“The Fountainhead,” the film version of Ayn Rand’s first novel, was a box office and critical failure when it was first released in the late 1940s. Rand’s uncompromising story in which the hero, an architect named Howard Roark, blow up a building he designed because a committee of government bureaucrats changed the design, has had a reappraisal in recent years with some modern critics considering it a classic. The movie certainly made the careers of its two stars, Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. A report by Deadline provided most of the details for this article.

Zach Snyder doing a remake?

Because of the cache that “The Fountainhead” has developed over the years, a number of directors ranging from Michael Cimino to Oliver Stone have expressed an interest in remaking it. Zach Snyder, famous for such films as “300” and “Justice League” is the latest to posit the idea of going back to the material from the founder of Objectivism.

Why ‘The Fountainhead’ now?

Of course, the idea of remaking “The Fountainhead” has elicited a little bit of snark from the chattering class. John Podhoretz is pretty sure that the movie would have creepy associations with 9/11,

Actually, Snyder may be on to something in one respect.

President Donald Trump, who erected quite a few buildings before he became a media star and the late life politician, has often expressed his admiration for Ayn Rand. A man with a healthy ego, Trump likely sees himself as a Randian hero. Indeed, he has pronounced “The Fountainhead” as his favorite book. Thus, Snyder can rely on the president using his potent twitter account to support the project should it go forward.

Rand followers don’t quite know what to make of Trump. Superficially he is an outsized personality that would have been at home in an Ayn Rand novel. However, a recent article published by the Atlas Society suggests that Rand were she alive, would take a dim view of Trump and some of his policies. Trump is not a free trader and uses religion as a rhetorical device, the latter of which would have offended the strident atheist novelist and philosopher.

Trump also has the capability of lying with a straight face, and something Rand would have taken a dim view of.

In fact, Trump most resembles Gail Wynand, the crusading newspaper tycoon who caters to the mob and is ultimately destroyed by it. The difference is that Trump went from building to media to politics almost effortlessly. Unlike Wynand, he has proven adroit at destroying his enemies as he has been advancing a populist agenda. Trump may be the Wynand who succeeds and prospers, something that should give pause to modern objectivists.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED