I’m not going to spoil this excellent movie for those who don’t know, but for those who DO know…how the heck did Dr. John Nash get paid for his “work” which took priority over his career while at Wheeler Labs of MIT? Granted, this was the 1950’s, but whatever happened to “publish or perish”, for one? - Jinx
As a big fan of this movie I am posting.
Who says he did get paid?
hijack
I watched a program once (before Beautiful Mind) about Schitzophrenia (sp???) and it had Dr John Nash in it. At the time I had no idea who he was so didn’t give it a second thought.
Then I saw the movie (and loved it)
Then I saw the documentary again. “bloody hell that’s John Nash!” The doc was mainly about his son - who looks freakishly like Russel Crowe.
Lobsang, I just meant he (Dr. Nash) spends so much time with his obsession and yet…he had to make a living, right? And, to be a professor…teaching is not enough. You are continuously working on papers and publications to survive. Who the heck has time for pet projects with no pay?
Also, what was the deal with people turning in their pens to him? Was that a symbol to say “there’s no more work for us to do here because you’ve done it all?”
Oh, also, what year did this movie come out? …Thanks, Jinx
Oh I see. Sorry. Well in that case I can only guess the film focused more on his ‘other job’, but in reality he spent enough time at his paying job.
The movie came out in 2001 I believe.
I watched it quite awhile ago, but I think the pens thing was mentioned earlier in the movie. Something about “being in the club” if the other professors give you their pens. Someone who knows the movie better would have a better explanation (or the correct explanation) I’m sure.
It was a “being in the club” thing. John witnessed another person being given pens when he was younger.
[slight highjack]
I’m proud of myself because I figured out what was happening early in the movie, especially when:
Nash began searching newspapers & stuff for hidden Russian coded messages. For me, 'twas a total case of “Been there, done that!” 
(Except the insulin therapy.)
The movie glosses over the fact that Dr. Nash had more than just the Nash Equilibrium to his credit - I’ve read the book, and though I don’t know nearly enough math to understand exactly what else he did, I know it was considered important. However, embedding algebraic manifolds isn’t as easy to make interesting in a movie as having him doing all kinds of code-breaking, so there you go.
(I read the book before the movie, by the way, and I just hated it. There really isn’t a lot of correspondence between the two, and though I can normally understand, I don’t see how you can do that and still claim to be telling someone’s life story. Just MHO.)
Read the book to get the real story. When he was at MIT, he of course got paid. I believe his teaching was okay, and when you are a mathematician no one is requiring a certain number of lines of proof per week.
For a long period of time, when he was living in Princeton, he was not working and Alicia supported him through her job with NJ Transit. This was even after they were divorced.
I was kind of upset that the movie did not have them being divorced, actually. Alicia’s support for Nash even after they were divorced is far more telling than her supporting them being married. But, read the book - it is much better than the movie.
Some of this movie was filmed in the building I work in. I walked in on a scene by accident and I met Ron Howard. Russell Crowe gave the finger to a Princeton undergrad and she got a picture of it. It made the University paper. He was most unfriendly.
I liked this film. However, from what I am told, it is an inaccurate portrayal of his life.
And, there is no pen ceremony at Princeton, as far as I can tell. Sorry to disappoint.
I used to see Mr. Nash around town. He liked to go to a bagel shop downtown. (Downtown in Princeton is one street. “The Street” Nassau Street.)
Nash had auditory hallucinations, not visual. I think they changed it to make it into a compelling film.
UM.
Dr. Nash, I mean.
Most of the film A Beautiful Mind is an utter lie. There is no pen ceremony anywhere in academia. Nash didn’t work at Wheeler Labs, even if such a place exists. He taught at MIT and did a normal teaching load. He also published a number of fairly good papers while he was there. He got tenure and was probably only a year from getting a full professorship when he quit. During the first several summers that he was teaching, he spent his summers working at the RAND Corporation in California. He was doing nuclear war scenario planning there, not code-breaking. He lost his security clearance and was fired from RAND in 1954 (five years before he became schizophrenic) because he was arrested for what may have been a homosexual solicitation in a public bathroom at a beach (or it might simply have been a set-up by the police). In any case, he was never charged in that case. He didn’t become schizophrenic till he was 30. He never had any visual hallucinations. He had some auditory hallucinations, but mostly his problems were that he created vast conspiracy theories.
Everything is distorted in the film. Everything. It doesn’t mention his first son by a girlfriend he didn’t marry. It doesn’t mention the Nashs’ divorce. They were divorced from 1963 to 2000, when they remarried. It doesn’t mention his second son’s schizophrenia. He didn’t give a speech at the Nobel ceremony.
And Alicia Nash looks about as much like Jennifer Connolly as I do.
She isn’t an unattractive woman, but she’s quite short. She is not a willowy type. A Salvadoran woman I work with was quite perturbed that they didn’t even get close to what Alicia Nash really looks like.
Not that I mind looking at Jennifer Connolly.
Thanks, BobT, that’s another of the distortions. Alicia Nash was dark-haired and pretty as a young woman, but that’s about all she has in common with Jennifer Connolly.