The Screengrab : the fountainhead

Introducing the Screengrab Highlight Reel

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 02 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Welcome to yet another new weekly feature here at the Screengrab. Hard as it is to believe, our research shows that there is actually some miniscule percentage of our reading public that misses the occasional post during the week. We can’t stand the thought of any of you being deprived of our wit and wisdom, so every Friday the Highlight Reel will round up the best of the week in Screengrab.

You like film festivals? We’ve got your film festivals covered! Phil “Tolstoy” Nugent has seen and written about seemingly every movie at the Tribeca Film Festival, while Andrew “Dropkick” Osborne has the Independent Film Festival of Boston covered.

While those guys are out loading up on art, I’ve been sitting home with the 100 worst movies of all time. You might say they’re Unwatchable.

Art schmart. What you really want to know is which movies will be the Top 5 Hits of Summer 2008 and which will be the Top 5 Bombs.

Why haven’t all you Objectivists come out of the woodwork to jump all over Leonard “Teflon” Pierce and his takedown of The Fountainhead?

Any Billy Jack fans out there?

How will you spend your weekend? With Grand Theft Auto IV or Iron Man?

And finally, Scarlett Johansson has large breasts. Er, a music video! I meant Scarlett Johansson has a music video!

No, But I've Read the Movie: THE FOUNTAINHEAD

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Up until now, the "No, But I've Read the Movie" has focused on great works of western literature, and assessed the movie versions to see if they can possibly stand up to the titanic reputations of the novels upon which they are based. That ends today! For today, we will focus on one of the most successful, and yet overrated and overblown, works of the western canon: Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It's a novel that helped launch her career as one of the preeminent authors and philosophers of our time, but as a novel, it's hokey, overlong, bloated, and filled with characters one dimension short of being one-dimensional; and as philosophy, it's incomplete, inconsistent, and unable to look past its own epistemological shortcomings. Rand's ideology of Objectivism became hugely popular, just as her novels became huge best-sellers, but whereas most literary adaptations were doomed to failure because what makes a great novel rarely makes a great movie, anyone daring to tackle her endlessly preachy books would be faced with the prospect of improving on the original, rather than dumbing it down for the format. Given the runaway success of The Fountainhead -- Rand's story of an incorruptible architect who refuses to compromise his craft to satisfy the demands of the masses -- it was inevitable that there would be a film adaptation. The question is, how would it handle such a patently unworkable premise and fundamentally unbelievable storyline?

Mistakes, as they say, were made. Casting the young, fiery Patricia Neal -- 26 years younger than her co-star and with virtually no big-screen experience -- was one major gamble. Casting earnest, plain-speaking Gary Cooper, who excelled in playing jus'-folks characters who knew what was right as the pompous, speechifying Howard Roark was another. And it didn't exactly do anyone any favors to select the hapless King Vidor (who, for every Stella Dallas or The Crowd he had in him, also had a Duel in the Sun or Beyond the Forest) to direct. But what should have sent a jolt of fear down the spines of everyone involved in the production is who Warner Brothers hired to turn Ayn Rand's mess of a novel into a coherent screenplay: none other than Ayn Rand. She made it a condition of the sale of the rights to the novel that only she could write the script, and her fierce demeanor during pre-production (she apparently nearly drove the formidable King Vidor to a nervous breakdown) meant that, as with her hero Howard Roark, it would be her way or no way at all. This was made explicit when Warner wanted to trim Roark's famous speech before the jury at his trial down to a manageable length because it was rambling and dull; Rand pitched a fit, demanding it be included in the movie in its entirety or there would be no movie. The result is right there on the screen for all to see, in all its rambling, dull glory. She got the movie she wanted -- the question is, did anyone else?

WHAT IT HAD: You certainly can't fault The Fountainhead for inauthenticity. With the force of nature that was Ayn Rand writing the script and throwing her weight around as much as possible behind the scenes, it's as faithful an adaptation of the novel as we're ever going to get. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is subject to debate, but its truth cannot be denied. The score is one of Max Steiner's livelier ones, and King Vidor occasionally gets to hit those whoozy melodramatic notes at which he excelled. A few of the supporting cast, including Raymond Massey as the newspaper tycoon Gail Wynand and Robert Douglas as the cartoonish villain Ellsworth Toohey, figured out what they were up against pretty quickly and decided to throw in the towel, resulting in some enjoyable performances. And, again, the basic story and the ham-handed philosophy from the novel are there, more or less perfectly intact, for better or for worse.

WHAT IT LACKED: Aside from a point, a direction, or any sense of style, decency or restraint? Pretty much everything. Vidor was clearly phoning it in as much as possible, even for a hack like him. Ayn Rand's script, much like the novel, hasn't got much going for it; the characters are cardboard-thin, the motivations are as transparent as the glass in Howard Roark's skyscrapers, and the situations strain the credulity of anyone who, unlike Ms. Rand, has actually interacted with other human beings and seen the way they behave. The two leads are amongst the least charismatic in screen history: Patricia Neal's heaving, fire-breathing, nearly psychotic Dominique Francon would be ridiculous just on her own, but is especially so when contrasted with Gary Cooper's abysmally miscast Howard Roark. Cooper reportedly didn't understand the screenplay at all, and tried to downplay Roark's character, leading to total disaster: one of the great tragedies of Charlton Heston's recent death is that the overwrought ham never had the chance to take a shot at Howard Roark, the character he was born to play.

DID IT SUCCEED?: Critics hated it then, and they hate it now, but Rand's books have always been rather critic-proof, both in literary and philosophical terms. More pertinently, it wasn't much of a success at the box office, either; at the time of its release, it barely broke even (it didn't cost much to make due to Rand and Vidor ramming it through to completion in less than two months, and it shows). However, it's picked up a certain degree of cachet in subsequent years: devotees of Objectivism have flocked to it because of their cultlike fervor for Rand's works, and it's also acheived a bit of a cult status in so-bad-it's-good circles. Rand herself blamed studio interference for the movie's failure (because it certainly couldn't have been her fault) and vowed never to write for the movies again. She never did, but her books still exert a mystical hold over some people in Hollywood; a big-budget adaptation of the interminable Atlas Shrugged is in preproduction and slated for a 2009 release, and longstanding rumor had it that a remake of The Fountainhead was brewing, to be directed by Michael Cimino. It never happened, thus robbing us of the delightfully egomaniacal romp that would have been, but rumors of a remake persist, this time -- even more wonderfully/terribly -- with Oliver Stone's name attached.

Vanishing Act: Michael Cimino

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:30:00 GMT

When contemplating a subject for the “Vanishing Act” column, I often find myself wondering, “Why hasn’t this person worked in so long?” In the case of Michael Cimino, I did not ask this question. My query was more along the lines of, “How many incriminating photos of which top Hollywood executive blowing what particular kind of farm animal did this person have in order to keep working for so long after Heaven’s Gate?”

Indeed, Gate is such a storied, monumental flop in the annals of motion picture history, it’s some sort of credit to Cimino that it took him so long to vanish. This is particularly true when you consider a slate of aborted projects that makes Terry Gilliam look prolific and bankable by comparison. For instance, did you know that at one time, Cimino was actually hired to direct Footloose? Personally, I would like to see documentary footage of the meeting at which this decision was reached. I’d much rather see that than ever again sit through Desperate Hours or Year of the Dragon, two Cimino films that actually were made. (Quoth Footloose producer Craig Zadan: “Cimino wanted to make a darker movie. We wanted to make an entertainment.” And Kenny Loggins rejoiced.)

The man has never lacked for ambition. Other Cimino projects that never got off the drawing board include an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, biopics of Dostoevsky and Janis Joplin, and a multi-generational American Indian saga to be filmed entirely in the Sioux language. At one time or another, legend has it that he was slated to direct The Dogs of War, The King of Comedy, The Dead Zone and Mutiny on the Bounty. (There’s gotta be a sequel to Final Cut in here somewhere, right?)

Cimino’s final completed feature to date is 1996’s The Sunchaser, starring Woody Harrelson as a wealthy doctor who is kidnapped by a terminally ill gangbanger hoping to find a magical lake of healing. Grossing a grand total of $23,107 at the box office, the barely released Sunchaser appears to have done what Heaven’s Gate could not: make Cimino a complete untouchable.

In 2001, Cimino published his first novel, Big Jane. The following year he gave a rare interview to the Independent, dispelling rumors that he’d had a sex change operation and talking up a big-screen comeback with an adaptation of Man’s Fate, “Andre Malraux's dense, heady novel about the squelched 1927 Communist uprising in Shanghai.” It never happened.

The good news is: they love him in France! Last year, Cimino earned his first film credit in over a decade, contributing the three-minute segment “No Translation Needed” to the omnibus film Chacun son cinema. Don’t call it a comeback yet, but at least it’s a start.