Paxton's Oscar-Nominated Film on Rand Challenges and Succeeds
She loved Hollywood, Tiddily Winks, music, and the U.S.A. Her books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged still sell hundreds of thousands of copies each year, and her work continues to interest a passionate cult of admirers as well as a hostile circle of detractors.
Ayn Rand with Gary Cooper, star of the film version of her novel The Fountainhead, in 1949.
In an engrossing Academy Award-nominated 1997 documentary, writer-director and 1979 Albany alumnus Michael Paxton meticulously crafted the life story of Ayn Rand, from her youth as an observer of the Russian Revolution to her final days as a lecturer and champion of her objectivist creed.
In Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, Paxton followed Rand�s career as an author, philosopher and screenwriter, as well as the writer�s tumultuous personal life. The film, narrated by Sharon Gless, delved into Rand�s Russian childhood and her opportunity to travel in the U.S. for six months. Before leaving, Rand had wangled a meeting with legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille and married film star Frank O�Connor. She went on to write her landmark books and became a fervent lecturer and champion of her objectivist philosophy.
This acclaimed documentary by Paxton is considered by many to be the authoritative word on the controversial author�s life and works. Paxton utilizes interviews with Rand and her associates, as well as Rand�s letters, diaries and personal photographs. Interviews with Phil Donahue and a youthful Dan Rather were especially noteworthy, as was an abundance of movie lore, with DeMille, Garbo, Cooper, and Crawford all part of the tale.
Despite his success, Paxton says he has to stay single. "The only documentary filmmaker I know who can afford a family is the guy Paul Reiser plays on television�s �Mad About You,�" he quipped to the New York Daily News.
After graduating from Albany with a B.A. in philosophy, Paxton went on to New York University�s graduate film program. "I was really interested in communicating what I thought was important about life, our existence," said Paxton. "I thought film was an incredibly dramatic way to express the human condition." His film, done as a master�s thesis, "Forbidden Fruit," won best screenplay and best editing awards at the 1988 NYU Film Festival.
University at Albany Alumni in Government Event
President Hitchcock, at right, was happy to be with more than 100 alumni from the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the first-of-its-kind University at Albany Alumni in Government event at the Governor�s Mansion in Albany on March 19.
With her, left to right, were Alumni Association President Patty Salkin �85 and the featured speaker for the evening, Barbara Billet �72, New York State�s Solicitor General.
Artist Richard Callner, Faculty Emeriti
The University Art Museum, awarded an $8,000 grant from the Richard Florsheim Art Fund for the purpose of acquiring a painting by artist Richard Callner, now is the proud owner of the Callner work, "Oriental Window/Wave," a 1997 oil on canvas measuring 43 x 46 inches.
The artist, whose work is in the collection of the Albany Institute of History & Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, among others, is faculty emeriti from the University at Albany.