Filmmakers Scrub Homosexual Episodes From Crowe's 'beautiful Mind'; Concern Gay Theme

[oakleyx4]

The film which received the most GOLDEN GLOBE nominations today in Hollywood hits maximum controversy after homosexual themes found in the book A BEAUTIFUL MIND -- have been deliberately left out of the movie version!

Gay scenes found in the book "A Beautiful Mind: The Life of the Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash" have been completely scrubbed, dropped, eliminated from the film, directed by Ron Howard and staring Russell Crowe -- even though actor Crowe's picture is featured on the paperback of the biography.
The UNIVERSAL/DREAMWORKS co-production, set for release next week, includes not one of author Sylvia Nasar's repeated homosexual references, including Nash's 1954 arrest for 'indecent exposure' and 'making a come-on to another man' in a public bathroom.

Nasar's entire chapter on the Nash arrest and its fallout is left off the screen.

A source close to director Ron Howard said the gay scenes were left out to build a stronger cinematic experience between characters played by Crowe and his female co-star Jennifer Connelly.

"The homosexual stuff found in the book got in the way," a well-placed source told "Besides, American audiences don't care to see Russell Crowe getting it on with a man! It would just kill us at the boxoffice."

MORE

MIND led nominations for the GOLDEN GLOBE nominations on Thursday with six mentions, including best picture, actor, actress and screenplay.

On page 169 of the biography, a winner of the National Critics Circle Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Nasar writes: "Nash was always forming intense friendships with men that had a romantic quality... He was very adolescent, always with the boys. Some were inclined to see Nash's infatuations as "experiments," or simple expressions of his immaturity, a view that he may have held himself. He played around with it because he liked to play around. He was very experimental, very try-outish... Mostly he just kissed."

Nasar continues: "Donald Newman and the rest of the MIT crowd watched Nash and Jack Bricker with amused tolerance and concluded that the two were having a romance. "They were importantly interested in each other," Newman said; they made no secret of their affection, kissing in front of other people."

On Page 345, a letter written by Nash states: "An essential and significant personal role in my personal long-awaited 'gay liberation'..."

Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman follows Nash from the late 1940s at Princeton, where he studied mathematics with some of the world's greatest minds, through his battle with schizophrenia, to 1994, when his game theory earned him the Nobel Prize.

Although the Hollywood Foreign Press Association gave Goldsman a nomination for best screenplay, his stunning omission of the full Nash found in the bio BEAUTIFUL MIND has raised early warning flags at the gay right's group GLAAD.

"It is rather alarming in this day and age that UNIVERSAL studios and DREAMWORKS would find same-sex love too offensive to be depicted in a major motion picture," a GLAAD executive said.

Repeated calls to DREAMWORKS co-founder David Geffen, who is openly gay, went unreturned. A spokesman for UNIVERSAL was said to be unavailable.

 

[Never]

A Literotica Intervention.

I've noticed a few Cut and Paste Threads started by yourself. Tell me, have you ever heard of Pasteism?

It's an illness that strikes many posters of various political backgrounds though it seems more severe the more 'political' the poster. Pasteism starts slowly, a few cut and pastes here, you tell yourself that you're just helping to 'spread' the news that others may have missed. Then you read an article that seems to eloquently state an opinion of yours ? so eloquently that you don't feel the need to comment or edit the article.

That's when Pasteism begins to gain its power over you. You begin to post more and more threads, it's so easy ? just highlight, copy and paste into another screen. Soon you start to lose control, you feel as though you have to post various articles. You're compelled by some force that seems to come from within.. yet, you can't help but feel as though it's unnatural.

You do one after the other, after the other. Five one day, seven the next. You rationalize what you're doing ? you make excuses. It's not like anyone really would read your opinion so there's no need to write it. Editing the article would be too hard, it's better that they see the entire message. Besides, if no one cares it will just sink to the bottom.

Pasteism has you in its clutches now. You fill the first page with threads. You lash out or become defensive when anyone calls you on it. You become bitter, angry. You copy and paste threads out of anger, out of sorrow. You've lost that wonderful feeling you used to get but you can't stop.

Then you hit rock bottom. You end up giving strange men blowjobs for the money and sleeping on street corners. You wake up and you have no idea what you've done for the last 24 hours.. there are pamphlets scattered over your sick and frail body.

I've seen it happen to the best of posters.

Please, don't let it happen to you.

 

[Rick DeVille]

I was just gonna hurl abuse but Never's is better

 

[Never]

Please, don't stop on my account.

 

[Rick DeVille]

Please, don't stop on my account.

Nah, its ok.

 

[Azwed]

Please, don't stop on my account.

Hey cuttie nice to see you. You always look good when you tear into losers

 

[Guest]

rick loves dick

 

[Rick DeVille]

Hey cuttie nice to see you. You always look good when you tear into losers

me or the other guy?

 

[Never]

Not that anyone cares..

 

[lavender]

 

[Never]

 

[lavender]

 

[Never]

 

[modest mouse]

I'm not even going to explain this edit.

 

[Never]

 

[Never]

 

[patient1]

(backing out of thread slowly)

 

[Never]

 

[lavender]

 

[daughter]

Does it matter that in

a interview on NPR, the author as his biographer she says that the gay experiences were just that. They were not who he was. She said when she interviewed him, he told her that while he enjoyed the encounters he did not consider himself bi or gay. He said he was just having sex. The author says the book and the movie focuses on the things that were most important to the film: his work, his wife, and his illness.

So we don't see everything about his life in a biography, is that new? The movie was about his life. It wasn't about serving him up as a poster child for a group of people.

There's no shortage of spokespeople for anybody. What does his sexual dalliances have to do with what he achieved and what he enjoyed with his wife?

So he had sex outside his marriage. WoW!

Peace,

daughter

 

[talk2024]

*waiting for daughter to edit her post*

literally, it's like a police investigation scene... "Nothing to see here, no discussion happenin' round here...please carry on with whatever you've been doing."

 

[Laurel]

LOL! I thought maybe everyone at Lit had grown so sick of long debates that they were resorting to arguing in rebus form.

 

[Never]

LOL! I thought maybe everyone at Lit had grown so sick of long debates that they were resorting to arguing in rebus form.

Funny.

 

[Oliver Clozoff]

Re: Does it matter that in

a interview on NPR, the author as his biographer she says that the gay experiences were just that. They were not who he was. She said when she interviewed him, he told her that while he enjoyed the encounters he did not consider himself bi or gay. He said he was just having sex. The author says the book and the movie focuses on the things that were most important to the film: his work, his wife, and his illness.

So we don't see everything about his life in a biography, is that new? The movie was about his life... What does his sexual dalliances have to do with what he achieved and what he enjoyed with his wife?

Your statement that every biopic leaves out some details of its subject's life is true but says nothing about why some details are included and others excluded, and it's this question that illustrates why many have objections to the sanitization of historical figures in movies. The nature of making movies today is an extremely conservative process. Studios invest tens to hundred of millions of dollars in films which will eventually range from dismal failures to wild successes. The only way studios can continue to make expensive movies is to make movies that they know the audience wants to see.

What results is a sort of risk-minimization bland idealization of characters along with the smoothing away of any ambiguities and subtleties. The vast majority of the viewing public either doesn't want or doesn't have the ability to make the distinction between having homosexual experiences and being homosexual that you do. The studios are intensely aware of this are literally betting money on it, thus they make the necessary omissions to provide as sympathetic a character as possible to the most paying customers. Such is movie-making today.

In the case of A Beautiful Mind, there's a lot of complexity about Nash which is ignored, and I disagree with your argument that these omissions are trivial. You're right that extramarital affairs are common, but they still don't arouse sympathy from most movie viewers. Also, the omissions in question weren't your run of the mill indiscretions - he had several homosexual experiences, an indecent exposure arrest which cost him an academic post (this is the film's most important omission, I think), and a divorce and a subsequent remarriage to the same woman. All these were neglected though, presumably only because these events make him a less sympathetic protagonist.

The question that I suppose should be asked is "who is hurt when history is sanitized in this way?". If I'm paying 7 or 8 of my hard-earned dollars to see a movie after a hard day of work, am I seeking historical truth or entertainment? Hollywood thinks it knows the answer to this question. They're betting folks want entertainment. If they're right and I walk away from A Beautiful Mind feeling good and even inspired to see a genius beating a terrible illness to win a Nobel, have a lifelong love, and be an all-around good guy, maybe that's ok. What harm is ultimately done?

Personally, I want much more from a movie than to make me "feel good". I like to challenge myself and think, but many people don't. In my opinion such movie-making is pandering to the most popular prejudices of the masses, enabling narrow-minded and shallowness of thought. Until the economics of movie-making changes, I don't think we'll see much of a change.

 

[Laurel]

I agree with Ollie completely. I realize that entertainment corporations gotta make money, but I fear that their reluctance to challenge the movie-going audience only aids the "dumbing down" of people in general. I like to think that people rise to meet expectations. If they're challenged, they'll become thinkers. If their intellectual laziness is catered to - if they're fed a steady stream of mindless crap - they'll be intellectually lazy.