Monday, April 14, 2008

ugly truth

i'm 3 blogs overdue so i hope you're ready for this.

i was also 6 comments behind but i did that first, to get the thought process going a little bit and it helped me think of things to say in these blogs...

in "a beautiful mind," did they portray john nash as a likable character in order to make him more appealing to audiences and to assure that viewers would sympathize with him throughout the story, or was it simply a decision made based upon which version of the story would sell more tickets? from all the research that everyone has done on this movie, it sounds like the john nash in "a beautiful mind" is nothing like the real-life john nash. maybe they thought basing it on a true story would attract more attention while they were promoting the movie and get more people to watch it. would it still have won best picture if they had depicted a more realistic john nash? would they still have gotten russell crowe and jennifer connelly to play the leading roles? imagine if the previews for this movie had shown russell crowe crawling into bed with a college student, then doing his homework for him afterwards to keep him from telling other people about it and then going home and beating his wife, all the while hearing voices that no one else can hear. box office disaster. they altered the story to fulfill viewer's expectations of a film, and to assure successful sales for themselves.

4 comments:

Ana said...

You can totally make a cool movie out of that! We would call it A Twisted Mind!
It starts with Russell Crowe torturing his dog while trying to convince his sister to sit on the chair as she cries to her mom. Then he stares into the camera with an evil smile. A brief showing of him growing up into an awkward 14 year old boy that likes math and then poof... he's in college, as you said, sleeping with his fellow men classmates and doing their homework. Also, he has a son... we can't explain where he came from because there isn't enough time in the movie. Then he gets arrested while in bed with his roommate! (we can spin it a little and still not lose the main truth.) Then he gets married solves big math problems... yadda yadda yadda. And then we go to Princeton and film him now.

Alyssa said...

I love this idea, A Twisted Mind. A Beautiful Mind is another of Hollywood's specialty, attractive people dealing with unattractive problems. Okay, that was cynical and out of line, but really I mean the film is glossy, it just shines like perfectly lighted and touched-up magazine photographs.

I definitely think that a film that more closely adhered to the real life of John Nash could be great. But I really don't know about film awards, I didn't even know it did win best picture and now I don't know why.

Alyssa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alyssa said...

for some reason it posted it twice, hence the deleted comment