According to a survey taken by the Book of the Month Club, the second most influential book for Americans after the Bible is Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." (And I thought it was "The Celestine Prophecy.")

Ayn Rand, born in St. Petersburg, Russia, arrived in the United States in 1926, and quickly embarked on a phenomenal career that eventually led her to creating what she labeled "Objectivism," a philosophy of rational self interest that opposes the collective of the modern welfare state. Through her novels, especially "The Fountainhead" (1943) and "Atlas Shrugged" (1957), her thoughts climbed up the bestseller lists and made her into controversial figure, much hated by liberals and worshipped by conservatives. Yet often when she spoke, she had more in common with her enemies than her fanatical followers.

This Oscar-nominated documentary, workmanly directed and produced by Michael Paxton, is linear in approach, seldom dynamic in bearing, and stylewise, there's nothing here that's going to set the documentary field afire.

The problem just might be that associates of some great philosophers are often not that interesting. This isn't the Ty Cobb story. But one comes away feeling Paxton just interviewed the wrong people.

There's no doubt that when Ms. Rand, who died in 1982, is verbally sparring with the likes of Phil Donahue or Mike Wallace on old TV broadcasts, she comes alive——and she makes her ideas jump, too. When asked if she believed in an afterlife, she notes if she did, she would have killed herself in a second to be with her dead husband.

Otherwise, we are dependent on the narrator Sharon Gless, of TV's "Cagney & Lacey," to supply the facts in a pleasant manner. Her script sadly lacks wit or an overwhelming penetration into Ms. Rand's character, but then that's probably how Ms. Rand would have liked it. But the addition of at least one or two rabid anti-Randites spouting forth venom to counterweight all the paean might have gotten this show off to a more robust start.

What is fascinating though to a degree is Paxton's rendering of Rand's Hollywood career: her part as an extra in Cecille B. De Mille's "King of Kings"; her screen writing attempts; and eventually the fight of the glamour queens (e.g. Joan Crawford; Barbara Stanwyck) to star in "The Fountainhead." Also quite revealing is Rand's "friendly witness" appearance before the House of Un-American Activities Committee and her mingled feelings about this fifties' institution.

But where's the supposed exaltation people have described of being Ms. Rand's presence. One interviewee recalls not being to sleep for two nights after chatting with his idol. If only an iota of that magic had been captured, one might be able to understand why this film garnered a nomination.

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: Michael Paxton (Strand Releasing)
NARRATION; Sharon Gless
THOSE APPEARING : Ayn Rand, Mike Wallace, Phil Donahue, Leonard Peikoff, John Ridpath, Harry Binswanger, Michael S. Berliner, Cynthia Peikoff, Sylvia Bokor
LINE PRODUCER: Ellen Raphael
EDITOR: Lauren Schaffer
ORIGINAL MUSIC/MUSIC EDITOR: Jeff Britting
ELECTRICIAN: Vince Torres
CATERER (NEW YORK): An Affair to Remember

GENRE: Documentary RUNNING TIME: RATING: