Yikes, darlings!
I watch a lot of old movies on TCM, mostly because TCM are my initials. (I'm Tallulah Clytemnestra Morehead) and I just finished watching a doozy of a terrible movie on TCM, one that has to be seen to be disbelieved: the ultra-hilarious piece of right-wing objectivist claptrap, the movie of Ayn Rand's ridiculous novel, The Fountainhead, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, as glamorous, sexy Fascists, I mean an architect and his best gal.
I'm afraid Juliette's blowing up the H-Bomb on that island on Lost must have screwed up the Time-Space Continuum. This can't be Normal Reality, because this movie is the most absurd piece of twaddle I have sat through since the final season of Roseanne.
Enormously well-hung Gary Cooper plays Howard Roarke, the most brilliant, unpopular, and egotistical architect in the world. The movie is all about how people are always trying to get Howard Roarke to design buildings just like the same ones everyone else designs, but Howard is too great to listen to anyone, even his clients. People are always telling him his designs are too outré, although his houses are all Frank Lloyd Wright rip-offs, and his office buildings are all rectangular glass and steel structures that look exactly like every souless office building clogging the downtowns of every major city in the world, the very style that Jacques Tati spent his great movie Playtime attacking. "We can't take a chance," they always say to him, as though they were gambling their lives building an office tower or a block of flats. Has the designer of Disney Hall in Los Angeles been lynched yet?
The villain of the story is a newspaper architectural critic, who wields tremendous public power. He writes a column of architectural criticism, and his slightest word can bring the city to a halt. What planet is this? When the publisher fires the architectural critic, the staff walks out in support of the critic, and the paper buckles under to the critic, and the publisher shoots himself. Star Trek is more realistic.
Howard does not consider architecture to be a collaborative art. Rather, it's the solitary work of a lone artist, toiling away in an attic somewhere. Making even the tiniest change in any of his designs is intolerable to Roarke.
He means it. When a block of flats he designed are built while he is on a vacation with Patricia Neal, with changes made at the orders of the people paying for it to be built, Roarke dynamites it. He stands trial for blowing up this building he didn't own, in the middle of Manhattan, without so much as a blasting permit. It's a wildly illegal, irresponsible, dangerous, negligent act of overwhelming egotism, an SMD: a Snit of Mass Destruction.
He's found innocent, and the jury and the whole courtroom erupts into applause at this horrific miscarriage of justice. He has admitted committing the crime on the stand. His defense was that he has way better taste than the pigs who paid for it, so he should be able to blow it up. The jury buys this idiocy. The movie paints him as a hero.
The first clue that Howard Roarke has something weirdly wrong with him comes early on. He's going out of business. A friend offers him a loan, and he refuses it. Okay. He has too much pride to take help. That's fine. But he says, "I never ask for nor give help."
What? He never "gives help"? He never helps anyone?
Yup. That's exactly what he means. He's anti-helping his fellow man. In his trial summation, six minutes of Gary Cooper giving a completely unhinged, turgid speech, he actually says, "The world is perishing in an orgy of self-sacrifice ."
Whatever finishes off mankind, it won't be an excess of self-sacrifice. The movie is pro-selfishness and egoism (which is just egotism misspelled), and anti-altruism. It preaches, at length and in a superior tone, that Altruism is Bad. And it means it.
The "love" story subplot is a scream. Patricia Neal is an architect's daughter who hates anything that makes her happy, because her taste is too supurb, and the masses with their bad taste will destroy anything she likes, so she deliberately throws out any stuff she has that she likes (We first meet her dropping a lovely nude statue down an airshaft), and she refuses to marry the man she loves, and instead marries a man she finds creepy, to avoid being happy, so happiness can't be taken from her. She'd rather be miserable, than be happy, and risk being made miserable by the masses. If you can find any sense in that, let me know.
So she's vacationing in a lovely home that adjoins a marble quarry where they dynamite rock all day, every day. Let me repeat this: she is intentionally vacationing in a house next door to a site that is blasting rocks with dynamite all day long, every day. You can't get more relaxing than that.
Her idea of sight-seeing is riding her horse to the quarry and then wandering around, drooling over the hunky, muscular workmen driving pickaxes into walls of granite. This is, in my opinion, the only sensible thing in the whole movie. And her favorite workman is Howard Roarke, who is working there after driving himself out of business with his too-high standards of taste. She first sees him holding a jackhammer, drilling away into into solid rock. She is turned on by the ever-so-subtle sexual implication of his drilling into rock with a jackhammer. She must imagine she has a marble hymen.
Now she can't get him out of her mind. She rides around on her horse, imagining Howard and his drill while she's being jostled in the saddle. At one point she rides up to him and slashes him across the face with a riding crop, which makes him grin, and the unforgettable final shot of the film is her riding up over 100 stories in an outdoor elevator (No elevator can go that far. It takes three to get to the top of the Empire State Building.) to where Howard is standing, on top of his not-yet-finished "Tallest building in the world." The shot tracks in on his crotch as he stands astride his masterpiece, the world's-biggest-phallic symbol.
The movie was written by the novelist-nutball, Russian-American, writer-philosopher Ayn Rand. She promoted a form of highly-anti-communist philosophy called "Objectivism," probably because it is so objectionable.
Being virulently anti-Communism-and-Socialism, she believed that ownership and rights of property were sacrosanct, although when Howard Roarke, her Ideal Man, blows up other people's property because he doesn't like it, it's a righteous act, not a violation of other people's rights of property. Ayn was a hypocrite.
Ayn wrote every word of dialogue, and forbade a word of it to be changed. She was the Howard Roarke of screenwriters. What she was not was a good writer of dialogue, none of which sounds like human speech, and all of which sounds like a lecture from a Fox News lunatic.
Ayn insisted that Gary Cooper say every damn word of her summation speech, which is utterly nuts from beginning to end. Jack Warner, no slouch in the anti-Commie department himself, ended up cutting it down a little. It's still six minutes of Gary Cooper standing in one place, making a completely insane-yet-boring speech, in praise of selfishness, condemning altruism, and stating that there are only two types of humans: "Creators" and "Parasites." That's it. No shades of gray. No middle-management.
When Ayn learned that some slight cuts had been made to her speech, she squawked and hollered, but she did not blow up Warner Brothers, nor set fire to the negative and all prints, nor even beat Jack Warner into paste with a poker (Damn!), which makes her a raging hypocrite. It's what Howard Roarke would have done. It's what Bette Davis would have done.
Ayn is having a small vogue right now (very small, as the country is becoming far less happy with rightwing nutballs), because her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, an insane novel that makes The Lord of the Rings seem like a speedy short story, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary just now. This means that the people who began reading it the day it came out, are nearly through it by now, those that haven't hanged themselves.
Ayn believed in a woman looking up to The Ideal Man, and Howard Roarke is Him. And Ayn claimed she wrote it for Gary Cooper, so he's her sexual ideal. Well, at least she's left Hugh Jackman for me.
Have you ever seen a photograph of Ayn Rand? For a woman who wants strong muscular men to drill her like a jackhammer, Ayn went to a lot of trouble to look like a Bloomsbury literary Lesbian. In fact, she looked rather like a young Rosa Klebb, only not as sexy.
Ayn died the day after John Belushi died, although I don't think she did so to cheer us up again.
Life is too short to spend any of it reading the insane horrors which are the writings of Ayn Rand. Read my book instead.
I'll be back Monday darlings, with my review of The Tony Awards. Until then, Cheers darlings.
To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to
The Morehead the Merrier.
I think that even today, we have losers like Ellsworth Toohey and Jim Taggart (if you don't know who these are, you should read the afore-mentioned books) in all walks of life, who can not bear the thought of individual brilliance and success and will do whatever to kill it. They probably enlist the help of bitter people like you in their campaigns. You probably never excelled at anything in your life other than running your mouth (or pen or keyboard). Judging from some of the other responses I think the losers outnumber the productive individualists amongst your readers. I only came across this crap becauses I was looking for the movie version of the Fountainhead which i would love to watch, although i ANXIOUSLY AWAIT THE MINI-SERIES BASED ON ATLAS SHRUGGED.
I am not. I am criticizing Ayn Rand and one very bad movie, neither of which contributed to "America's Greatness."
"Ellsworth Toohey and Jim Taggart (if you don't know who these are, you should read the afore-mentioned books)"
I do know who they are. I mentioned Toohey in the article, although not by name.
"They probably enlist the help of bitter people like you"
I'm not bitter; merely a bit tart, and a bit of a tart. And I never discourage individual brilliance (at which I shine myself).
"You probably never excelled at anything in your life other than running your mouth."
I have also excelled at acting, oral sex, and I'm good with kitties. Have you ever excelled at anything? Anything at all? You will one day. I have faith in you. (Not really)
"Judging from some of the other responses I think the losers outnumber the productive individualists amongst your readers."
Whereas I would say the majority of my readers are witty, intelligent people who do not discourse in Randian jargon. I suspect many of them are productive individuals, but not pretentious enough to call themselves "individualists."
"i ANXIOUSLY AWAIT THE MINI-SERIES BASED ON ATLAS SHRUGGED."
First off darling, you deserve an upper-case "I," so be bold and use one. You may be anxious a long time, although fans of BATTLEFIELD EARTH eagerly await its camp excesses.
Cheers darling.
As far as the little 'i" goes, you should have realized that the last sentence resulted from hitting Caps Lock by mistake. I changed the A and S in the book title, but forgot to capitalize the I. Maybe not al Ayn Rand fans are as pretentious as you think....
THE FOUNTAINHEAD has good acting, good directing, lovely photography, and a deranged screenplay. BATTLEFIELD EARTH has deranged acting, deranged directing and ugly photography to go with it's deranged screenplay.
But what is your point? PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is a better movie than BATTLEFIELD EARTH. That doesn't make it a good movie.
They are wrestling with trying to make a filmable screenplay from ATLAS SHRUGGED right now, for some unfathomable reason.
Last I heard, Saints don't publicly humiliate their husbands by carrying on lengthy public affairs. And also, selflessness and self-sacrifice are required for Sainthood, as well as religious belief, all anathema to Ayn.
BUT, I never said anything of the sort. Roarke could most certainly turn down any business deal he doesn't like, as can anyone. What he can NOT do is blow up buildings that do not belong to him.
You are exactly the sort of fuzzy-thinking boob that falls for Ayn Rand's nonsense.
"The movie is all about how people are always trying to get Howard Roarke to design buildings just like the same ones everyone else designs, but Howard is too great to listen to anyone, even his clients."
You seem to be guilty of at least an inaccuracy, by implying that Howard Roark should have to make the deals he does not like with his clients for some strange reason. But it is more than that. It is saying that man does not have a right to his mind, which was what got Ayn Rand upset. Imprisoning someone without due process is a violation of rights of the body, forcing them to enter into deals they don't want to enter into is a violation of the rights of the mind.
The blowing up of the building was quite obviously a literary device. Ayn Rand never advocated destroying someone else's property. It would go against her entire philosophy of individual rights. Her point, however, was that the builders of the building were stealing his ideas. Of course they in actuality were not, since he had only entered into a private deal with Keating, but you are forgetting that this is a novel. She was not advocating the blowing up of buildings. This was a literary device.
I just got yelled at by a friend who has a desperate belief that all Ayn Rand says is right for sending her a link to the article!
Best part (for me, being a hardcore fan of his): "And Ayn claimed she wrote it for Gary Cooper, so he's her sexual ideal. Well, at least she's left Hugh Jackman for me."
All hail the Hugh Jackman lovers in the world!
But a word of friendly warning: don't get beteen me and Hugh Jackman.
My best to Osirus. Cheers.
And Osiris says hi back.
As for the friend, I really don't talk to her anymore...
Remember the scene in THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN where Sir Guy Grand buys a Rembrandt masterpiece and then cuts out the painting's eye to keep, and destroys the rest, to the horror of the art dealer? He bought it. He owns it. He can do what he likes with it.
But the important point is that Rand was fervently a believer in the rights of property and ownership, so justifying destroying what belongs to another is her towering hypocrisy.
I have known one great architect personally, the magnificent Edward Killingsworth (Google him. You'll be knocked out by his buildings.) I can assure you, Ed thought THE FOUNTAINHEAD to be twaddle. And many of his houses are now protected treasures.
Couldn't choke down this book, nor the movie. I think I'll rent it again, just for laughs!
Thanks for the hilarious comments : )
Which is one of the reasons they are better off than we are.
Her ideology (neurosis) is hideous by any standard.
But you can't blame her on America. She was a European.
I never commented in the essay on the acting in the film. A good cast does what they can with the dialogue, which admittedly isn't much. So the DELIVERY of the dialogue is fine, it's what they had to dedliver that smells. A dead rat shipped by third-class post will stink to high heaven, but that's not the fault of the mail carriers.
Thank you darling. That was where I was aiming.
The acting and certainly the directing are indeed good, however, your statement "The three main characters, played by Cooper, Neal and Massey, are well-fleshed out and human" is absurd on the face of it. None of the three are remotely human, with Neal coming the closet.
The movie praises selfishness (Rand wrote "The Virtue of Selfishness" remember) and condemns altruism.
"Cooper maintains his integrity throughout and wins over society eventually via his day in court."
"Integrity" never enters into it. He retains his pig-headedness and commits a terrible crime, irresponsible crime. The winning over of society is the single most absurd aspect of the film. No jury would ever have jury-nullified the laws against dynamiting other people's property. Further, it was a crime, and hypocrisy (as a violation of Rand's own dearly-held belief in the rights of property), so it is the opposite of maintaining integrity.
The film IS entertaining, in much the same way that PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE is entertaining., winning over Ed Wood's film only in acting and it's superb look. The screenplay is on a par with Wood's work.
"Morehead herself needs to ... learn more about film history."
I AM Film History, as well as an expert on it, and it's "Miss Morehead" to you, dear.
I retract that one sentence. Ed wood wrote better dialogue than Rand.
Second, this is a fantastic and humorous summation of The Fountainhead. I read this book as well as AS, and I must say that I enjoyed the books for the sheer ludicrousness of the plots and the over-the-top soap opera-esque quality of Ms. Rand's writing. It was like Melrose Place for the mid-century, if you will. Her philosophies are pure crackpot diatrbies at their best. Thank you for skewering FH so expertly and thank you for the laugh.
"This means that the people who began reading it the day it came out, are nearly through it by now, those that haven't hanged themselves."
excellent. I haven t read Atlas Shrugged. Listening to an interview with one of the producers who once owned the rights and his dealings with Ms. Rand was funny enough. Doubt the book - what - 1200 pages? can live up to that.
Well think of my book, MY LUSH LIFE, as the blog extended to 330 pages, telling the story of my life. Read it 4 times, and you've read an entertaining version of ATLAS SHRUGGED. Think of it as HERCULES SNEEZED.
But as for the rest of her heroine's ridiculous neurosis, not to mention the rape, what wasn't dealt with in my essay is dealt with in the comments.
"what's the benefit of objectivisim"?
There is none. It's a destructive, anti-social ideology of selfishness.
Whoever it was that presented Rand's works to you as "Great Literature" knows nothing of Great Literature, and you should reexamine everything that person ever said to you. Mary Baker Eddy was more sensible and a better writer than Ayn Rand, and Mary was insane, and her books are unreadable.
Actually just the opposite. If you had taken an American Literature class your teacher, if she mentioned Rand at all, would have pointed out that as a writer she was pretty much universally viewed as a no talent hack.
Does that sound any dumber than the behavior of real rich girls with their promiscuity, shoplifting, drug use and eating disorders?