The documentary will be available on DVD and download beginning in April through Virgil Films (“Restrepo,”"Forks Over Knives”) complete with extra features.

Author/philosopher Rand began writing her last and most ambitious novel – “Atlas Shrugged” – in the years immediately following World War II. Her working title for the book was “The Strike.” It was about what would happen if all the productive people in America went on strike, leaving the entitlement recipients and governmental regulators she called “moochers” and “looters” without anyone to create value for them.

The result is chaos and ultimate disaster.

The post-war years and early ’50s are generally thought to be a relatively prosperous and benign period in twentieth century American history. Yet that’s the period through which Rand painstakingly crafted her novel. When it was published in 1957, “Atlas” was widely dismissed for its “preposterous” scenario. “Atlas” was science fiction. In no way, said the critics, did it depict the real America. Not yet, Rand said. In fact, she wrote the novel in the hope she might prevent it from coming true.

Despite the criticism, “Atlas Shrugged” became a bestseller and continued to sell through the decades. Tens of thousands of copies still fly off shelves, both digital and physical, each year. And though readers occasionally noticed similarities between “Atlas”’s plot and the way things were going in America, you didn’t hear the name Ayn Rand or the titles of her novels or subsequent philosophical essays spoken very often. But readers were noticing, and little by little, as the century turned, you began to see and hear Rand and “Atlas Shrugged” referenced in the media and public discourse.

By 2008, in the wake of one disastrous administration and on the threshold of another, people who had read “Atlas” were picking it up again. Events mirrored the novel’s plot.

An ever burgeoning government churned out upwards of 5,000 new federal regulations per year. The financial system was corrupt. Wall Street was rigged, the economy melting down even as the government stooges that had created or facilitated the mess called for wider powers.

Meanwhile, the new president talked about “redistribution of wealth” and Americans having to sacrifice and taxing the rich in a time of need. And – hold on a second – hadn’t all that happened in the book?

What did Rand know and how did she know it?

“Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged” is the biography of a book and an idea. It provides a close examination of Rand’s controversial novel and the validity of its dire prediction for America.

“Atlas Shrugged Part 2,” based on Rand’s iconic 1957 novel, begins principal photography in April in Los Angeles, Colorado, and New York. The film’s release window is October 2012, roughly a month before the presidential election.

No word on cast additions or changes yet, but Duncan Scott, an 8-time Emmy winner who worked extensively with Rand in her editing of “We the Living,” has joined the “Atlas” production team.

“Rand has long been the focus of Duncan’s work. He brings invaluable experience to the table as well as an incredible depth of knowledge regarding Atlas. We’re thrilled to have him on the team,” producer John Aglialoro said in a statement.

Today’s announcement, timed for Rand’s birthday, comes with the promise that the filmmakers will try to build upon the first installment.

“We have high aspirations for Part 2. We’ve looked carefully at Part 1 and taken time to analyze and reexamine everything from the script to the casting. John and I are committed to making a great Part 2 and excited about what lies ahead,” producer Harmon Kaslow said in a statement.

Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” follows a future America where the many of the country’s leading innovators have gone missing.

Vaughn, being the pro he is, finished undeterred, going on to describe his long standing relationship with Rep. Paul. Looking at the crop of actors and artists who have thrown out their support for Paul in recent months, one has to wonder if Vaughn started all this and whether he was a “brave actor” when he dared to stand for something opposing the liberal Occupy Wall Street mentality of Hollywood celebrities.

The “Swingers” star stood for capitalism and his own conservatism in front of that audience, and it seems to have sparked a sudden movement in Hollywood of celebrities supporting the capitalism loving, libertarian leaning Paul. But, does this mean a change in Hollywood from the liberal, Obama worshipping place we know it as?

Heck, if Oliver Stone can publicly state he’d vote for Paul over President Barack Obama, then Hollywood is truly in uncharted political waters.

To be fair, Ron Paul is no George W. Bush. Hell, he’s no Ronald Reagan, either. Paul is admittedly more of a libertarian than a religious-based conservative, but he always has been. He’s been the man preaching sound economics and praising Ayn Rand principles since before the ’80s. And now, after a financial crisis, we have a new generation of conservatives who care for individual liberties above all else, and it seems a few of them are Hollywood celebrities. We even recently got a film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged.”

Paul may not be as modernly Republican as, say, Rick Santorum, but it means something to see actors/artists support a man who preaches doing away with income tax completely and that the self-interest principles taught by philosophers like Rand can lead to peace and prosperity for all as opposed to the nanny states proposed by sitting president Obama. Seeing celebrities stand for this shows them going against the socialist-loving Hollywood they inhabit. It may not mean a complete change, but think about the people that have come out for Paul who we never would’ve guessed would’ve held individualistic or conservative principles.

The biggest endorsement, besides Vaughn, was probably from Kelly Clarkson, winner of the first season of “American Idol.” She announced her support of the congressman through Twitter. Not long after, she was attacked almost endlessly by people claiming Paul was ridiculous things like racist. Singer-songwriter Michelle Branch also tweeted her support of Paul to Clarkson. The “Idol” veteran stood her ground and was rewarded the next day when her “Stronger” album sales jumped a supposed 600 percent after Paul supporters rewarded her statement with their record-buying dollars.

Paul also appeared on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” where comedian and “Fear Factor” host Joe Rogan came out with a Ron Paul 2012 T-shirt and began praising the congressman and his views on everything from economics to civil liberties. Paul also garnered endorsements from former Catwoman Julie Newmar, who claimed before Paul that she never would have voted for a Republican let alone someone from Texas. Similar comments were shared by Juliette Lewis from TV’s “The Firm,” who made clear that she wasn’t a Democrat or a Republican before endorsing Rep. Paul.

Paul’s supporters have also apparently been trying to drum up a bit of celebrity support for the congressman without the celebrities’ consent. Nicole Sherzinger’s, Rise Against’s and No Doubt’s Twitter accounts were all allegedly hacked tweeting support for the congressman. All have since denied such endorsements and set the record straight.

Stone’s Paul shoutout marks the most surprising Hollywood connection.

I think in many ways the most interesting candidate – I’d even vote for him if he was running against Obama – is Ron Paul.  Because he’s the only one of anybody who’s saying anything intelligent about the future of the world.

It appears the man is able to garner support from everyone from Vaughn who claim to be conservative to those like Stone who make propaganda films supporting dictators like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Ironically, a world where Paul was president would be the exact opposite of these dictatorships considering his enduring belief in the individual, rather than the state/government.

What does any of this mean for Hollywood? Not much, really. Hollywood is still quite a partisan place where people are ostracized for making blockbusters about Jesus Christ.

The Paul movement does show some celebrities are willing to come out and stand for the fact that they make money and don’t need the government telling them what to do when it comes to helping their fellow man. Such statements can be considered radical when put in the context of a Hollywood that is filled with people praising murderers like Hugo Chavez while making demeaning and evil comments about former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.

Paul may be more of a libertarian than anything, but so are many Tea Partiers of today and, apparently, some of them live in the Hollywood community, whether they identify themselves as conservative, liberal, etc. It used to be bad to come out and say you were for making money and ambition and individualism and against government control when you worked in Hollywood. I’m sure it still is, but clearly some artists and actors have the will power to stand up for their individualistic and libertarian principles, and the key factor behind that may be Paul.

We’ve gone from Dirty Harry to Jason Bourne (or whatever his name ended up being; the camera was too shaky for me to ever tell what was going on). We’ve gone from Humphrey Bogart to George Clooney.  We’ve gone from John Wayne fighting Indians to Na’vi fighting Americans.

But, don’t fret. For there is an answer to our problems, fellow film buffs. I know you’re six feet from that ledge, but let me give you hope…they are called books. They are these contraptions with bindings and pages with words on the inside. Together this all creates a story one hundred times more fulfilling than today’s dim-witted liberal flavor-of-the-month films.

Hollywood has always been a liberal town. They give us anti-Iraq war movie after anti-Iraq war movie despite the fact that they all flop at the box office. But what of the literary world?  They must surely share Hollywood’s contempt for conservatives and enriching stories, right? Wrong. The publishing world seems to get it, for the most part. They like to publish what sells and what seems to sell today are right-leaning stories.

Stephen Hunter, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Tom Clancy, Frank Miller, James Ellroy, and Andrew Klavan. These are just a handful of names of today’s top fiction writers. All of them have something in common: they have, admittedly, right leaning politics and philosophies. This does not mean that their books are some kind of weird right-wing propaganda. What it means is that their stories usually make the bad guys who the bad guys really are and their heroes don’t shy away from masculinity or righteous indignation. These writers also have something else in common: they are all New York Times bestselling authors. Try out Stephen Hunter’s new novel Soft Target. It’s a hundred times better and more visually striking than any new action film to hit theaters in the last year. Or try Andrew Klavan’s last adult thriller, The Identity Man. It’s more thought-provoking and more well thought out than any half-baked political thriller cooked up by George Clooney. These writers lead the fiction front in literature today. They put out bestsellers that frequently win acclaim from critics.

As for non fiction…now we are really getting to the heart of the beast. Look at the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction and you are bound to see a plethora of conservative thought. While Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham are regularly blasted in the mainstream media, they regularly put out bestsellers. Others do too. In fact, most non-fiction political books that hit shelves are written by conservatives. Why this phenomenon and why now? Is it that conservatives have been turned away by Hollywood so they have retreated to the inner workings of books? Or is it because right-leaning artists and right-leaning thinkers need more than a 90-minute film to bring across a message and/or story?

Perhaps films are more representative of a liberal approach to storytelling, while writing is a more conservative approach. Films are a collected effort. They takes hundreds, if not, thousands of people to create, and usually have a vision that is compromised by too many cooks in the kitchen. Books, on the other hand, are a celebration of individualism. It takes one person to sit and put his vision down. Maybe this is the explanation, but maybe not.

But whatever it may be, this much is true: if you hit up your local bookstore or head over to Amazon, you’ll find a world of old school storytelling and right-leaning stories. John Wayne and his films ain’t dead, they just grew up. They exist in an entirely new world: the world of books.

Check out footage from the latest Tea Party rally and you’ll see people holding signs referencing classics like 1984 by George Orwell and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Check out footage of the latest Occupy Wall Street rally and you’ll see people wearing “V for Vendetta” masks. That says it all.

“Atlas Shrugged: Part I,” the long-awaited film adaptation of Rand’s celebrated tome, arrives on Blu-ray and DVD today after its spring theatrical release.

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The film follows a driven capitalist (Taylor Schilling) trying to save her family’s railroad company by using an experimental metal. Governmental regulations, and the disappearance of several noteworthy innovators, threaten to derail her ambitions.

“Atlas Shrugged: Part II” will begin production in 2012, but for now Rand fans can savor the original feature along with a quarter of home video extras:

• “Road to Atlas Shrugged” – A look at author Ayn Rand and how her writing still inspires a new generation of politically aware readers. “It sparked the idea that man is a heroic … and success is something I need not feel guilty about,” says writer/producer John Aglialoro, who bought the film rights to the novel back in 1992.
• “I Am John Galt” – The social media outreach effort prior to the movie’s release yielded a series of fan-made videos repeating the book’s iconic quote.
• “The John Galt Theme” Slideshow – A virtual gallery from the film’s set.
• Commentary from Aglialoro, screenwriter Brian Patrick O’Toole and producer Harmon Kaslow. – The brain trust behind the film share anecdotes from the production.

They can opt for a standard Blu-ray or DVD copy sold at brick and mortar stores starting Nov. 8. Or, they can sample one of three special editions.

Those ponying up for the Reason Foundation version of ‘Shrugged’ get exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. The FreedomWorks edition includes video clips matching modern political sound bites with dialogue from the movie. The Atlas Society version comes with footage from the film’s April 14 premiere as well as video commentaries by David Kelley.

“It allows various groups to put their own content on the DVD,” says ‘Shrugged’ producer Harmon Kaslow of the film’s unique home video rollout.

‘Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,’ based on Rand’s influential political fiction, tells the story of a determined businesswoman (Taylor Schilling) fighting back against government overreach and the disappearance of the world’s premier industrialists.

So far, Rand devotees aren’t just scooping up the film. Kaslow says pre-orders are averaging about $40 per purchase, meaning customers are also investing in the film’s soundtrack, the metal bracelet worn by Schilling in the film and other ‘Shrugged’ merchandise.

“We’re not being distributed by a studio, so we don’t have the same fears [they might],” he says of their eclectic approach to sales and marketing. “We feel very confident about our brand. It has a lot of meaning behind it.”

The biggest question surrounding the first chapter in the proposed trilogy is whether audiences will ever see a Part 2 … let alone a Part 3.

Kaslow admits the team behind ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part 1’ sent plenty of mixed messages about the future of the franchise. Now, they’ve agreed to start working on ‘Part 2’ early in the new year. But the faces from the next ‘Shrugged’ may be unfamiliar to fans of the original.

“There are something like 41 speaking roles [in ‘Part 1’]. Logistically, it’s nearly impossible to get everyone [in the cast] back,” he says, particularly given the strict production window. Kaslow wants the film to hit theaters in October 2012 – roughly a month before the presidential election. And he isn’t evasive about the reasons for the release date, unlike some Hollywood producers promoting left-of-center fare.

“The movie will be an opportunity to experience what they’ve read [in the book] and to bring their neighbor in for some healthy discussions,” he says.

Kaslow admits the team behind ‘Shrugged’ made some mistakes during the run up to the first film’s theatrical debut.

“We chose a very tough date to come out and didn’t give ourselves a lot of time to run trailers and create the [necessary] level of awareness,” he says. ‘Part 2’ will be accompanied by a more aggressive traditional media push and hit theaters at the peak of the political season.

Kaslow is diplomatic when asked if film critics treated ‘Part 1’ fairly. The film currently has a 13 percent ‘Rotten’ rating over at rottentomatoes.com, a popular film review aggregator.

“The successes and failures of ‘Part 1’ are entirely on us,” he says. “We’re extremely proud of what we did … we did what everyone said was impossible, we made ‘Atlas Shrugged’ into a movie.”

Kaslow says his team hasn’t even discussed the details of a third and final ‘Atlas Shrugged’ feature – yet. But he admires how the project’s visionary, fellow producer John Aglialoro, is taking inspiration from Rand’s teachings.

“[Aglialoro] spent nearly 20 years to bring the film to the big screen,” Kaslow says. “He controls his own destiny, and that’s really falling within the themes of the book.”

Set in what Rand called ‘the day after tomorrow,’ Atlas depicts an American society driven to the edge of collapse by over-zealous government regulators and their business cronies.  Besides having penned three previous novels, Rand had already written for the movies and had success on Broadway and knew how to capture an audience’s attention.  Atlas was an old-fashioned page-turner – a stylistic throwback to 19th Century classical romantics in the manner of Tolstoy, Jane Austen and Victor Hugo.  But 20th Century critics, accustomed to a regular diet of naturalistic prose (Kerouac’s On the Road was published that same year), failed to appreciate the novel’s archetypal characters, operatic themes and melodramatic sensibilities.  Atlas was panned and even ridiculed for what some critics called its ‘unlikely plot’ and ‘black & white’ characters.’

—–

But questions of literary value had little to do with the controversy that has followed author and novel ever since.  Atlas is at its heart a morality play illustrating Rand’s conviction that America had lost touch with her core values of individualism and freedom and was marching blindly toward the collectivism that had ravaged her native Russia.  The only hope, she said, was for American to turn away from the concept of altruism – living for the sake of others – that had represented ‘morality’ in this country since the late 19th Century.  Loving thy neighbor is killing us, she said.  The solution and salvation lay in selfishness.

This eyebrow-raising theme – along with the ‘cause and effect’ philosophy Rand introduced called Objectivism – was received with open hostility by philosophers, religious groups, politicians and intellectuals of every ideological stripe.  Rand, they said, was a nut, a loony, a fascist!  But even as author and novel were intellectually marginalized, Atlas Shrugged found a popular audience, made the bestseller lists and remained there for half a century. 

During that time, like religion and politics, Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged were dangerous topics to bring up at a dinner party – unless your intent was to start a food fight.  So, for years you didn’t hear much about Ayn Rand or Atlas Shrugged.  Even as the book stayed on the bestseller list, year after year after year.

Then came the financial crisis of 2008.  In that single year Atlas Shrugged sold over two hundred thousand copies – an all time record.  The following year over half a million books were sold.  Perhaps even more surprisingly – in the media and public discourse, you heard the names Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged again.

Maybe it was the countless new laws and freedoms-limiting regulations Washington was churning out in the wake of 9/11.  Or maybe because people couldn’t see the upside of the foreign conflicts in which their young men and women were sacrificing their futures, bodies and lives.  Or around the time that the government-built Mississippi River Bridge collapsed.  Or when Hurricane Katrina destroyed a major American city because incompetent cronies had been left in charge.  Or when the housing bubble burst… and the brokerage houses went under….and the banks collapsed….or when the auto industry was nationalized and the stock market crashed and the jobs went away.

Somewhere in there – during that tumultuous first decade of the 21st Century.  That’s when you heard people talking about Atlas Shrugged.  Because people remembered that all that had happened in the book. And how spooky was that?

When I first read Rand in college, I was oblivious to the controversial or political aspects of the novel.  It’s not that I failed to grasp Rand’s ideas – she makes them abundantly clear.  But at that tender age I couldn’t imagine them being controversial.  Wasn’t she talking about individual rights, creative freedom, self-sufficiency?  Atlas for me was just a good read – a page turner (if you don’t count John Galt’s 57 page speech near the end).

Nor did I recognize much connection between the world of Atlas Shrugged and the world I lived in.  I saw no chance that the America I knew would soon or ever deteriorate into anything resembling the bleak dystopia depicted in the novel.

That’s why I was surprised to discover that Atlas and Rand were not universally admired. In fact, quite the opposite was true.  “You can’t be serious.  You actually liked that book?”  Rand was an elitist, a fascist, an atheist, a Darwinist.  She’s all about greed.  She calls selfishness a virtue.  She wants corporations to rule.  She wants to exploit the poor!

Was this true? How could I have missed that?

What did Ayn Rand know and how did she know it?  That’s the question I looked to answer when I began the documentary Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged.

My documentary is not intended to be a defense of Ayn Rand or the ideas contained in her epic novel.  Indeed, I’ve come to believe that Rand’s ideas don’t require defending.  But they ought to be removed from the rancor and ad hominem attacks in order to be heard and understood.  Most Rand detractors I’ve met confess to having never read a single page of her work.

Nor does it offer a doc version of a TV-pundit-style shouting match - although, I confess to having spent a lot of time persuading prominent figures with opposite views to Rand to go on camera.  But they demurred – probably because they were no more interested in appearing in a philosophical reality show than I was in moderating one.

Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged is a biography of a book and an idea. Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged – about as dire an illustration of America as could be imagined at that point – in the post-war late 40’s and mid-50’s.  We usually think of that period as one of the most benign and prosperous eras in American history – certainly in the 20th Century.  Yet that’s when Rand decided that we were on a slippery slope to dystopia and devoted the next twelve years of her life to showing us how and why.

How did she know where it would all lead?  The author once said that, if you can identify the dominant philosophy of a society and you can predict its course. What Rand perceived as America’s dominant philosophy – and fatal direction – provides the jumping-off place for this film.

Here’s just a bit of what I’ve learned over the last two years: Contrary to what you may have heard or believe: Ayn Rand was not right wing or fascist or elitist or even conservative.  The intellectual she most despised was William F. Buckley!  She would likely have seen little distinction between George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  Ayn Rand and her ideas – if they must bear comparison – are similiar to what once was known as classical liberalism – unequivocal belief in the individual’s rights to lead his own life or – as Jefferson phrased it – the pursuit of happiness.

Rand championed small businessmen – independents.  Didn’t much care for corporations, thought they promoted groupthink and limited individual creativity.  As for the ideas that greed is good and selfishness as a virtue - she enjoyed throwing those bombshells around simply to get a rise out of people and to get them to think about the difference between earning something on your own and stealing it or having it handed to you. In that sense, even a liberal stooge like – well – me, has to admit that, given that choice, greed is the more desirable trait. Incidentally, despite her strong endorsement of capitalism, Rand herself didn’t care much about money or any material things in general.  While writing Atlas and for the rest of her life, she lived simply in a little apartment on 34th Street in Manhattan with her husband and a cat.  To make ends meet, she took in laundry. (Okay, that last sentence is false.).

As for the prophecy of Atlas Shrugged?  I’m a glass-half-full guy and am still hoping that the similarities between the book and today’s headlines are all just coincidence.  What do you think?

Mad Universe Presents A film by Chris Mortensen. Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged.  Executive Producer John Corry, Associate Producer Fawaz Al-Matrouk, Camera Al Broderick Mark Simon, Editor Martin Singer.  Produced, written & directed by Chris Mortensen.  Run Time: 85 minutes Genre: Documentary  Rating: This film is not rated.  Adult language.  Distribution Mad Universe, LLC.

The NY Post article linked above asks the question: “Why didn’t The New York Times, which deploys a small army of critics to handle even the most obscure releases, bother to review this particularly newsworthy movie?” A worthy question. The Post goes on:

The Culture Desk, as its [sic] known over there, hasn’t even run a feature on the movie since 2007 (though a couple of Op Ed columnists mentioned it recently). The Times didn’t respond to my e-mailed query, but a commentor [sic] named Stu Freeman posted an intriguing theory at the movie’s page on the newspaper’s website:

“Has anyone else been wondering why The Times- which never lets a new movie go unreviewed (even when no critics’ screenings have been arranged)- has decided to break precedent with this one? My understanding is that the film’s producers actually did hold a press screening but decided not to issue an invite to this paper. If so, the failure to publish a review here is a matter of pure pique and comes across as a disservice to the paper’s readers. I have no personal connection to the film and nothing good to say on its behalf. My argument is that every film that opens commercially in NYC deserves to be critiqued by its paper of record. The decision not to do so is even more deplorable than that taken by the distributing company to withhold an invitation to its opening for reasons of editorial politics, operating policy or anything else. Who knows? The Times critics might have actually liked the thing…”

Indeed, it is noteworthy that The Times would ignore this particular movie while reviewing scores of others arguably less relevant to today’s current events. The Times’ possibly intentional choice to ignore Atlas Shrugged is yet another example of how news outlets control the national conversation not just by how they cover stories, but by which stories they choose to cover.

Written byAccuracy in Media’s Allie Duzett.

Released April 15, 2011, Atlas Shrugged Part I has been predictably panned by reviewers and wildly embraced by audiences.

At the movie-review site Rotten Tomatoes, just 8 percent of critics give a thumbs up, compared to 85 percent of moviegoers. Such a sharply split reaction mirrors the reception of Ayn Rand’s original and controversial novel too. Appearing in 300 theaters, the movie’s weekend take on a per-screen basis was a strong $5,640, good enough for third overall behind major-studio releases Rio and Scream 4.

How do the folks behind Atlas Shrugged Part I feel about it all?

On April 16, at Reason Foundation’s annual Reason Weekend, Nick Gillespie interviewed producers John Aglialoro, Harmon Kaslow, and Mike Marvin, and actor Matthew Marsden (he plays James Taggart) live in front of about 100 people. They talked freely about the challenges of making the film on a tight budget and an even tighter deadline; how Rand’s politics play in Hollywood (spoiler alert: poorly!); where the inspiration for the film came from; how the train and other memorable scenes were shot; and whether there’s any truth to the rumors that Atlas Shrugged Part III will be a musical…

And then they answer audience questions…

Go here for IMDB’s page on the movie.

About 40 minutes. Shot by Paul Feine and Paul Detrick; edited by Detrick.

Scroll down for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to get automatic notifications when new material goes live.

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Whether you agree with Ayn Rand’s philosophy or not, her novel Atlas Shrugged has touched the lives of millions and influenced many of today’s center-right thinkers. The Wall Street Journal noted this morning:

Book sales for “Atlas” have always been brisk—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.

Rand’s belief in the primacy of the individual over the collective has garnered her vilification from some on the Right and many, especially, on the Left.

Yet, there is no denying that Atlas Shrugged’s portrayal on the devolution of society at the hands of the Left was prescient as it was one of the most cogent attacks on the excesses of liberalism. Today, it seems as though the lines of fiction and reality have blurred in our nation.

Tomorrow, the film Atlas Shrugged, Part One opens nationwide, which is a faithful adaptation of Part One of her 1957 novel.

Today, we offer you, Atlas is Shrugging, a new short film by Ben Howe.

If you are a fan of Atlas Shrugged, go see the movie. You won’t be disappointed.
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In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit.–Ayn Rand

Cross-posted at RedState.