Saturday, May 22, 2010
"The Fountainhead" In Five Seconds
Two things.
First, honestly, I got bored at the 1.5 second mark and couldn't make it all the way through.
Second, the most full-throated, hard-core, Randite cult member I ever met in my life (post-puberty) is an inept, mid-level gummint bureaucrat who owes his entire career to ass-kissing, back-stabbing, credit-grabbing, pouring drinks for all the right people and otherwise latching onto power like a barnacle. And yet when he gets up every morning to go to his perfectly useless, taxpayer-supported gummint job I have absolutely no doubt that, as he looks at himself in his bathroom mirror, he sees Howard Roark gazing heroically back out at him.
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To date, this is how the very few interactions I've had with Never Trumpers have gone, because I want to talk about the Befor...
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'...he sees Howard Roark gazing heroically back out at him.'
Whilst his nipples explode with delight.
;>)
I was gonna say... they lost me at "The Fountainhead."
Does that ugly building get blown up at the end of the movie? 'cause that would have improved it a lot.
Ayn Rand was a DULLARD.
And nasty.
FWIW, two (more) things RE Ayn Rand:
--Every person whom I have ever met who has read either Altas Shrugged or The Fountainhead--it's the ONLY "grown up" <--note quotes book that they've EVER read since filthy libruls made them read shit back in high school, unless Letters to Hustler counts as a book.
--As Drifty noted, they either have a gubmint job OR they work for a job that they never would have had unless they were white and had a penis (and they ALL fit this description).
As a friend has told me a few times while discussing Randroids, "Every pointy-haired boss believes he's Dilbert". I doubt I've ever met a big-L Libertarian who did anything useful enough to earn a berth on the B-Ark.
I have a confession to make: I love The Fountainhead. It's one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies of all time.
Anybody can make an awful film with a miniscule budget, lousy director, hack actors and a sub-literate screenplay. But this was a high-profile project from a major studio, with the great King Vidor at the helm, starring some of the best acting talent of the late 40s.
But no amount of lipstick or theatrical pancake could keep Rand's preposterous warthog of a plot and feverishly clunky dialog from sinking the film. And to make the humiliation complete and undeniable, she wrote the screenplay, too.
Although I can (sort of) understand a racy anti-communist potboiler's popularity at the time, it still amazes me that the material and the author were treated with such utterly unmerited reverence. Seriously: How often does a studio literally beg the novelist to do the screenplay?
That someone at the studio, somewhere along the way from this movie's greenlighting to its final edit, didn't stop and say "This isn't just crap, it's completely ludicrous crap!" makes me wonder if there wasn't something in the water. Or maybe it was fallout from the atomic tests.
Darkblack: "Exploding Nipples" would be a great name for a rock band.
I laughed so hard at this video. I read The Fountainhead about 15 years ago and admit I really liked it. The sentiment that we as individuals can succeed on our own terms appeals to me. I understand Rand is a republican doodyhead though.
Just read Chapter 18. That way you don't have to struggle through the glorified rape of Ms. Francon and a host of other verbose trivialities.
I think Rand's over-the-top individualism does make sense for artists, aside from the whole blow-my-shit-up-cause-they-put-kitsch-on-it.
This book also didn't really hate on gummint and the horrible gummint titty-suckers - just illustrates stupidity of altruism in artistic thought.
I read it in college, and didn't start hating liberals at all... instead I became one.
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