Two weeks? In f*cking Bruges? In a room like this, with you?

http://www.alliancefilms.com/inbruges/trailer.html

Not necessarily the best trailer in the world (it's decent), but check it out. It's for the upcoming In Bruges, written and directed by Martin McDonagh, and I'm not gonna get mushy, but this is something I am going to plug, because Martin McDonagh is a fucking genius.

You know when you're a kid, and you have that fantasy that some day you'll grow up and set all these records, be the youngest to do this and that, be the best at this, win awards, be acclaimed whatever you do? Well, if those fantasies had come true, you'd be Martin McDonagh.

The man was the first man to have 4 plays running in the West End in the same time since a man called William Shakespeare -- at the age of 27. Starting with his first play, he was nominated and won a slew of Obies, Oliviers Awards, Tony Awards, Drama Desk Awards, Evening Standard Awards, Writers Guild Awards, et al. He created a movement. His first short film won him an Academy Award. His first feature-film is opening the Sundance Film Festival.

And how did he pay for himself as he started out? Unemployment benefits, the fucker!

You don't have to check out the trailer. You don't have to like the trailer. But keep an eye out for the film when it comes out, and if it sounds like something you might like, give it a go -- the man's sure to at least give you something to talk about afterwards.

Cheers,

Ten Cents

The Getaway Car

Best recent TV show. Seriously -- I can see why it got canceled -- but if you've got any interest in Saturday Night Live, sketch comedy in general, producing film or television, and/or like The West Wing and rat-tat-tat dialogue, then Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is for you. And, on a sidenote, Danny Tripp is God. I'm starting a cult and calling us the Trippers. Who's in? Let's Tripp together.

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I'm developing a script at the moment (if you know what it's about, ssshhhhhh). It's an adaptation of a recently released bestseller, it's the first option I ever got in my life, and I'm fairly excited about it. And the reason I'm bringing it up is something that has to do with producing: how hard it is to find writers.

If you're just starting out in the film business, and you're a director or producer who can't especially write, then your first challenge is going to be finding someone who can. To be honest, decent actors are relatively easy to find -- not great ones, but decent ones; and so are ideas. Writers, who can make that idea into a piece that has something worth filming on every page, though, are a very, very rare thing. If you've ever been to a film festival, you'll agree with me that one thing short films and low-budget independent films have in common is great lighting, great camerawork, decent acting, good editing, and HORRENDOUS writing. The dialogue will be all right, albeit showy, the structure will be shoddy and essentially rely on a last-minute twist, and any theme or subtlety is usually missing in action. I used to think this is because most people don't work on their scripts enough, and I now think I used to be mistaken. It's because scriptwriting is a bloody hard, unnatural thing to do.

I like to think of myself as a competent semi-pro screenwriter. In the sense that if I have a solid, plot-able idea, I can write that out into a script that's fairly clever, fairly entertaining, and fairly commonplace. It'll take me lots of hard work, but it'll have a theme, two- or three-dimensional characters (also whether they're interesting or not I couldn't vouch for), and a somewhat compelling, forward-moving three-act(ish) structure; dialogue that doesn't rape your ear; and maybe even one or two good scenes. The problem is, it'll also be about as exciting, inspired and risky as your average chair. And I think people can learn to get to that level of writing -- get a good idea, hack it out to where it clunks along in a decent fashion -- and then use those skills to shoot a decent short film, go to a festival, network, find better writers, and move up the Ladder To Nowhere together.

But inspired writing -- and this is what I need for this, inspired, tone-perfect, brings-tears-to-your-eyes-as-you-smile writing -- is rarer than diamond. It's not a very new thing to do, and probably not something you give a pole-dancing crap about, but I've been wrestling with this adaptation for a couple of weeks now, and that's what on my mind on the moment, so I thought I'd share.

And as you might be wondering: Yes, I do support the Writers' Strike. It's a shame there is a strike, but if there's a right side and a wrong side, the writers are definitely in the right.

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It's funny (and by funny, I mean unbearably sad) how America used to mean apple pie, Brett Favre, Bruce Springsteen, Clint Eastwood, Walter Cronkite, fulfilling your potential, entrepreneurship, hard work, family values, hot dogs, the 4th of July, and men on the moon; and now it means Burger King, Michael Vick, Paris Hilton, Adam Sandler, Fox News, fear, Enron, legalized torture, distrust, and the impunity of the powerful.

Don't me wrong -- I never thought America used to be Heaven and is now Hell (I mean, Jefferson of the many lovers were as hypocritical as they came; the Founding Fathers knew smear campaigns as well as anyone before or since; and the 50s had their share of crappy blonde "singers"). But their used to be respect for the idea of America. It was cultivated. People who believed in it were welcomed, and people who made it happen were celebrated. I can't help but be worried by the fact that America won the Civil War by being the side that fought for their rights rather than their privileges; then won the Cold War by being the side that said "we'll fight if you pick a fight"; and now is losing the war on terror by being the side that attacks third-party countries and says, "torture? sure. slap a different name on it, lie about it, and we can do it". I can't help but worry that they're fighting a moral struggle by taking the same moral low road as their enemies do.

If you had asked people in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, what the word America meant to them... I'd never dare predict what their answers would have been, but I imagine they would've been very different from what people would think of first now. Not in a good way, either.

I suppose it's a cyclical thing, that the superpower that rose as a beacon of progress falls as a litter of fat cats, and that if it happened to Athens, Rome and the L.A. Lakers, it's only logical that it could happen to America. To someone like me, though, who grew up on the idea and values of Americanism (despite not being even remotely American), it's like waking up one morning and realizing that Kermit the Frog is actually a wife-beating child molester. Or is that piggy-beating child molester?

In any case, it's not a warm feeling.

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Things have, otherwise, been going relatively well. I've been meeting writers (some of them potentially very good, shame on my earlier self for being so negative), optioned the project, and even though I can't announce exactly who just yet (but will soon), I have just signed a fairly well-known artist to help us finish that long-overdue short film I'm hoping to get out there in the somewhat near future. In my first year out of film school, I worked with Robert DeNiro, Indiana Jones, Elizabeth, a Stephen King story, and Natalie Portman; and hustled a (very good) short film into film festivals.

Looking back, it's been good. The one problem so far has been getting paid to an extent where I can do all these things comfortably, without counting pennies in the evenings to make sure I'm not going to eat canned soup all weekend, and if any of you hear me talking about needing a win, that's what I'm referring to. One of those Paying Jobs. I'm onto a few leads, but the legend is true: they're a hard thing to come by. Not any paying jobs, not something to pay the rent and food, but something that's IN the film business, advances your career and learning, and can pay for optioning stuff, buying your writing books, maintaining your software, traveling to a couple film festivals, registering copyrights, and all the while have enough time to keep working on your stuff.

You might say I'm not finding one of those jobs because they can't be had. But, hey -- I'm not gonna get anywhere by having what can be had, am I? That would be too easy.

Cheers,

TenCents

PS: Check out I'm Not There and Gone Baby Gone if you can. Great films -- and both, to me, epitomize, in very different ways, what independent is all about. Risky, unique, artfully made, entertaining, challenging and emotionally and morally complex. If I get to help make one of those, two of those, in my lifetime, I'll die a happy producer.

PPS: And to finish, and in case you'd like me to explain the title of the post, a David Mamet quote about producers...

"The artist is, in effect, a sort of gangster. He hitches up his trousers and goes into the guarded bank of the unconscious in an attempt to steal the gold of inspiration. The producer is like the getaway driver who sells the getaway car and waits outside the bank grinning about what a great deal he's made." - David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

You gotta love film people.

London Film Festival (Week 1)

In The Shadow Of The Moon

In The Shadow Of The Moon is a British documentary, directed by TV veteran David Sington, and telling the story of the only people to ever reach the moon -- American Apollo astronauts. Using tons of unseen footage, and new interview with the surviving Apollo crew members, the movie is an inspiring experience, starting with the beginnings of the space race, and, using Apollo 11 as a centerpiece, tells the astronauts' stories -- how they got to the moon and back, what it was like, and what they took away from it.

The film is an uplifting experience, and a lot of the space footage is awe-inspiring. The most enlightening part is getting to know the astronauts involved (you get to hear everyone's first hand recollections, with the sole exception of Neil Armstrong, who is famous for keeping to himself), who are all soft-spoken, gentle, Middle-America kind of people, extremely clever, extremely articulate, and extremely humble. Everything about them, from their achievements to the way they speak, throws you back to what America used to (and was supposed to) be in the first place; a feeling enhanced by footage of the whole world (yes, including the French) cheering and waving U.S. flags to celebrate Apollo 11's landing on the moon -- a togetherness it's hard to imagine happening again in today's world. The film's music, composed by Philip Sheppard, is the movie's other big strength: powerful, emotional, stirring, it's an impressive feat, especially considering this is Sheppard's first film score.

The directing itself is unexceptional, and you do get the feeling that the film just rides somewhat comfortably on its fantastic subject and all the fascinating men involved -- but in the end, that's enough for a terrific 90 minute doc, one which'll entertain you, educate you, elevate your spirits, and throw in a few things to ponder in the process. 8/10

Enchanted


Enchanted had a one-off screening at the festival, making it its World Premiere, two months before the film's actual release in the UK (which'll come in the middle of December). It was a big promotional event for Disney, who treated every audience member to a free magic eight ball (woo-hoo!), and made sure the movie's three main stars were present and in a good mood to get some buzz going.

Enchanted tells the story of animated princess Gisele (Amy Adams), who is about to marry animated Prince Edward (James Marsden), which'll make her Queen of Andalasia in stead of evil Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon). To save her throne, Narissa pushes Gisele into a magic well, that leads into an world where there are NO happy ever afters -- ours. More specifically, New York City, where Gisele meets a handsome divorce lawyer (Patrick Dempsey), who introduces her to her new environment...

It's an idea that could've been developed into a sickly-sweet film, aimed squarely at teenage girls and their parents. But Disney and director Kevin Lima (Tarzan, A Goofy Movie) instead make the concept blossom, and develop it into an extremely entertaining movie, one that even I, a 20-something male whose favorite films include The Godfather and Braveheart, thoroughly enjoyed. In fact, there's a lot of satire and irony in the film that I'm not sure kids would get, but that made all the grown-ups in the audience piss themselves, and that's not something that happens very often with movies about Disney princesses.

Most of the humor in the film comes from the culture crash between members of two very distinct worlds: the classic Disney cartoon world and our real-life world. Gisele, a gorgeous young princess, is used to improvising love duets, marrying Prince Charmings she barely met, cutting dresses out of curtains and rugs, and counting forest animals amongst her friends (and housekeeping mates). But suddenly, she finds herself in a world where no one sings, there are supposedly no happily ever afters, and people, well...date before deciding to marry.

The film is well, but not uniquely, written, but flies along at a very fun, breezy pace. The actors have a great time, and most of them are pretty much terrific -- Amy Adams is fantastic casting as the princess, and even though one might blame her for just taking on yet another pretty-ditzy role, she still delivers every inch of the way. James Marsden, who is the only person I can think of ever to get typecast as "the likeable other guy" (see the X-Men movies, Superman Returns, and The Notebook), is a revelation as Prince Edward, and overall gets the most laughs of anyone in the movie. He plays your typical overjoyful, overconfident, overperfect, overzealous storybook prince with glee and an absolute straight face, and as such pulls off the very rare feat of creating a character who is deeply likeable because of all his flaws. Patrick Dempsey is great casting too, and even though his role isn't exactly a stretch in any direction, he fills it solidly, hitting the beats and making every situation work. There's also a great animated chipmunk in there, one of the few CGI-animals-in-a-live-action-film I've ever seen work so well.

The one disappointment, really, is Susan Sarandon, who is terribly miscast as evil queen Narissa. She just tries too hard to be over-the-top and cartoonish, and as a result is simply ridiculous, working all right in the animated portions of the film, but looking ludicrous in the live-action bits -- like a thesp who takes herself very seriously, but to prove that she doesn't, takes a fun popcorn role and, hamming up way too seriously, comes out looking like a desperate middle-aged woman in a funny outfit, trying too hard to be wacky. Dempsey's to-be NYC girlfriend, played by Idina Menzel, is also somewhat annoying and miscast, but her role not being gigantic, it's not much of a bother.

There are also a few situations that the film fails to exploit fully, and even though the songs are composed by legend Alan Menken (an EIGHT-time Oscar winner) and do stick in your head, the way they are orchestrated in the couple of musical numbers ruins them. The choreographies in the musical numbers aren't very impressive either, and on a whole the numbers themselves are disappointing. The very final act is also quite disappointing (it throws the necessary CGI-packed climax at a film that never really needed it).

Nevertheless, it's a great film, really good fun, especially if you enjoy Disney films (even if you don't admit it) or if you have a little girl to take out to see it. 8/10


The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford


This is one of the films I was looking forward to the most in this year's lineup -- I'm a huge fan of Ron Hansen's book, I'm a huge fan of westerns, I'm a huge fan of the cast (Brad Pitt, Sam Shepard, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell -- how right can you go?), and the early buzz has been quite good, comparing the film to some of the 70s greats.

Let's say it straight-out: the film's far from perfect. In fact, it's far from even being the film it could be. It feels over-edited (director Andrew Dominik's spent a year in the cutting room) and somewhat without a center, shooting for a theme but not quite bringing it together as poetically and humanly as it could and should.

As a result the film is edited in fade-outs, like little vignettes, and features what felt like wall-to-wall narration from an omniscient storyteller. The idea is obvious -- to make the film feel like a yarn told by a frontier storyteller, which is the tone of Hansen's novel -- but the filmmakers sacrifice the story's power and potential on the altar of that form. Some of the important transition and human bits are left out of the story, and eventually, it definitely feels like someone is telling you a yarn, but not the most interesting one -- it's like Grandpa is reading you a story, but leaving out most of the good bits.

The movie isn't a bad one in any way -- it's a good film, but it could've been a great western, as far as I'm concerned an all-time great. It looks fantastic -- absolutely breathtaking for most shots -- the music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is brilliant (and I wish had been used more in place of the irritating narration, which just tended to tell us everything that we could already see happening on screen), the costume and set design looks deliciously authentic, and the acting is all-around top-notch. Brad Pitt is great as Jesse James, a man whose larger-than-life character slowly turns mercurial and paranoid, but there again the edit cuts out many of the important transition points in his character's arc, which has the effect of making his performance seem less impressive than it actually is (I think). The supporting cast is stunning, from Sam Rockwell (who steals every single scene he's in, which is pretty much what you pay Sam Rockwell to do) to little-known Garret Dillahunt, magistral as an awkward, frightened member of the James Gang. Zooey Deschanel makes a solid cameo near the end, and two of the bigger names in the cast (Mary-Louise Parker and Sam Shepard) take rather unnoticeable turns, but there again it could be the editing shaping their performance into something less defined than it could've been.

Surprisingly (to me), considering how much praise his performance has received so far, I thought Casey Affleck's performance was unexceptional, nothing special -- he takes the obvious path of making Robert Ford your pale-faced, awkward kid with a cracking voice and tender eyes, the victim of bullies who suddenly turns the biggest of all bullies into his own victim. But he never fully creates Ford's darker side, his ambition, his own mercurial side, all those things that, in a way, do make him like Jesse James -- only a weaker Jesse James, one without courage or pride. As a result you never quite feel James and Ford connect in the way they should: as Mary perfectly put it when we left the screening, this is essentially All About Eve, and where Pitt does (in my opinion) a fantastic Margo Channing, at first captivating and entrancing and likeable, then fearsome and paranoid, Affleck's Eve Harrington is too simple, too obvious. Jesse's his hero, he wants to be like Jesse, turns out Jesse isn't that nice a guy, so the best way to become as famous as him AND not be bullied anymore is to shoot Jesse. Only it's not that simple: in actuality, Ford was someone who went from wanting to be like Jesse, to wanting to be with Jesse, to wanting to be respected by Jesse, to wanting to BE Jesse; but since he didn't have any of the few qualities that made Jesse James such a larger-than-life character, he ended up going about it the way most of us would've, by waiting until the last possible moment and then, motivated by fear and greed rather than something undefinable, shooting his prey in the back, in his own house, while backed up by his brother.

Again, it might be the fault of the way the film is cut together (incredibly, the very important beat where Robert Ford turns from James gang member to government snitch is just plain missing from the film), but it's another reason why the piece doesn't completely click.

In the end, what could've been The Godfather or Unforgiven or Once Upon A Time In The West comes out more like The Proposition or Open Range -- a good-to-great western, but not a masterpiece. The shame is, that masterpiece is probably on the cutting room floor somewhere, already shot and performed, but probably never to be seen. 7.5/10

"Gone" World Premiere!

A quick post to let everyone know that Gone, written/directed/produced by Mary Kerr, and starring Jenny O'Reilly and Kate Wyvill has just had its World Premiere at the St. John's International Women's Film Festival in St. John's, Canada.

Worth sharing as it's the first film either Mary or I have been involved in to get to screen in front of a paying audience (yay!), and as this festival is a fairly big festival of its kind (for instance, Mary's film screened in the same program as a film by Isabella Rossellini, and other films selected for the festival include the award-winning Soft, the best short film I've seen in a film festival this year, which has also screened at the NY Short Film Festival and the Edinburgh Film Festival), which is a long-overdue and much-deserved little tidbit of recognition for Mary and her film -- in my opinion a really cool, original short.

So, there -- a bit of bragging. :) I'll be back later on tomorrow with a bit more news, and something of a report on what we've been seeing at the London Film Festival.

Cheers,

TenCents

Turns out blogs are hard to keep up. :)

I'll try to do better in the future, but until then, here's a bit of information about how things have been going since I last posted -- the Cannes Film Festival.

I spent the first couple of months of the summer back in New York, doing some work. It was an odd few weeks -- to save some money, we took a cheap sublet in Chinatown, and my God, Chinatown is a hostile place. It's funny how, where Little Italy is like a Disneyland version of Italy, Chinatown is properly like China. It's a whole different world, and oddly not a welcoming one. There's this feeling of a mass there, of people just trudging along rather than elevating themselves (which is one of the most amazing aspects of New York usually -- people are vibrant), and a hostile fear of anything different or unusual or unexpected. And, to call a cat a cat, the hygiene's pretty dodgy too. So we worked with that for a while, and then flew back to London for a wedding. Shortly after that, Maz and I took a road trip around the Scottish Highlands, which was an amazing experience -- we started down in Jedburgh, in the Borders, and then worked our way up the East Coast, to Inverness, then along the North Coast, and then back down the West Coast, all the way to Oban, and from there drove to Glasgow, from where we flew to Barra (the ONLY place in the world where the plane lands on the beach -- natch) for a few days, then back to Glasgow, from where we drove to Peebles and back to Jedburgh.

It was a fantastic thing to do (Maz's idea, to give credit where credit is due), and at the right time, too. You develop tunnel vision, working in something like the film industry, trying to get ahead -- you forget about anything else. You wake up, look up film news, work on film stuff, go see a movie, work on some film stuff, go to bed, start again. Even when you're not doing film-related stuff, you're thinking about it, it's dancing in the back of your head, it's worrying you, it's obsessing you. Every disappointment sticks with you like a bad smell, and every success only serves to make you worry about the next step. Ultimately you just end up running in circles, more busy than productive, trying to check things off your To-Do List rather than actually growing in any way. And Maz and I had both gotten to that point in the past few months. I personally had been focusing way too hard on how to get that short film finally off the ground, on how to get onto Indiana Jones 4, on how to find a producer I respected to work for, on how to make a living, on how to find a project to produce next...And for weeks I had been trying so hard to get it all done, I stopped getting anywhere.

So the road trip was really good -- couple of weeks with virtually no Internet, no cinemas, just talking and doing things and landscapes and reading and writing. Suddenly rather than anxiously bouncing in every purposeless direction, every day narrowed down to getting into the car, going somewhere fun, and having fun -- and talking in-between. Scotland's a gorgeous country, one where the landscapes, history and activities combine to instantly make all the bad energies just seep out -- and I personally came back from it in the best headspace I've been in in months.

And unsurprisingly, since getting back, things have been going much, MUCH better. After obsessing over it every single day since January (I'm serious.), I finally got my few days' work on Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, worked on the same set as Steven Spielberg, and saw Harrison Ford in the outfit -- it cost me nearly a grand for the privilege, flying to L.A. and putting myself up and working for free, but fuck, man, it's Indiana Jones. I can't talk about it much, non-disclosure agreement oblige, but it was a great experience, and as far as I'm concerned the film looks amazing fun. After it comes out, I'll post a longer post with the bits I saw, how they did them, and what was great about them -- and hopefully Lucasfilm won't sue me then. :)

I also started doing some book reading for Walt Disney Studios, and a bit after that, I got to work on a series of commercials for H&M, as a camera trainee for one of my all-time favorite DPs, Darius Khondji. We've also gotten a film into a film festival, and I've initiated contact with a bunch of directors and writers I'd like to work with as a full-fledged producer, and things are going well.

It's funny how things aren't always necessarily about putting your mind to it, but putting your right mind to it. Trust me, the world's full of driven people, but driven people who go about things in the right way, with the right mindset, beating their own drum at their own pace... I truly think that's one of the keys of getting wherever you're going. I'm not one of those people yet, not consistently, but I'm starting to tell when I'm in that mode and when I'm not, and I can tell the (huge) difference.

I'll keep this a short post -- no point writing too much today, and then not doing it for a month, as I tend to -- but I'll be back over the weekend, asking myself several questions that have been swimming around in my head, all centered around one issue: why is the film industry so keen on killing itself?

Cannes Pictures!

First off -- apologies for the low-res quality of the pictures, they're Duane Reade-made CD versions of what came off our disposable cameras (which we were excited about when we bought them -- it was like 1996 all over again -- until we got the pics printed and were reminded of the crap quality and silvery-gray color of disposable camera pictures. Oh, well). In any case, here's hoping you enjoy...

The entrance to the Palais des Festivals -- and the famous steps...

The blue steps leading to the Un Certain Regard screening room (at the other end of the Palais), where Martin Scorsese's Masterclass also took place.

Martin Scorsese making his entrance before the Masterclass

Scorsese accepting his minutes-long standing ovation before the beginning of the class

From L to R: a translator, the Directors' Fortnight host, Gregg Araki,
Anna Faris and Danny Masterson before the Smiley Face showing
(gotta love sitting in the balcony)

Maz working away in our little hotel room...


...and the mess of film magazines and trade papers we had around
every morning

The Across The Universe billboard on the side of the Hilton

The Carlton hotel -- during the Festival, also known as
"The Biggest Billboard In The World"

20th Century Fox's undeniably badass FF2: Rise Of The Silver Surfer display


Quentin Tarantino introducing the Cannes Classics screening of
Rio Bravo (also attended by Edgar Wright)

During the Festival, the city organized for some very cool see-through banners,
with pictures of screaming movie stars printed on them, to be hung over the Rue d'Antibes (Cannes' biggest shopping street). Here: Matt Damon and Tom Hanks.


An advance poster of the upcoming DeNiro & Pacino event film "Righteous Kill". The film hasn't started production yet (it does in August), but as it's an indie, its producers went all-out in Cannes trying to attract financiers and foreign rights buyers. You spend some to get some, I guess.
A banner for the upcoming The Broken, starring Lena Headey (300) and directed by Sean Ellis, who directed Cashback (the short) and Cashback (the feature).

The now-famous Simpsons Movie display (as seen in every multiplex in Amerika).

The outside of Cannes' train station, depicting the brothers Lumiere (inventors of cinema) watching frames of an early film of a train driving by. Think this is a cinema-loving town?

I wish I could write like this.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the loots who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor--your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?
"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions--and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is MADE--before it can be looted or mooched--made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss--the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery--that you must offer them values, not wounds--that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of GOODS. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade--with reason, not force, as their final arbiter--it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability--and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality--the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?
"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of your money?
"Or did you say it's the LOVE of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred for money--and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.
"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
"Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion--when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing--when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors--when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you--when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice--you may know that your society is doomed.
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are."

-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged