When a newsroom colleague asks me what I know about “the movie Hollywood most wants to keep you from seeing,” I get interested.

The movie he was referring to is “Atlas Shrugged: Part I,” based on the first third of a novel by Ayn Rand. It opened at Rave Westroads last weekend.

That bit about Hollywood is because many people believe the movie industry has a liberal tilt in its view of the world. I think if you look around you’ll find ardent conservatives make movies, too, but that’s not my topic today.

Rand, a Russian native who left after the revolution (her father’s pharmacy was confiscated), was a champion of limited government, individual rights and achievement, and unbridled capitalism. She was an ardent foe of suffocating bureaucracy, welfare and altruism. She believed all achievement naturally flowed from the pursuit of self-interest.

Her novels encompassing that view — particularly “Atlas Shrugged” — have been embraced in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Some say events in “Atlas Shrugged” foreshadowed the crisis.

Signs mentioning Rand and the hero of “Atlas Shrugged,” a character named John Galt, have appeared at Tea Party protests. Many Libertarians love Rand.

Others on the political left have blamed the economic crisis in part on Rand’s support of selfishness and free markets, since former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, an ardent admirer of Rand, championed deregulation of the financial industry. Greenspan believed Wall Street capitalists’ self-interests would keep them from engaging in investments that would pose undue risk to the financial system.

Conservatives may be reading Rand somewhat selectively to get so fired up. She was an atheist, and her books often rant against organized religion. She was pro-choice and lived a life of sexual freedom that doesn’t fit the stereotype of what the Tea Party movement has come to stand for. Borderline-abusive sex figures in her novels, too.

Regardless, half a million copies of “Atlas Shrugged,” a 1,000-page novel published in 1957, were sold in 2009.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported last week that the movie is being marketed with the help of Tea Party organizing groups and conservative media. Its booking service is based in Salt Lake City. Sean Hannity is telling Fox News viewers that “Atlas Shrugged” is the movie liberal Hollywood doesn’t want you to see.

The Times article traces the decades-long path of why this movie didn’t get made. When she was still alive, Rand herself blocked it by insisting on veto power over every frame.

Ever a purist, she wasn’t satisfied with the 1949 movie adapted from her other novel, “The Fountainhead.” She was working on a screenplay for “Atlas Shrugged” until she died in 1982.

Rights to the story were sold to John Aglioloro in 1992. For years he couldn’t get a script green-lighted. At one time Angelina Jolie was attached to play the heroine, Dagny, with a script by Randall Wallace (“Braveheart,” “Secretariat”). That, too, fell through.

Finally, as Rand’s ideas found a new audience, Aglioloro’s rights were about to expire. A script was thrown together hastily. Aglioloro hired Paul Johansson (“One Tree Hill”) to direct, his first feature. The cast has no big-name stars. Johansson plays John Galt. The budget was small, about $10 million. The novel’s graphic sex has been largely expunged.

And the reviews have been awful, including online ratings that incorporate both what critics had to say and what those who have seen the movie report. Still, if enough people buy a ticket, you may yet see Parts II and III of “Atlas Shrugged.”

I haven’t seen the movie or read the book. I have read “The Fountainhead” and seen that movie several times. To me it feels a little preachy, melodramatic, with disturbing sex (date rape), but I liked certain things about both the movie and the book.

As if all this hubbub weren’t intriguing enough, another newsroom colleague pointed out that Omaha has a John Galt Boulevard. It borders two sides of a light industrial park, running west from 108th Street just south of L Street, then south to Q Street just east of 114th.

The Douglas County Historical Society website says it was named after the character from “Atlas Shrugged” because he never shows up, and the street basically goes nowhere.

Actually, Galt does show up in the last third of the novel. I’d love to know more about who chose this street name, when and why, and I tried to find out.

Nobody at the Historical Society could offer more than what’s on the website. Several people at the City Planning Department drew a blank. Former city planners such as Steve Jensen and Alden Aust and someone at Omaha by Design also couldn’t help.

Maybe John Galt Boulevard, like Rand herself, will remain something of an enigma.