Daily Dialogue — October 31, 2014

“My name is John Nash. I’m being held against my will. Someone contact the Department of Defense.”

— A Beautiful Mind (2001), screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, book by Sylvia Nasar

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Madness.

Trivia: While this film is inspired by the life of John Nash, there were elements from his life that were deliberately omitted: 1) he was married twice, both to the same woman (Alicia Nash); 2) in the past, he had several affairs with both men and women; 3) he was arrested by the police by scandal; 4) He fathered a child out-of-wedlock in his twenties; 5) he believed that through his mental illness the extra-terrestrials spoke him, giving his advanced knowledge by means of cosmic connection with them; 6) he tried to renounce to his American nationality some times, in the belief that the USA government pursued him; and 7) he made numerous anti-Semitic comments during his period of extreme mental illness, most of which equated Jews with world Communism.

Dialogue On Dialogue: The whole fantasy characters dynamic in Nash’s life was a great creative choice by the filmmakers, helping to suck us into the nature of the Protagonist’s madness.