservice.
Ayn Rand said that art, broadly, is not meant to "teach" but to "show." If a film version of Atlas was meant to teach the philosophy of Objectivism then, yes, it would have to be a 9-hour-long mini-series, in order to avoid being a chop-job. But that is not the purpose of art.
As Jack says above, there are 4000 ways to "convey" (or to "show") a point. Every line in Atlas Shrugged is not crucial to either its truth or its beauty, and its truth and beauty can be preserved in a distilled form by an artist with enough skill.
In Da Vinci's time, if you said that you could recreate the Mona Lisa -- without substantial loss of quality -- in an image less than half its original size, you be called a heretic. Folks would line up to inform you that you can't ever fit the detail of that work of art into a smaller package without botching it up.
However, if you look up Mona Lisa on Wikipedia -- an encyclopedia created by an Objecitivst -- we can witness Da Vinci's skillful representation in an image one-tenth of its original size. We can do that -- we can "fit" the beauty into one-tenth of the original size -- because of the applied skill that went into the field of digital imagery.
In the same way, a skillful artist could fit what's crucial to Atlas into a smaller box -- preserving both its truth and its beauty.
Posted at 1:56PM on Jun 21st 2008 by Ed T.