Two-bit Opinion #14: A Hollywood Mind

I finally got around to watching A Beautiful Mind recently. A fabulous film, I must say. A fabulous work of nearly complete fiction I later discovered.

From reading up on the main character John Nash, I discovered that very little of what happened in the movie actually happened to the man himself. For those of you who haven't seen the film, stop reading now, for there are spoilers about....

Nash never hallucinated his roommate. His illness did not manifest itself until after his wife became pregnant. He experienced only auditory hallucinations. He never gave a speech after winning the Nobel Prize. The only resemblance between the Russell Crowe's portrayal of John Nash and the good doctor himself are the words "John Nash" and "paranoid schizophrenia." Hollywood ran with that.

I have no problem with Hollywood whipping a fine tale from actual events - most fiction has its roots in truth because truth is often more interesting than fiction. But truth is rarely as simple as fiction, and truth doesn't like to sit still for 2 hours. My concern here is that they used the name John Nash, fooling the audience into believing that this story actually happened when it in fact nearly none of it did.

By contrast, one of my favorite movies of all time is Almost Famous. Much of it is writer/director Cameron Crowe's autobiography. In fact, based on interviews I've read with Crowe (as well as the very revealing DVD commentary track), I would venture that roughly 70% of the events in the movie actually occurred. Comparing that with a possible 15% score for "A Beautiful Mind"...I have to wonder why it was presented using the names, places and dates from Nash's life.

At least Cameron Crowe had the good sense to change the names, places and dates.

I will say that Akiva Goldsman's screenplay certainly deserved its Oscar win - for it was a remarkable work of fiction. Buy why plagiarize the characters and settings? What's to be gained? Giving people hope that a life like the one portrayed in the movie can actually happen? It can't. I realize that's what movies are for - to give us hope and make us think and entertain us...but presenting this movie using John Nash's name is just an outright lie.

Meanwhile, an honest film like Almost Famous goes by unnoticed. I could almost guarantee that if Almost Famous had been billed as "inspired by the life of Cameron Crowe" or "based on a true story" or whatever, that there would have been a better commercial reception for that film. Because who wouldn't want the life of a 15 year-old writer on tour with a rock band - getting your cherry popped by groupies and falling in love with Kate Hudson?

The gain behind A Beautiful Mind's deception: voyeurism.

These days America wants "reality" in film and movies. TV shows like Survivor, The Real World and Big Brother as well as movies like A Beautiful Mind attest to the fact that people are more interested in their neighbor's lives than their own, or even the lives of fictional characters.

This isn't to say that A Beautiful Mind isn't a great film, it's fantastic and deserving of its Oscars, but I just have to wonder if it had been a film about nobody in particular, would people have gone to see it?

Probably so, because Russell Crowe is hunk and Jennifer Connelly is a babe, but STILL...

I don't think watching Russell Crowe play a mentally ill man is as interesting to Hollywood and the typical moviegoing audience member as Russell Crowe playing a man whose life circumstances resemble those of a real Princeton professor.

Post script: I was thinking a lot about Crowe's Nash and the scene where he breaks the coordinates code. He walks into the Pentagon confident, curt, and self-important. The hallucination was feeding his ego. The seductive appeal of his illusion was what gave it such a tight grip on his consciousness.

He wanted to believe he was a top Pentagon code-breaker.

We wanted to believe he was the real John Nash.