"Atlas Shrugged," is one huge novel containing 645,000 words taking up 1,168 pages which Ayn Rand wrote to explain her philosophy of life and liberty. It is her magnum opus. One chapter is of particular interest--it's the climactic radio speech of the hero, John Galt, which Rand uses as a plot device to express her guiding principles of life and thought.
Rand said that as she approached that chapter, she had a sense of dread because she knew it would be THE chapter, the one toward which the story had been gunning since her first keystroke. She anticipated that it would take her three months to write it. She was wrong. It took two years.
Wait. What? One chapter takes two years of a person's life? Just how long is that speech? Let's put it this way, the speech consumes 60 pages of closely written text as John Galt speaks without interruption for three hours on the radio, which is about how long it would take you to read the monologue aloud.
MAKE IT INTO A MOVIE?
How about making a movie of "Atlas Shrugged"? A movie with a three-hour speech? President Clinton's State of the Union Address was a "mere" one hour, twenty-eight minute, and 49 second speech in January 2000. There's no way I'm going to sit through a three-hour speech which delivers the objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. (Or any three-hour speech, even if it delivered my philosophy.)
But Galt's speech is the heart, the soul, the core of the book. That speech is essential to the plot (and her philosophy) because it explains the reasons for the disappearance from society of the brilliant, the movers, and the shakers. But, if a movie's to be made of "Atlas Shrugged," that speech must be omitted or cut severely, say, from 60 pages down to one page or paragraph or so. You've got to put a huge part that speech on the cutting room floor.
When one director approached Ayn Rand about making a movie of the book, she agreed; she agreed, that is, until he told her the Galt speech had to be cut way, way back. She balked and never relented. She demanded that all the speech, every word, had to be in the script or she wouldn't sell him the rights to make the movie. To Ayn, the issues were too big, to vital, for her to agree to the director's scissors. They had reached an impasse; there was no movie.
APPLICATION TO CHRISTIANITY
The gospel basically revolves around three issues: the need of salvation, the basis of salvation, and the means of salvation. An evangelistic encounter must involve man's need of salvation (he's a sinner); it must involve the basis of salvation (the death of Christ, the Son of God), and it must involve how one receives eternal life (by faith). The evangelistic encounter must include the resurrection, since a dead savior can't save anybody.
These vital issues are not entertainment, but the medium of film is and must be entertainment. Therefore the motion picture format for the gospel is wanting, to say the least.To make the gospel entertaining is to abuse it. Jesus didn't come for our amusement.
You might be thinking, "But if the movie presents the gospel, doesn't that take it out of being entertainment?" Not so fast. Neill Postman, in his classic study on television and the effects thereof, writes, “The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining
subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining,
which is another issue altogether… No matter what is depicted or from
what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for
our amusement and pleasure.” ("Amusing Ourselves to Death") He would say the same about movies.
TROY DONAHUE?
Back in 1998, Dr. William F. Russel was riding a student bus across a university campus. In front of him were two undergraduate students who looked to be sophomores or juniors. The two girls were talking about something they'd been reading and both were having a hard time figuring out the meaning of a certain section of the textbook which referred to "the wooden horse of Troy." The last thing Dr. Russell heard them say as they got off the bus was, "And who in the world is this guy Troy, anyway?"
These
two presumably bright and competent students had never, in all of their education, heard of the story of Helen of
Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships, the Trojan War, and didn't know anything about the the second greatest deception in human history, the Trojan horse.
But the story doesn't end there. Where were the two girls going? On what part of the campus did the bus stop and let them out? The School of Education of the university. They were studying to be teachers who would be teaching, guiding the learning of somebody's children somewhere in America.
If that was status of education back then, then what must it be now? Let's transpose this bus scenario to biblical literacy and the results are even more dismal. We encounter people with no basic framework for understanding the gospel: "sin" isn't in their vocabulary because all is relative, "finished work of Christ" sounds esoteric, and John 3:16 looks like "John three, colon, one six" with no biblical framework (the first two chapters and 15 verses of the book) in which to put it. They can't look it up or turn to it because they don't know the code. "Grace" to them has to do with figure skating or an Olympic diver gong off the high board. And what about "repentance?" Forget it.
THE ILLITERATES ARE AT THE GATES
These are the illiterates to whom we'll be speaking more and more, just like Paul did when he went to the gentiles. The gospel demands an explanation, but movies don't welcome definition, declamation, and discourse. Movies crave action with dialogue lean and spare. One of the longest speeches in movie history by a single character (Orson Wells in "Compulsion," 1959) clocks in at fifteen minutes and would push and punish the patience of audiences today. Movie dialogue must look like Cassius who, Julius Caesar said, "hath a lean and hungry look." Film abhors an action vacuum.
Speaking of discourse, John records Jesus as giving seven lectures, each defining His Person and His work: "I am the bread of life," I am the good shepherd, etc. In Matthew, Jesus' longest lecture took three chapters to record, and the book of Acts contains references to the discourses of Peter, Stephen, and Paul. Our hearers are like the Ethiopian to whom Philip said, "Do you understand what you are reading [ in Isaiah 53]?" To which the official answered, “Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?”
We find ourselves like Paul who told the Philippian jailor, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved," and then we learn, "And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house." "Believe on Lord Jesus Christ" needed a conversation, an explanation as to who Jesus is and what He has done. In other words, it needed dialogue. Movies need action.
To be continued.
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