The Passion of Ayn Rand | |
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Genre | Biographical drama |
Based on | The Passion of Ayn Rand by Barbara Branden |
Screenplay by | |
Directed by | Christopher Menaul |
Starring | |
Music by | Jeff Beal |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
Production | |
Executive producers |
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Producers |
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Cinematography | Ron Orieux |
Editor | David Martin |
Running time | 104 minutes |
Production company | Producers Entertainment Group |
Original release | |
Network | Showtime |
Release | January 27, 1999 |
The Passion of Ayn Rand is a 1999 American biographical drama television film directed by Christopher Menaul and written by Howard Korder and Mary Gallagher, based on the 1986 book of the same name by Barbara Branden.
The film stars Helen Mirren as philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand, who engages in an affair with Nathaniel Branden, played by Eric Stoltz, a psychologist who is 25 years younger than she is. Branden built up an institute to spread Rand's ideas, but the two eventually had a falling-out. The film also stars Julie Delpy as Branden's wife Barbara and Peter Fonda as Rand's husband Frank O'Connor.
The Passion of Ayn Rand premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 1999, and aired on Showtime on May 30, 1999. It received moderately positive reviews from critics. [1]
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 1999. [2] It aired on Showtime on May 30, 1999. [3]
Based on reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall approval rating from critics of 80%, with an average score of 6.8/10. [4] Writing in Variety , David Kronke called the film "an ambitious, visually sumptuous attempt to depict a bizarre element of a controversial personality's life". [3] Kronke went on to say, "Unfortunately, its insistence on maintaining a detached point of view towards its characters – or, rather, no point of view at all, as the filmmakers seem reticent to offend either Rand fans or detractors – renders it dramatically inert." [3]
Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
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1999 | Emmy Awards [1] | Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie | Helen Mirren | Won |
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie | Peter Fonda | Nominated | ||
2000 | Golden Globe Awards [5] | Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV | Peter Fonda | Won |
Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV | Helen Mirren | Nominated | ||
PGA Awards [6] | Television Producer of the Year Award in Longform | Peter Crane, Linda Curran Wexelblatt, Marilyn Lewis, Irwin Meyer, Steven Hewitt | Nominated | |
Screen Actors Guild Awards [7] | Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries | Helen Mirren | Nominated | |
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries | Peter Fonda | Nominated | ||
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.
Julie Delpy is a French and American actress, screenwriter and film director. She studied filmmaking at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and has directed, written, and acted in more than 30 films, including Europa Europa (1990), Voyager (1991), Three Colours: White (1993), the Before trilogy, An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), and 2 Days in Paris (2007).
Ulee's Gold is a 1997 American drama film written and directed by Victor Nuñez and starring Peter Fonda in the title role. Co-stars include Patricia Richardson, Christine Dunford, Tom Wood, Jessica Biel, J. Kenneth Campbell and Vanessa Zima. It was released by Orion Pictures, with Jonathan Demme receiving presenter credits for his role in the film's financing.
Nathaniel Branden was a Canadian–American psychotherapist and writer known for his work in the psychology of self-esteem. A former associate and romantic partner of Ayn Rand, Branden also played a prominent role in the 1960s in promoting Rand's philosophy, Objectivism. Rand and Branden split acrimoniously in 1968, after which Branden focused on developing his own psychological theories and modes of therapy.
Dame Helen Mirren is an English actor. With a career spanning 60 years, she is the recipient of numerous accolades and is the only performer to have achieved both the American and the British Triple Crowns of Acting. Mirren has received an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, a Tony Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for portraying the same character in The Audience, as well as three British Academy Television Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards for her role as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect.
This is a bibliography for Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophical system initially developed in the 20th century by Rand.
Killing Zoe is a 1993 crime film written and directed by Roger Avary and starring Eric Stoltz, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Julie Delpy. The story details a safe cracker named Zed who returns to France to aid an old friend in performing a doomed bank heist. Killing Zoe was labeled by Roger Ebert as "Generation X's first bank caper movie." In 2019, Avary directed the semi-sequel Lucky Day.
Eric Stoltz is an American actor, director and producer. He played Rocky Dennis in the biographical drama film Mask (1985), which earned him the nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture.
Barbara Joan Branden was a Canadian-American writer, editor, and lecturer, known for her relationship and subsequent break with novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand.
The Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), originally Nathaniel Branden Lectures, was an organization founded by Nathaniel Branden in 1958 to promote Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. The institute was responsible for many Objectivist lectures and presentations across the United States. Many of those associated with NBI worked on the Objectivist magazines, The Objectivist Newsletter and The Objectivist.
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.
Tumbleweeds is a 1999 American comedy-drama film directed by Gavin O'Connor. O'Connor co-wrote the screenplay with his then-wife Angela Shelton, based on Shelton's childhood memories spent on the road with her serial-marrying mother. It stars Janet McTeer, Kimberly J. Brown and Jay O. Sanders.
Patrecia Scott was a Canadian-born model as well as television and stage actress who was married to Nathaniel Branden from 1969 until her death in 1977.
Atlas Shrugged is a 1957 novel by Ayn Rand. It is her longest novel, the fourth and final one published during her lifetime, and the one she considered her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing. She described the theme of Atlas Shrugged as "the role of man's mind in existence" and it includes elements of science fiction, mystery and romance. The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism, including reason, property rights, individualism, libertarianism and capitalism, and depicts what Rand saw as the failures of governmental coercion. Of Rand's works of fiction, it contains her most extensive statement of her philosophical system.
Mary Gallagher is an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, actress, director and teacher. For six years, she was artistic director of Gypsy, a theatre company in the Hudson Valley, New York, which collaborated with many artists to create site-specific mask-and-puppet music-theatre with texts and lyrics by Gallagher. These pieces included Premanjali and the 7 Geese Brothers, Ama and The Scottish Play. In 1996-97, she directed the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, and she taught playwriting and screenwriting at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts from 2001 to 2010. She is a member of Actors & Writers, a theater company in the Hudson Valley, and the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, where she developed many of her plays and created and moderated the series, "You Can Make a Life: Conversations with Playwrights" from 1994 to 2001.
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.
The Passion of Ayn Rand is a biography of Ayn Rand by writer and lecturer Barbara Branden, a former friend and business associate. Published by Doubleday in 1986, it was the first full-length biography of Rand and the basis for the 1999 film of the same name starring Helen Mirren as Rand.
Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand is a 1989 memoir by psychologist Nathaniel Branden that focuses on his relationship with his former mentor and lover, Ayn Rand. Branden released a revised version, retitled as My Years with Ayn Rand, in 1999.
Who Is Ayn Rand? is a 1962 book about the philosopher Ayn Rand by Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden. It comprises four essays addressing Rand's life and writings and her philosophy of Objectivism. The book's title essay is Barbara Branden's authorized biography of Rand. The Brandens subsequently repudiated the book, deeming its approach too uncritical toward Rand.
Charles Francis "Frank" O'Connor was an American actor, painter, and rancher and the husband of novelist Ayn Rand. Frank O'Connor performed in several films, typically as an extra, during the silent and early sound eras until about 1934. While working on the set of the 1927 The King of Kings, O'Connor met Rand, and they eventually dated each other steadily. They married in 1929. When O'Connor and Rand moved to California so Rand could work on the movie adaptation of her novel The Fountainhead, O'Connor purchased and managed a ranch in the San Fernando Valley for several years. In addition to raising numerous flora and fauna on the ranch, he there developed the Lipstick and Halloween hybrids of Delphinium and Gladiolus.