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Working in Korea
Town, I saw tremendously moving examples of courage and steadfastness.
Most of the people, who had shops, lived above their shops. So when their
shops were burned down, as so many of them were, their living quarters
and all their possessions were gone. Yet many of these people, who now
had nothing, came to the volunteer areas to help others. And they somehow
managed to send their children to school the moment the riots ended. I
was profoundly impressed by the fact that to these people, nothing mattered
more than educating their children.
It was shortly after
the riots that Los Angeles was hit by another earthquake. I stood dutifully
in a doorway of my apartment, as one is supposed to do, while the building
rocked gently back and forth under my feet—and wondered: "Precisely
why am I living in this city?" Since I had no answer, I decided it
was time to leave. Before this, it was primarily my friends who kept me
in Los Angeles, but by now many of them had moved away and were scattered
over the United States and Canada.
As to why I chose
Winnipeg: I was born and brought up there, I still have friends there
with whom I grew up and who are very dear to me. I have a sister-in-law,
I have two very special elderly aunts, and cousins I’m close to—and most
appealing of all, my two nephews live there. One of them has a boy and
a girl who have always made the sun shine for me. I did not intend to
stay very long, perhaps a couple of years, until I decided where I wanted
to live permanently. I knew that Winnipeg would not be my final home.
Q: Do you
still talk to Leonard Peikoff’s mother?
Barbara: Of
course. She’s my aunt, my mother’s sister. She’s a lovely, warm, and intelligent
woman, I hadn’t seen her in several years until she visited Winnipeg while
I was there. I was very happy to see her and I know she was very happy
to see me. Sadly, she is now quite ill.
Q: So what
brought you to Santa Fe?
Barbara: In
March of 1997, a friend and I visited a mutual friend who lived in Santa
Fe. I had passed through New Mexico when Robert Berole and I left New
York late in 1968 and drove to Los Angeles; its unique beauty had made
me decide that I wanted to come back one day, to see more. And now I was
back. The first evening of my visit, I went outside the dining room where
we were eating, to smoke a cigarette (I am no longer a smoker, by the
way) and to look at the city. I have felt, all my life, like a wanderer—which
suited me very well. I’ve never had a desire to stay permanently in one
place. The time always came when, however much I loved the city I lived
in, I’d begin to wonder what was over the next hill—and I’d know that
soon I had to leave and find out. As I stood outside that evening, unable
fully to believe the beauty of the mountains, the city, and the sky—I
suddenly felt, for the first time in my life, "I’m home." I
felt that I finally had found what was over all the hills. By the end
of June, I was living here. It probably was the most impulsive decision
I’ve ever made, and one of the very best. New Mexico in general and Santa
Fe in particular are beautiful and…nurturing, beyond belief. There are
more interesting things to do here and wonderful things to see than can
be done and seen in a lifetime, there is world-class opera under a star-filled
sky; the people are remarkably warm and friendly and interesting; the
painting and sculpture is in large part spectacularly good. Santa Fe is
called "the City Different" and "the Enchanted City"
for an endless number of good reasons. Would you believe that my house
sits between two mountains, one of which is called "The Sun,"
the other, "The Moon!" D. H. Lawrence, who spent some of his
final years here, once wrote—I wish I could remember the full quote, but
I do remember the essence, that when he first saw the "radiant morning
sunshine" shining over the mountains and deserts of Santa Fe, "something
in my soul stood still." I understand that very well.
Q: That’s
nice! Say, what made you stop smoking? You know, that’s such an "Objectivist
thing."
Barbara: It
should never have been an Objectivist thing, it shouldn’t be anyone’s
thing. I started smoking when I was fourteen, in order, of course, to
be grown-up, to be as glamorous as the older girls my brother brought
home, to have something to do with the eight hands that seemed to sprout
from my arms in social situations. In the past twenty or more years, I
have tried by every means known to man to stop smoking. I was smoking
close to two packs a day, and that scared me. I have been to Smoke Enders
three times, I quit cold turkey for two hideous years until I finally
could not bear the withdrawal symptoms a moment longer, I’ve been hypnotized,
I’ve worn the nicotine patch on two different occasions. Hypnosis was
typical of what happened. All during my session with the hypnotist—who
had a fine reputation among former smokers—I said, as he directed me to
say, "I don’t want a cigarette, I don’t want a cigarette, I don’t
want a cigarette." But in my mind, I was saying, "What is this
nonsense? Of course I want a cigarette!" The moment I left his office,
I lit one. I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. Friends of mine who live
in the Netherlands and who were very concerned about my smoking, sent
me a book, Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking. They knew two
people, former chain smokers, who had read the book and immediately stopped
smoking. I was delighted to receive the book, but I was terrified that
it would not work and equally terrified that it would work—and then I
promptly lost it for several months. Oh, the power of the subconscious!
When I finally found it, it was in precisely the place it should have
been. And then I was much too busy to read it for another two months—but
not too busy to read a number of other books. Finally, in fear and trembling,
I read the book. Near the end, Allen Carr writes that when one finishes
the book, one is immediately to smoke what one knows will be the last
cigarette one will ever smoke in one’s life. That’s enough to terrify
a smoker out of his wits! I finished the book, I closed it, I lit a cigarette,
I smoked half of it. And then I put it out—because I did not want it.
I have not had a single withdrawal symptom since then, I have not once
wanted a cigarette. I can scarcely believe it, but that’s what happened.
Q: What’s
the secret?
Barbara: Before
he finally stopped, Alan Carr was smoking as many as a hundred cigarettes
a day. He was in despair because all his attempts to quit had failed.
He writes that after once stopping for six months, then smoking again,
he wept, knowing that he probably had not long to live—and he was only
in his forties! But after a long process of thought following that episode,
he gradually began to wonder if his difficulties were not a result of
his being addicted to nicotine, but the result of his conviction that
he was addicted. When he finally became convinced that that was so, he
immediately became a non-smoker without the least difficulty. In his book,
he presents a powerful case for his conclusion that almost everyone—smokers
and non-smokers alike—has been brainwashed into believing that smoking
is an addiction and that one must go through the tortures of the damned
in order to overcome it. His case for his conclusion is very convincing.
Clearly, it convinced me. And by the time I was nearing the end of the
book, it no longer was an absolute in my mind that I would continue to
have a problem quitting. And I didn’t!
Q: That’s
amazing!
Barbara: So
now I’m thinking that researchers ought to go back to the drawing board,
and reconsider whether or not tobacco is an addictive substance, or, at
minimum, whether or not all or even most smokers become addicted. One
might say that, reading Alan Carr’s book, I was brainwashed into believing
that I could stop easily. But I don’t think that’s the case—because until
I had read almost the entire book, I didn’t for a moment believe that
it would work.
Q: I wonder
if it works with chocolate!
Barbara: I
believe Alan Carr has written a diet book. It’s probably very good indeed.
May I tell your readers how they can obtain the book on smoking? It’s
not yet published in this country, though it will be, perhaps even late
this year. For now, it can be obtained by sending a check for $15.00 to
Laura Cattell, 12823 Kingsbridge Lane, Houston, TX 77077. Phone: 281-597-1904.
E- mail: ACatt38826@aol.com.
Q: Someone
should give David Kelley that book!
Barbara: I’d
forgotten that he smokes. I’ll tell him about the book. You know, people
who learn that I’ve stopped smoking keep congratulating me on my strength
and will power. But the fact is that it required neither strength nor
will power. All it required was that I read a book. Obviously, I can’t
guarantee that it will work its miracle for everyone, but I haven’t smoked
for over a year, and I know, without question, that I’ll never smoke again.
Q: Tell us
how a movie has come to be made from your book The Passion of Ayn Rand?
Barbara: In
a way, it was like a story out of Ayn Rand’s life. So many times, her
career moved ahead because one single person believed in her work and
fought for it. My book had sold very well, sufficiently to put it on the
New York Times bestseller list for several weeks, and my editor
told me that in all her years in publishing she had never seen reviews
as complimentary as the reviews I received. But it was going nowhere as
far as film was concerned. Then I met Marilyn Lewis, the head of Marilyn
Lewis Entertainment in Los Angeles. She told me that she had read Passion,
thought it a wonderful book, and wanted to take an option on it and try
to sell it to a movie studio. That was seven or eight years ago. During
all that time, Marilyn never gave up, despite one rejection after another.
Finally, she and I concluded that it was too early for Ayn Rand in Hollywood,
at least for a studio-made movie. Hollywood seems to be the last bastion
of left-liberalism. I have no doubt that Ayn will break through there,
but it may take a few more years. Marilyn, with my whole-hearted agreement—because
I love the medium of television—began to think more seriously about a
television film. Because of her efforts, The Producers Entertainment Group,
located in Los Angeles, purchased the rights from me, and in turn made
a television deal with Showtime. The rest…I was about to say, "was
like the plot of a story," but that’s not correct, because a plot
requires conflict, and there was none.
Q: Were you
afraid at first? Hollywood does such hatchet jobs….
Barbara: I
wasn’t afraid, I was terrified! It was impossible for me to have any sort
of control over the final product. Unless your name is James Michener
or an equivalent, you cannot possibly expect to have a say in what’s done
with your book. And usually, the writer of the original material is considered
to be the least important person involved in the project, and is rarely
even consulted. I know so many writers who have been miserably disappointed
because of the—as you say—hatchet job that was done on their work. So
you sell it, hold your breath, and wish desperately that you could spend
the next year on the moon until the movie is made, shown, and forgotten.
Q: Were you
afraid that they would do a hatchet job on it and all Objectivists would
point their fingers at you and say "You ruined Ayn Rand and her movement
forever!"
Barbara: No,
it didn’t stand that way in my mind. It wasn’t an issue of what other
people would think of the film, but of what I would think. Besides, it
would take more than a bad film to ruin Ayn and her movement. My feeling
was much more personal, and much more selfish: I didn’t want my work to
be distorted. But Ayn once told me something that I clutched as if it
were a security blanket. She said that when she sold The Fountainhead
to Warner Brothers, she was extremely worried about its fate, because
Warner Brothers had the legal right to make any sort of movie they wanted
to. She said that what kept her sane was the knowledge that the book existed,
and that no one could alter or affect it. No film studio could do anything
to the book. I learned that from her, and it kept me sane…most of the
time.
Q: Did you
have any dreams about who would be playing the parts?
Barbara: I
had nightmares! A movie producer, who was briefly interested, suggested—are
you sitting down?—that Madonna would be great as Ayn Rand.
Q: Oh my God!
Barbara: There
were other suggestions almost as ridiculous. But to my great good fortune,
my producers at the Producers Entertainment Group were wonderful, and
the cast is a dream. It’s really a feature film rather than a television
cast. Ayn is portrayed by Helen Mirren, Frank is Peter Fonda, Nathaniel
is Eric Stoltz, and Barbara is Julie Delpy.
Q: I heard
that you played a minor role in the movie. Tell us how and why you were
cast and describe your film experience.
Barbara: I
had said to the producers months earlier that I would love to "do
a Hitchcock" in the movie. He was in every one of his films, usually
very fleetingly, sometimes you saw only his back, but he was there. I
said that I didn’t care if the viewers knew I was in the movie; I would
know, and it would be a source of great pleasure to me. They said, "We’ll
see"—which is what producers say quite regularly.
I arrived in Toronto,
at the producers’ invitation, to watch a week of the shooting. I was met
at the airport and rushed off to the costume department at the set, where
I was fitted with a rather lovely dress from the 50’s. By the way, I was
enchanted by the fact that at the various sets, one found one’s way around
by following large signs that said either The Passion of Ayn Rand
followed by an arrow, or "Ayn Rand" and an arrow. Next morning,
I was taken to makeup and hair, and transformed into a vision, complete
with blue eyeshadow, from the 50s. I was to be an extra at the wedding
of Nathaniel and Barbara. We see the end of the wedding ceremony, we see
Ayn as matron of honor and Frank as best man. When the ceremony is over,
the young couple kiss, then separate, and we see a woman standing behind
them with tears in her eyes. Barbara turns around and smiles at the woman
very lovingly, because the woman is her mother. The woman is also me.
I was my own mother at my own wedding!
Q: Did they
have to put the tears in your eyes or were they real?
Barbara: The
tears were artificial. I couldn’t have cried, because nothing about the
scene was real to me. I felt as if I were in some other dimension.
Q: Did you
feel very nostalgic going back and remembering the real scene as it happened?
Barbara: Watching
other scenes being filmed, I felt a great many things, some happy, some
sad, and sometimes I had tears in my eyes, feeling as if I were re-living
parts of my past. But not with this scene…By the way, although I had planned
to be on the set for only a week, I could not tear myself away and remained
for the five-and-a-half weeks of the shooting. After my glorious film
debut as an extra, I told the two producers, Linda Wexelblatt and Peter
Crane, that I assumed my name would appear above the title in all adds
for the show. They said, "Oh, yes. It will be very, very, very far
above the title." They also warned me that if I wanted to see myself
in the final cut, I must be sure not to blink. Ah, me, great artistry
is so rarely appreciated! At least I won’t end up on the cutting room
floor, because a syndicated columnist, amused by the story of my playing
my mother at my wedding, picked it up.
Q: Well, we
will all be looking for you…and we won’t blink! Did you get to know any
of the actors? If so, tell us what they were like and how they reacted
to the characters they were playing.
Barbara: I
got to know all the lead actors, and several of the secondary players.
To be part of the making of a film, I learned, is to enter a separate
kind of world, a very special world of its own. The actors, the producers,
the director, the crew spend up to sixteen hours a day together. We talked
together, we watched the work of whomever was performing, we ate together—it
becomes like a family, because everyone is dedicated to one purpose and
one goal: to make the best movie possible. When it was over and everyone
went home, I felt as if my family had abandoned me. I was told that this
sense of family is a very common experience on movie sets. It’s very special.
Q: What did
Helen Mirren think of Ayn Rand, her works and ideas?
Barbara: I
know what she thinks of Ayn Rand, I don’t know in any detail what she
thinks of her work and ideas. Helen, besides being a phenomenally talented
actress, is a woman of great integrity. When I first met her on the set,
she said to me: "I promise you something, Barbara. I will not let
Ayn down. I will not let her be diminished." She kept her promise.
We didn’t discuss what she thought of Ayn’s specific ideas, but she told
me she saw Ayn as a great woman—great in intellect, great in passion,
great in charisma. She was fascinated by her, and determined to do her
justice. Her performance is remarkable.
Q: Did she
look like Ayn Rand?
Barbara: No,
not in the slightest—and yes, eerily so. Helen is a blue-eyed blonde with
an English accent. But when I first walked over to the woman I was told
was Helen Mirren, I stopped dead in my tracks and backed up a step—because
for a second I thought I was seeing Ayn. The transformation was incredible.
She wears a wig that is exactly the color and style of Ayn’s hair, she
has brown contact lenses—she told me she was seeing the world through
a brown haze—a slight Russian accent, and expressions and body language
that are typically Ayn.
Q: Did she
have many of Rand’s mannerisms?
Barbara: This
was astonishing to me. I saw all of the actors doing things that for a
while I could not understand. For instance, I knew Helen had read and
studied my book, she had read some of Ayn’s works, she had watched video
tapes of Ayn—but during the shooting I saw her using certain mannerisms,
ways of standing, facial expressions, ways of holding her head and moving
her hands—even the way she carried her handbag— that she could not have
learned either by watching Ayn or by reading about her. And I saw a similar
phenomenon in the other actors. Apparently what happens is that a really
fine actor is able to go so deeply into the character he or she is playing,
that to some extent what is natural and automatic for the character becomes
natural and automatic for the actor. It was fascinating to watch!
Q: What about
Peter Fonda who played Frank O’Connor? How did he do Frank O’Connor?
Barbara: Peter
had me in tears almost every time he was on. He seemed not to be portraying
Frank, but to be Frank. He looks somewhat like Frank, his natural body
language is similar, he’s a very gentle man as was Frank. He obviously—and
he told me this was so—empathized with and understood Frank in a profound
way. I have always respected fine actors, but watching this cast I felt
a much deeper respect and admiration. I remember watching a scene with
Peter in which he had only a single word to say, which he said twice:
the word was "Well." I wept both times he said it because somehow,
by a means I don’t begin to understand, it was if he had spoken paragraphs;
one knew his suffering and his tragic acceptance of that suffering.
Q: Is that
how Frank was in real life?
Barbara: Yes.
Of course there were other aspects to his personality and character, but
that one aspect was very apparent in him.
Q: Did you
ever ask Fonda what kind of research he did on Frank and how he came to
understand him?
Barbara: I
don’t believe he did a great deal of research. I think that the empathy
he felt for Frank, together with his many similarities to Frank and his
talent and sensitivity as an actor, led to his remarkable performance.
Q: Did he
ever discuss any of Rand’s ideas? His sister is a liberal, to say the
least.
Barbara: My
impression—and I can’t say I fully know it to be true—is that he is very
far from his sister politically. There is no question that he loves his
sister, he talked a bit about her and quite a lot about his father, Henry
Fonda. But he seems to be a man with an utter loathing of authority. He’s
livid when he talks about anybody telling anybody what to do.
Q: What about
Eric Stoltz, who played Nathaniel Branden, did he seem at all Branden-like
to you?
Barbara: I
think Nathaniel should be pleased that Eric is so good-looking! But when
I first saw him, I thought that he might be too boyish to convincingly
portray Ayn Rand’s lover.
Q: He wasn’t
back then?
Barbara: He
was very young, but he was never boyish. Eric soon put my concern to rest.
The first scene I saw him in was Nathan’s and my first meeting with Ayn
and Frank—and one was of course aware of his youth. But as the story progressed,
any hint of boyishness disappeared and one saw the progression from student
of Ayn Rand to lover.
Q: How well
did they re-create the Neutra house?
Barbara: It
was not a precise re-creation, that would have been impossible. But the
house they chose was beautiful, with the feel of Ayn and Frank’s home
and a number of concrete similarities. I was fascinated by what the lighting
people did. We were in Toronto in the winter, it often snowed and the
sky was overcast—but the house was flooded with California sunshine.
Q: With the
portrayal of their apartment, people who have never seen the place but
had imagined it, did they have all the rooms right?
Barbara: They
couldn’t find in Toronto a apartment that was appropriate for the 50s
and 60s in New York. So they built it—in a huge warehouse that was often
used as a set. Like the house, it was not identical to Ayn and Frank’s
apartment, but had Ayn seen it she might have wanted to move in. The prop
people were very careful to have things right; they even had blue-green
ashtrays in the living room and the appropriate kind of furniture and
accessories.
Q: From the
write-ups that have been given, the movie for Showtime seems to focus
almost exclusively on the romantic quadrangle. Won’t that give a distorted
view of Rand’s life, thought, and achievements? How much time is devoted
to her growing up in Russia, her struggle in Hollywood, etc?
Barbara: Originally,
the producers had wanted to begin the action in Russia, but it simply
was too expensive to do so. And I was pleased that they didn’t do it.
You cannot tell the story of so complex and varied a life in two hours
unless you race through it. So they decided to focus on the period from
the filming of The Fountainhead to the end of Ayn’s life, with
the emphasis on 1950 to 1968 when Nathan and I were an integral part of
that life. But this was by no means only the period of "the romantic
quadrangle" It was the period during which Ayn wrote and published
Atlas Shrugged—the period of the Nathaniel Branden Institute and
the spread of Objectivism into the culture—the period during which Ayn
turned from fiction to non-fiction—the period of intense drama and conflict
in her life. It was the climax of all the years during which Ayn had struggled
and created. Because of that, we are able to learn as much as one can
expect a television movie to show about her ideas, her achievements, and
her influence.
Q: Are the
ideas presented fairly and accurately?
Barbara: I
haven’t seen the final cut, but what I saw was a fair and accurate—though,
or course, not detailed—presentation. The script writer, Howard Korder,
is a fine writer, but I believe he had not before been acquainted with
Ayn’s ideas. From the beginning, from his first draft of the script, the
producers sent me what he’d written and asked for my comments and suggestions.
And they incorporated a good deal of what I said. This is little short
of a miracle—it simply does not happen. Writer friends who have had books
made into films can scarcely believe the extent to which I was consulted.
Q: They probably
needed you!
Barbara: Apparently
they thought so. Particularly during the weeks I was in Toronto, they
had me writing a lot of the philosophical dialogue. You can imagine how
delighted I was to do so. It made it possible for me to get certain of
Ayn’s ideas into the script that I badly wanted to have included.
Q: What other
challenges did the writer have or discuss with you in writing the script?
Barbara: I
hadn’t talked to the writer until he came to the set for a couple of days.
I worked with the two producers, Linda and Peter, and all my input was
by way of them or by way of Christopher Menaul, the director.
Q: So you
were happy with the final script?
Barbara: I
was delighted.
Q: But you
haven’t seen the final version of the movie?
Barbara: Not
yet. I expect to see it soon. I spoke to Linda Wexelblatt about what was
done in the editing, and she told me, among other things, about certain
sequences that had been removed. None of them were philosophical or essential
to the story.
Q: What sort
of things did they remove?
Barbara: There
were a couple of scenes that they thought were over-long, so these were
slightly condensed in the editing. In one case, they removed a short scene
that was not important… By the way, I have no idea what the sex scenes
are like. The set was closed for such scenes, to give the actors some
privacy. I can’t imagine how they do sex scenes at all; the director and
a number of crew members are staring fixedly at them, a camera is in their
faces, the lighting people are shining lights at them.
Q: Helen Mirren
is a slim lady. At that time was Ayn Rand slim also?
Barbara: Ayn’s
weight varied from time to time, but she was relatively slim.
Q: I rather
think of her in the heavier years.
Barbara: That
was much later. Her body was never very heavy, but her face, as she aged,
lost its tightness and gave the impression of extra weight.
Q: All those
Godiva chocolates!
Barbara: She
loved chocolates. Is there any civilized person who doesn’t?
 [...]
|
from Full
Context, Vol. 11, No. 1
(September/October 1998)
|
Issues
of Full Context containing the full transcripts of our interviews
are available here. |
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