This is Not Fan Fiction of The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead (1949) stars Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. It’s based on a book by Ayn Rand. Gary Cooper plays an architect with vision and principles, who blows up a social housing project because his design was altered.

I hated it. That’s the reason I wrote this. So please don’t call this fan fiction.

In the movie, and presumably the book, the architect’s arson attack is painted as some heroic principled act. At his trial he defends himself and, if I remember it correctly, he ends up being applauded by the whole court - for blowing up a social housing development!

I was appalled and infuriated. And a little amused. It’s a ridiculous story.

Where were the characters that showed the perspective of the people who needed that social housing? Where were the fun easy-going types to highlight how laughable is the arrogance and self-importance of the characters in The Fountainhead?

I love old movies. Particularly ones from the 1930s and 40s. And it’s great to come across a new one staring some actor I like. There’s often things you have to overlook when watching old movies, the sexism, the racism, and a whole load of terrible attitudes really. But the glorification of egoistical bully-boy tactics isn’t typical at all.

So if you’d like to read a version of The Fountainhead with some Frank Capra style characters, the Marx Brothers, Jeeves and Wooster, and some good songs and dancing, thrown in for good measure, read on.

I’ve included some images just to give you an idea of what the characters look like. They’re not great quality - but they are the reason why I loved posting this first time around. Nothing like spending a few hours looking up photos of old movie stars to brighten your day.

When I first posted this in 2016, all the images were mash-ups of images from movies with the heads of Jean Arthur or Douglas Fairbanks Jr or whoever placed over them. And that’s still the case in 2024. But in 2024, AI has let me create some better images that aren’t so obvious a cut and paste mash-up job. AI has its faults, but it’s great for making mock-up images of old never-existed movies.

If you’re a fan of The Fountainhead or Ayn Rand, you may think I’m being very unfair. I have changed the story and the personalities of some of the characters. Also, the script that I downloaded was just a text dump. It didn’t indicate who said what. When I put this together, at the end of 2015, I refused to watch The Fountainhead again. So I’m pretty sure there are times when I have put lines into the wrong character’s mouth.

I find Ayn Rand’s philosophy, as it is painted in this film, offensive. At it’s core, it doesn’t believe that we are all equal. And I find that deeply offensive.

You may be wondering how then can I watch old movies that have racist and sexist attitudes ingrained in them? The truth is some of the old movies I can’t watch. But a lot of stuff I can dismiss as being ignorant attitudes from a more conservative, more constrained, more illiberal time. And the thing I love about old movies is I really think they helped chip away at all those old ideas. But I’m open to being persuaded I’m wrong about this.

Why can’t I just laugh at The Fountainhead? I can laugh at The Fountainhead. I did laugh at The Fountainhead. That’s why this exists. But I couldn’t laugh at someone being applauded for blowing up a social housing development. We have a bad housing crisis in Ireland. We’ve been in this crisis for a good decade. Some idiot who is powerful enough to be part of a social housing development, blowing up that development as if the people in need of housing are irrelevant, felt somehow a little too current to dismiss.

But listen, this mish-mash of different old movies (oh and a bit of Cold Comfort Farm) is just meant to be funny. So, if you don’t think you’ll enjoy it, just skip it. But maybe, just maybe, it’ll amuse you a little bit.