Ayn been workin' on the railroad....

Waldo was always keen on prospects of a movie version of  Ayn Rand's high-school-boys' fantasy, Atlas Shrugged. Nothing cheered Waldo like the thought of a bunch of die-hard right wingers cheering a story about the revival of the destroyed American economy by the visionary construction of....

...a nationwide network of high-speed rail.

Sadly, die-hard right-wingers had other things on their watching schedule, and Atlas Shrugged, Part I was only in release 35 days in 465 theaters, and made only a quarter of its $20m budget.

Reviewing the new flick for Slate, David Weigel comments:

When the third installment comes, in July 2014, we’ll probably get another all-new cast. “It’s hard to lock people down,” says Aglialoro. It’s the great cultural paradox of the Tea Party age. Rand’s dramatic work of dystopian horror can teach Republicans how to think, but it’s teeth-pullingly hard to keep distributors and audiences interested.

Now cometh the sequel, Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (Waldo's always thought it a nice irony that when the chips are down, the uber-clever makers rip the top tactic from the scabrous unionists' playbook, but never mind), in which the makers give the takers what-for.  After all, as one of the producers says:

Aglialoro wants me to think of Atlas Shrugged as a history of the future. “Most entitlements are promises made by politicians to the unwilling,” he says. “We’ve got generations of people on welfare. That’s not because there weren’t job opportunities, or education, or anything like that. We’ve got a problem of greed on the level of the entitlement class. Not the producers and the entrepreneurs that are creating the tax revenue. They’re the 53 percent. If we get to the tipping point, 57, 58 percent, then you’re going to see people saying: How do I go on strike?”

And those who don't care for the franchise? 

 “The left dismisses Ayn Rand,” he says. “The version of her that they attack is childish, it’s a cartoon.” But he understands why.” I wish she didn’t say ‘selfishness’ as she did. That she was for ‘selfishness.’ She was human, and probably meant that in a rhetorical way. But if she was on this earth again, maybe she’d put it another way.”

Except it's what she did write. And she wrote it so long, and so often, it's hard to misunderstand it. Just ask Paul Ryan, who wants to recast government in her image.