Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Fountainhead, revisited.

Following up on this post about The Fountainhead film, I started wondering how the story would be reinterpreted in the hands of a contemporary (or nearly) director.

  • John Waters' The Fountainhead, with bonus smell-o-vision!  
  • Spike Lee's "The Fountainhead: A Spike Lee Joint."
  • Pixar's The Fountainhead, in which Roark is not an architect at all but instead a modern building trying to get established in a neo-classical city.  Dominique is a flirty and flaky piece of marble.

  • Tim Burton's The Fountainhead, in which Roark is played by Johnny Depp, Dominique by Helena Bonham Carter, and the drawings and models render the architectural Modern Movement utterly unrecognizable.  Imagine a Tim Burton-designed Enright House!
  • Michael Bay's The Fountainhead, in which Roark is a vigilante architect/demolitions expert who goes around blowing up buildings left and right, culminating in the climactic explosion of Cortlandt Homes.  Dominique is played by an underwear model, in her underwear, splayed suggestively over Wynant's and Roark's desks.
  • Stanley Kubrick's The Fountainhead.  Five hours long, every monologue included, with long shots of drawings and models.  Roark abandons his droogs for the ultra-violence of the quarry and gives Dominique the old in-out.  The film score includes variations of Beethoven's 9th for the rape scene, and Ride of the Valkyries for the destruction of Cortlandt Homes.  Wynand is played by Jack Nicholson.
  • David Lynch's The Fountainhead, in which Ellsworth Toohey is a Bene Gesserit, Roark blows up the Cortlandt Homes with his "weirding way," and Wynant mysteriously disappears without a trace.
  • Peter Jackson's The Fountainhead, which is unbelievably even longer than Atlas Shrugged, in a four-film series.  Henry Cameron doesn't appear until the middle of the second film, and Dominique speaks Elvish.
  • Kevin Smith's The Fountainhead, with Silent Bob as Roark, Jay as Wynand, and a giant blunt as Dominique.
  • Quentin Tarantino's The Fountainhead, with Uma Thurman as Dominique, Steve Buscemi as Peter Keating, Harvey Keitel as Wynand, Bruce Willis as Roark, Christopher Walken as Henry Cameron, and a ridiculous amount of firearms and swearing.  The Cortlandt Homes sequence kills the entire cast.

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