Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life | |
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Directed by | Michael Paxton |
Written by | Michael Paxton |
Produced by | Michael Paxton |
Narrated by | Sharon Gless |
Cinematography | Alik Sakharov |
Edited by | Christopher Earl Lauren A. Schaffer |
Music by | Jeff Britting |
Distributed by | Strand Releasing |
Release date |
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Running time | 145 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life is a 1996 American documentary film written, produced, and directed by Michael Paxton. Its focus is on novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, the author of the bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged , who promoted her philosophy of Objectivism through her books, articles, speeches, and media appearances.
Actress Sharon Gless narrates the story of Rand's life and an overview of her ideas. In addition to color and black-and-white archival footage of Rand, the film includes appearances by philosophers Harry Binswanger and Leonard Peikoff, CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace, television interviewers Phil Donahue and Tom Snyder, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, political figures Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, and Hollywood personalities Cecil B. DeMille, Edith Head, Adolphe Menjou, Marilyn Monroe, and Robert Taylor.
Paxton first encountered Rand's work in 1970 at the age of 13, when he read her novel We the Living . In 1977 he saw her speak at the Ford Hall Forum, an experience that he later cited as an inspiration for his approach to the documentary. [1]
Paxton spent four years working on the film. [1] It was completed in 1996 and appeared that year at the Telluride Film Festival. [2] On November 2, 1996, it premiered in Los Angeles with a special screening to benefit the Ayn Rand Institute. [3] In January 1997, it appeared at the Slamdance Film Festival. [4]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times called the film "a pedantic specimen," "dutiful in outlook and utterly conventional in format," and said it "does little beyond appreciating its subject as unwaveringly as possible." [5] Film critic Leonard Maltin gave the film 2.5 stars out of 4, and commented: "Too long – and pedantic – for some viewers, but a must for Rand enthusiasts." [6]
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said the film "is not what one might expect at this stage in Rand's literary afterlife. The film doesn't make a case for her as an artist or philosopher, nor does it delineate her place in the pantheon of letters. It just assumes her importance and goes about telling her story . . . Obviously this was a woman of enormous courage, tenacity and fire. That comes through enough in Ayn Rand to make one wonder what she would have thought about the tone of the documentary, which at times borders on sappy . . . The tone will become grating even to anyone who is in sympathy with Rand's work. Though the documentary concentrates on the biographical, it glosses over the major embarrassment of her personal life – her adulterous relationship with her much younger disciple, Nathaniel Branden . . . Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life isn't nearly ambitious enough, but as an introduction to an important 20th century American voice, it works." [7]
Todd McCarthy of Variety observed, "Benefiting from some first-rate archival, personal and commercial film material, Michael Paxton's Oscar-nominated effort serves as a solid and appreciative precis of her life and world views, but doesn't get down in the trenches to illustrate how and why she stirred up such passions pro and con, and gingerly refrains from analyzing the paradoxes and complexities of her personality and intimate relationships." [8]
Following appearances at festivals and other limited venues, the film's regular theatrical release was on February 13, 1998. It earned $26,101 at two theaters in its opening weekend. When it closed its domestic theatrical run on November 12, 1998, it had grossed $205,246. [9]
The film won the Satellite Award for Best Documentary Film. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, but lost to The Long Way Home . [10]
Image Entertainment released an all-region DVD on October 19, 1999. A two-disc director's cut was issued by Strand Releasing on August 17, 2004. The film is in anamorphic widescreen format. Bonus features include an interview with screenwriter/producer/director Michael Paxton, additional interviews with friends of Ayn Rand, outtakes, a deleted dance sequence, a photo gallery, the complete filmed version of Rand's play Ideal , and cast and crew biographies.
Alice O'Connor, better known by her pen name Ayn Rand, was a Russian-born American author and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame with her 1943 novel The Fountainhead. In 1957, she published her best-selling work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays.
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Leonard Sylvan Peikoff is a Canadian American philosopher. He is an Objectivist and was a close associate of Ayn Rand, who designated him heir to her estate. He is a former professor of philosophy and host of a nationally syndicated radio talk show. He co-founded the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) in 1985 and is the author of several books on philosophy.
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Harry Binswanger is an American professor and author. He is an Objectivist and a board member of the Ayn Rand Institute. He was an associate of Ayn Rand, working with her on The Ayn Rand Lexicon and helping her edit the second edition of Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. He is the author of How We Know: Epistemology on an Objectivist Foundation (2014).
The Early Ayn Rand: A Selection from Her Unpublished Fiction is an anthology of unpublished early fiction written by the philosopher Ayn Rand, first published in 1984, two years after her death. The selections include short stories, plays, and excerpts of material cut from her novels We the Living and The Fountainhead.
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The Objectivist movement is a movement of individuals who seek to study and advance Objectivism, the philosophy expounded by novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. The movement began informally in the 1950s and consisted of students who were brought together by their mutual interest in Rand's novel, The Fountainhead. The group, ironically named "The Collective" due to their actual advocacy of individualism, in part consisted of Leonard Peikoff, Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Allan Blumenthal. Nathaniel Branden, a young Canadian student who had been greatly inspired by The Fountainhead, became a close confidant and encouraged Rand to expand her philosophy into a formal movement. From this informal beginning in Rand's living room, the movement expanded into a collection of think tanks, academic organizations, and periodicals.
The Randian hero is a ubiquitous figure in the fiction of 20th-century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, most famously in the figures of The Fountainhead's Howard Roark and Atlas Shrugged's John Galt. Rand's self-declared purpose in writing fiction was to project an "ideal man"—a man who perseveres to achieve his values, and only his values.
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Jeff Britting is an American composer, playwright, author, and producer.
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Christopher Walken is an American actor, whose career has spanned over 50 years with appearances in theater, film, and television. He has appeared in over 100 movies and television shows, including A View to a Kill, At Close Range, The Deer Hunter, King of New York, Batman Returns,Pulp Fiction, Sleepy Hollow, True Romance, and Catch Me If You Can, as well as music videos by recording artists such as Madonna and Fatboy Slim.
Objectivist periodicals are a variety of academic journals, magazines, and newsletters with an editorial perspective explicitly based on Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Several early Objectivist periodicals were edited by Rand. She later endorsed two periodicals edited by associates, and a number of others have been founded since her death.
Michael Paxton is an American filmmaker and writer. He has directed, produced, and written several films, both live action and animated, as well as plays and books. His feature documentary Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature and a Golden Satellite Award for Best Documentary film in 1997. Paxton currently works as Multimedia Producer for the Ayn Rand Institute.
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