Category Archives: Media Citings

TIME magazine: Ayn Rand fans get a film of their own

TIME magazine has a new article by Alex Altman about the Atlas Shrugged movie, titled “Atlas Shrugged, The Movie: Ayn Rand Fans Get Film Of Their Own.” Since it’s pre-dated for Monday, April 25, 2011, the article must be in their print edition, as well.

It begins:

John Aglialoro is on a quest. Aglialoro, 67, is the CEO of a fitness-equipment company, a former U.S. poker champion and an objectivist â?? a subscriber to Ayn Rand’s doctrine of rational selfishness. In 1992 he bought from Rand’s estate the movie rights to Atlas Shrugged, her 1957 novel about the heroes who prop up society and the parasites who leech off their efforts. His dream was to make a film that honored Rand’s philosophy.

For 20 years the dream eluded him. Studios shied away from the project. Scripts were written and discarded. A deal to have Angelina Jolie play heroine Dagny Taggart fell through. Even Rand’s acolytes feared that a thousand-page doorstop whose emotional climax is a lengthy monologue on the virtues of unfettered capitalism would flop as a film.

See the full article for more.

On getting your girlfriend to read The Fountainhead

Echoes of the TIME online article about the Atlasphere have been ricocheting around on a few websites lately. This comment at Hot Air seemed worth highlighting:

I suggested to two girlfriends in college that they read the Fountainhead, and they blew it off. I let the 3rd know a little about Objectivism, and then broke up with her when we had philosophical differences. She called me up six months later and wanted to meet. She changed her worldview after reading the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Weâ??ve been married for 14 years now and have two boys.

Can any Objectivist read that and not smile? :-)

I corrected a couple typos in the quote.

New article in TIME magazine online about the Atlasphere and the Atlas Shrugged movie

Time.com just published an article about the Atlasphere as well as the Atlas Shrugged movie, penned by Claire Suddath, who spent this week talking with members of our dating service.

Her article is titled “Single Objectivist Seeks Same” and begins:

Let me get one thing out of the way: I have never read Ayn Rand. In fact, until recently I was one of those uneducated boors who thought the author’s first name was pronounced Ann. A few of her readers have corrected me over the years, but for some reason, I assumed they were joking â?? which is also what I assumed when they told me that they’d just read a great book about government intervention in the railroad industry. (That book is now a movie, Atlas Shrugged: Part I, opening Friday in the U.S.)

But then my editor asked me to look into the dating website the Atlasphere, on which Randians can search for their soul mate among fellow objectivists. I didn’t have time to read all 1,200 pages of Atlas Shrugged or even the 680-page The Fountainhead beforehand, so I did what any self-respecting journalist would do: I called up a friend. “Quick, can you explain Ayn Rand’s personal philosophy to me in one sentence?” I asked Fahad Siadat, a professional musician who just finished reading Atlas Shrugged. I know this because he’d cornered me at a dinner party and told me all about it. Which is what people tend to do when they’ve just discovered Ayn Rand.

See the full article for more.

WSJ: Remembering the real Ayn Rand

Writing at the Wall Street Journal, Donald Luskin has an excellent article “Remembering the Real Ayn Rand” that begins by discussing the new movie:

Tomorrow’s release of the movie version of “Atlas Shrugged” is focusing attention on Ayn Rand’s 1957 opus and the free-market ideas it espouses. Book sales for “Atlas” have always been briskâ??and all the more so in the past few years, as actual events have mirrored Rand’s nightmare vision of economic collapse amid massive government expansion. Conservatives are now hailing Rand as a tea party Nostradamus, hence the timing of the movie’s premiere on tax day.

When Rand created the character of Wesley Mouch, it’s as though she was anticipating Barney Frank (D., Mass). Mouch is the economic czar in “Atlas Shrugged” whose every move weakens the economy, which in turn gives him the excuse to demand broader powers. Mr. Frank steered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to disaster with mandates for more lending to low-income borrowers. After Fannie and Freddie collapsed under the weight of their subprime mortgage books, Mr. Frank proclaimed last year: “The way to cure that is to give us more authority.” Mouch couldn’t have said it better himself.

See his full article for much more, including a sensible discussion of the ways in which big businessmen are often no friends of capitalism and the ways in which Rand was neither a conservative nor a liberal.

Mr. Luskin is co-author with Andrew Greta of a new book, scheduled for publication next month, titled I Am John Galt: Today’s Heroic Innovators Building the World and the Villainous Parasites Destroying It. Judging from this article, I guessing it’s pretty good.

Hedge-fund manager Barry Colvin raises funds for ARI outpost in NYC

A new article in the Wall Street Journal begins:

Forget tea leaves: Wall Street is turning to Ayn Rand for guidance.

Hedge-fund manager Barry Colvin has raised $60,000 to start a Greater New York outpost of the Ayn Rand Institute, the first chapter in the country for the Irvine, Calif.-based nonprofit dedicated to the late free-market philosopher and novelist.

“The idea is on-the-ground reconnaissance,” said Mr. Colvin, vice chairman of Chicago-based Balyasny Asset Management. Mr. Colvin contributed the bulk of the funds but rallied donors for the rest.

“It’s our civic duty to pound the table about making people challenge their own ideas behind what they think the role of government should be,” he said.

As a kick-off, Mr. Colvin will co-host a series of debates next month on freedom, government and capitalism with Demos, a public-policy research and advocacy group based in New York.

Ayn Rand popular among high school students at the Long Island “Ethics Bowl”

A new article “At Ethics Bowl, L.I. Teenagers Debate Slippery Issues” in the NY Times begins:

Ethics are a good thing, and almost everyone is said to have them. But by some accounts, they are like muscles in the brain, strong or atrophied, depending on exercise.

So consider the second annual Long Island High School Ethics Bowl, held on Saturday, a form of contest among athletes of ethics â?? students from eight high schools who spent a full day thinking up a sweat over the blacks and whites and grays of right and wrong.

And ends:

Do they read Aristotle on self-realization, Epicurus on the dangers of self-indulgence?

Many of the students interviewed mentioned Ayn Rand, the libertarian philosopher-novelist, as their favorite philosopher.

See the full article for more background.