A Beautiful Mind w. Nathan Shuherk (aka schizophrenicreads)

Hello, you. Welcome to You Are Good at Feelings Podcasts about Movies. Today, we're talking about a beautiful mind. We're talking about it with the great Nathan Shurik. I am your host, Alex Steed. I'm so happy that you're here. You are good at Feelings Podcasts about Movies is exactly what it sounds like. We are a podcast. We watch movies and we talk about what they make us consider with regard to who and how we are in the world. We're not film critics. We're people who are watching movies and talking about feelings. That's what we're doing. A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American biographical drama film about mathematician John Nash, who won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. I love this description from Wikipedia. The story begins as Nash being portrayed as a brilliant but socially awkward mathematics doctoral student at Princeton University. Yeah. Oh, it continues. After Nash's hard... This is a long intro paragraph to a wiki. After Nash's hard fought graduation, Nash accepted secretive work in cryptography at the Rand Corporation, where his competitive ambition and subsequent personal mental stress to gain the age-limited Fields Medal in mathematics contributed to his delusional thoughts about Cold War spies and his delusional role in thwarting anti-American agents. I can't believe that this is what we're doing in this led to his colleagues and wife eventually realizing he was severely mentally ill and he was subsequently diagnosed as schizophrenic. Yes, that is what happens. That is what we're going to be discussing. Nathan, we had Nathan talking about her recently was a doctor's sleep. Nathan is just a delight. So happy to have Nathan here. Nathan, Nathan Scherk can introduce himself more at the beginning of this episode, but he is a nonfiction obsessive. This talks a lot about the nonfiction books. Social media is just a real delight across the board. Love spending time with Nathan. And in his Instagram, he has labeled himself, he's quoting somebody else, which is my favorite. I assume this was a random criticism. A feminine commie. Love that. Nathan, always happy to have you here. We talk about mental health, mental illness, a handful of other things in this episode. And Nathan comes to us credentialed in that arena. We are going to discuss further, but I cannot wait to share this conversation with you and y'all. How are you doing? What's going on in your world? How are you feeling? I want to know. I want to know what's going on with you. I know that the world is bonkers, but remember the way that we save off that dread is by showing up, by participating, by getting involved, by way of action, by way of community. You know, either we look outside and we go, that's not good. And we freak out inside or we figure out how we were able to show up. And at the very least, we work towards a nicer thing together. That's at least how I'm trying to face it. And hopefully you will join me in doing the same. However you do it, however you engage, however you push back, whatever it is, don't forget that you, my friend, are good. I'm so happy you're here. I'm so happy you're with us. You are good at feelings, podcasts, about movies as made possible with and by your support. Thanks to everyone who supports us on Patreon and Apple Podcast subscriptions. We could not do it without you. Thanks to everyone who supports the show that way. Thanks to everyone who has taken some time off and has come back to support that way. Thanks to everyone who has just been with us supporting, getting those bonus episodes, getting those extended cuts along the way. We are glad that you're here. We could not do it without you again. It's true and we appreciate you. So be sure to check out our bonus content over there. Please join me in supporting Palestine Children's Relief Fund. Link in the show notes. Great way to support our friends in Gaza and in Palestine overall. There's that, of course, and then there's just any number of campaigns that need your help and attention. All of our struggles are interlinked. And I'm so glad that you all are folks who care about that sort of thing. All right, let's just get into it. This is a big talker. Love this one. Love this conversation with Nathan. Love this subject. Love the way where you went about it. So let's dive in. Hello, Nathan. Hello, Alex Steed. How's it going? It's going really well. This has been a, it's finally warm here in Indiana and I couldn't be happier. You have a grand shirt on. Yeah, I've got my Fabio shirt. I got this for like a little bit of a sponsorship a while back and now it's just been like my exercise shirt for some reason. It's the Fabio Reed shirt that you would see up at your local school library. Yeah, I think it's kind of cute and also I think helping promote, you know, a message I slightly agree with is like, you know, read books or something. I slightly agree. You're on the, all that. Apparently my dryer's stopping at the same moment. Oh, we went through the three beeps. Okay. So Nathan, I have an embarrassing thing to admit to you. Until this afternoon, I had no idea what a beautiful mind was about. Oh, you went in like cold. No idea. I had no idea. So now you can see why I might have recommended this movie. I mean, if you know anything about my username, you know, spoiler alert. What's your username? Schizophrenic reads. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I can see it. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I had no idea. I knew like memes from the movie and apparently I just never substantiated in my mind what the memes were about. I don't even think I've seen a beautiful mind memes. I feel like it's a movie that only gets brought up during Oscar season, because everyone likes to say it's one of the worst Oscar movies to ever win. That's the only time I see discussions on this movie anymore. It's very a Ron Howard movie. Yeah. Yeah. Like Ron Howard's our best bad director. Yeah, I would say that. I think he's, I think a lot of people talk about Ridley Scott in that same way, but I think Ron Howard is really the Ridley Scott of movies, if that makes sense. It's really kind of amazing because Ron Howard, I think in this century has made, I would say, two good movies. He's no auteur. No. No. And I think that was like one of the things I was watching this movie this time and like really kind of paying attention to like the filmmaking of it and kind of like looking into, you know, how did I feel about the visuals and the lighting and the, you know, the cinematography? And it was like, man, it's Ron Howard. He makes hyper palatable stuff. Hyper palatable. I can't, like if someone came along, I was like, Alex, Steve, you make things that are hyper palatable. I blow my fucking brains out. Sorry, Ron, stay with us. We love you. I'm looking at a filmography now. Of course, Splash. We've done Splash. We love Splash. Cocoon. A real shock. We haven't done Cocoon on this show. That's kind of amazing. But then we get into like Apollo 13 and Beyond Territory. That's where things are constructed to win Oscars. Yeah. No, I think he really does, I think, chase the Oscar at this point about every other movie. And it's not really paying off. I mean, he's kind of been famous for in like the last couple of years of directing Hillbilly Elegy, which is just, you know, that's a movie for a different movie podcast group. Yeah, that's the Jimmy Fallon rubbing Trump's hair of movies. He did Solo, a Star Wars story. I don't know. He's just, he's just doing things at this point. Did he really? Yeah. Wow. He really, he really truly is. And that had Paul Bettany's in the movie we just watched, right? Yes. Yes. They must be friends. Okay. So I guess now that I know or I'm assuming the reason you picked this movie, unless you just like Jennifer Connolly movies, can you tell me about your relationship with, I mean, obviously you have Schizophrenia. Yeah. But you are Schizophrenia. I don't, I don't even know the phraseology. But like, what has been like your relationship with it sort of overall, and then as a person now who's like, I am being visible for this experience. Yeah. The very first time that I watched this movie was like a couple years after my diagnosis. So I'd never seen this movie prior to being diagnosed. So like for me, it was just like one of those things that early in my diagnosis story, a lot of people had told me to watch this, they had just like recommended that I check it out, which I think is a interesting phenomenon as like a disabled person is for people to tell you to like consume media about your illness. But they're like 100% of my knowledge. Yes. Comes from this movie. So you should watch it. So I ended up watching it and I've watched it probably 10 times in the year since it's kind of one of those things that like it becomes a comfort watch, like kind of regardless of what I think of it or how I'm doing at the moment. Like there is just so much points of reflection for me of just like seeing my own story or of, you know, I think half the time when I'm watching a movie like this, I'm just thinking about situations my own life. And so it becomes, I don't know, kind of just a weird emotional experience. And so I thought this would be a good podcast to talk about that. And I think it's also, this is just a little fun fact, it's also become a date movie for me for some reason. Like whenever I've dated someone and they're like, I don't know anything about schizophrenia, I'm like, I guess we should just watch a beautiful mind together and then like, I'll walk you through like the grander lore of schizophrenia and I'll like try to explain it. But I do, you know, I'm very fortunate to date mostly movie people. So this is a great shared language for us. Yeah, you're like, you may not know schizophrenia, but do you know the filmography of Josh Lucas? Yeah. How much Russell Crow have you consumed in your life? We're going to get the full range of Russell Crow in one movie. Oh my God. Yeah, well, I'm stoked to talk about it again as a person who fully went into this, not having any idea what we're getting into. And then, you know, again, the way that it's presented is so fascinating because it takes you a while to realize along with him what's happening, which I really appreciate. I think it's like an extremely, it's a clever movie. Yeah. And I'm shocked that for a person who's lived 20 years alongside this movie existing in the world that it wasn't spoiled for me in some way. But I guess people are just like taking to microblogging sites to hash out what happened. Well, no, and I think, I think me and you have probably had different conversations about this movie over the year. Like you've probably had friends be like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's worth checking out. And then for me, people found out my diagnosis. And the first question is like, have you seen a beautiful mind? What did you think about that? Like, do you think that's true? And I'm like, okay, well, are there other movies that you feel like your experiences at least halfway decently represented in? No, I honestly, I don't think the media that I've consumed about schizophrenia has often been very accurate to like how my life has turned out. I do think there's parts of this one and we'll get into that. We'll get into some of the narrative plots that I resonate with a lot. But as far as like schizophrenia stories, it's a wide world of mostly like true crime stuff where schizophrenia is just kind of thrown in as like a character development within a serial killer. Like that's a pretty common phenomenon. And then we have, you know, occasionally, there'll be like a hospital show like the pit for anyone watching that. They just had a schizophrenic character. But that, you know, that's a pretty minor plotline and you're mostly there for like the diagnosis and not really like the person's story. So there is, I guess, Lars and the real girl, which is a movie heavily based off of delusional ideology. And I don't think it's like as strictly a schizophrenia story, but it's definitely playing in the world of like psychotic experiences. And I hated that movie. And I honestly can't even remember why, but I that was the other movie that everyone was like, you have to watch this. And I hated it when I watched it and I have never gone back to it. So maybe something worth revisiting at some point. I love those movies where you're like, it was so imprinted by the hatred that like the actual sort of sticking point does not remain with you, but the hate does. Yeah, I'm 15 years on. And I'm like, I don't remember other than Ryan Gosling, anything, you know, that's so funny. I just had a conversation with a friend who's like in like kink stuff and secretary came up and she just immediately was like, I fucking hate that movie. And I was like, I was like, oh, I'm curious as to why. And she's like, can't remember. Doesn't matter. I hate it. It's just like, maybe it's revealing too much, but I've had many conversations about secretary recently. And so I mean, it's just I love secretary. I'm not going to defend it to someone who hates it from their community background standpoint, but I love secretary. That's so funny. So can you also I'm really sorry. I feel badly about being like, hey, come on here and answer all of the broadest questions that someone might have about this. But what is schizophrenia? Yeah, so schizophrenia is kind of known as like a major mental illness. So there's like several mental illnesses that most people are familiar with, bipolar, depression, OCD, anxiety, like these are all just like things that people would call invisible illnesses. And largely they are, you know, in these kind of concentric circles of like, are they disabilities, mental illnesses, you know, it's like, how do people want to describe them is a little complicated. But schizophrenia is a psychotic illness. So a lot of these symptoms that someone experiences are things like hallucinations and delusions. And just to like make it as simple as possible, hallucinations are things like our sensory things that you experience that are not real. So you can hear or taste or touch or smell things that aren't real. And then delusions are false beliefs. So those are things that you might believe, like someone has put microphones in your house, or you might believe that someone can read your mind, or you might believe that you are Jesus, like these are all kind of well trot out delusions. And so those are like the hallmark symptoms of schizophrenia. But those are only the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia actually contains two other categories of symptoms known as the negative symptoms, which are things like depression, abolition, which is like a struggle taking care of yourself, anxiety, there's just a lot of like lifestyle things that make schizophrenia complicated, or like, you know, it complicates your lifestyle. And then there's cognitive things that you can see like decreased in your attention span, you can have confused speech. Confused speech, that's a way to mess that one up. And then there's a thing kind of famously called word salad, which is just like not being able to use the correct word in the correct way. And with regard to your, this is the last background question, but with regard to your diagnosis, like, what was the process of diagnosis like for you? Like, was there a point, was there like some divine stretch of like lack of clarity about something that was happening? And then there was diagnosis, but like, what did that arc look like? Yeah, I was uniquely lucky that I had attention given to me like almost immediately. I think that is oftentimes like in schizophrenia care, that is oftentimes one of like the deciding factors between like how someone's life turns out sometimes it's like, how far into the illness do they get before like they have some type of intervention or some type of help given to them. And so for me, within like the first six months of my illness, I already had scheduled like doctor's appointments, I had people looking out for me. And I think that's because I had what's called prodromal symptoms, which means I had like a personality change when I was like 14 or 15. So at that point, I had like pretty severe depression as a high school student, which was so far beyond how I grew up as a kid, like I grew up extremely extroverted and like very bubbly and like always wanted to be the life of the party. And then I just became this like very bookish, like isolated kid out of nowhere when I was about 14 or 15. And so I think my family just was like had a steady eye on the fact that I had already undergone such like a drastic change that they had seen. And so when I started exhibiting psychotic symptoms, I had both like a really good support system in my college environment. I had just really, I was in my freshman year of college when my symptoms really started becoming apparent. And so I had friends, I had professors, I had just people in that like small knit community of all small liberal arts college kind of looking out for me. And so it led to being able to get like a medical intervention pretty quickly. And then the diagnosis followed like shortly after. So I think if I like technically remember, right, I haven't gone through like my medical chart, but I think I got my official schizophrenia diagnosis when I was in a mental hospital. So that's really like that's the, you know, that's, that's the gold standard of, you know, that's like no one says like I got my degree at 711. The background has to match this attrition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder if you had any hesitancy around being public about your diagnosis, not only being public about your diagnosis, but being like, I have this, this is what this looks like. Yeah. I think in college, I kind of was slightly open. I wasn't like super open about it, but I was a little bit because it just, I went to a college of like 2000 students and it kind of just like leaked out into the public that I had spent some time in a mental hospital. And so it was just kind of one of those things that like I had to answer some questions and like it became a, I had to file as a student with disabilities. So I had to like talk to my professors sometimes. And I didn't always have to disclose, but I had to like ask for help. And so to make, you know, my education more accessible, it was something that I like had to kind of reckon with in some capacity. But then I tried to make it in the real world. I just jumped job to job after graduation. And I found, you know, living a standard, you know, nine to five life was just kind of impossible for me at that point. And so I kind of retreated from the world. I spent almost three years in a near like total agoraphobic isolation. And then it wasn't until a little while after that that I got into like public speaking. And I think at that point, it was just like, I thought the isolation would kill me. I thought it would like, I thought it would truly like destroy any part of me. And so I just like, I kind of got to a point where I was like, fuck it, I'll talk about this, I'll be honest about this illness. And so before the pandemic, I had been working in like the nonprofit space and doing public speaking to talk about my illness. And then the pandemic hit and advocacy totally changed. And everything just kind of melted away, you know, at once. And I found myself randomly talking about books online. And then somehow made a made a space doing that, which was honestly, it's been really helpful for me because I am writing a book about my life with schizophrenia, which I will hope to sell to a publisher sometime this summer. But having a part of my life that isn't revolving around my symptoms has been really helpful to me. Like I, I now really love being in my master's program and getting to focus on writing and reading and talking about books. And so I'm always okay talking about schizophrenia, but I also like to tell people like, I'm more than just schizophrenia. And I think like, there's oftentimes this thing that happens in disabled lives where the person becomes the totality of the illness, like where they're just like, you are not known beyond the scope of your illness. And for something like schizophrenia, that can be like a really toxic thing, because I think a lot of people have these preconceived notions of what this illness is. And so it like creates this social dearth that you are just inherently experiencing. If all of my kind of social interactions, all of my like livelihood focuses solely on my illness, it just, you know, it's not a fun place to live online or sometimes in person. And so I get to now put it in my username, but mostly talk about, you know, what, what books I'm reading or what, you know, what movies I'm consuming. So I love talking about it, but I also love, you know, talking about a movie too. So I know I'm so glad that we're doing this, but I also find it kind of strange because our entire, I know this about you, but our whole relationship to this point has been talking about movies. And so now being like, Hey, talk about your thing. But it feels, I'm glad it's in the context of this movie. It makes more sense. And it's in a lot of what you said already sort of speaks to what I saw in this movie, where obviously Nash is represented in this movie, did not have the luxury of being seen early about sort of what he had going on. And people weren't able to recognize what was happening with him because of sort of his disposition in my situation. So we'll talk about all that, which I'm very excited about. Okay. What's a beautiful mind? A beautiful mind is the story of Professor John Nash and kind of his quest to getting a Nobel Prize. And during that time in his life, he also experiences mass amounts of hospitalizations and homelessness and complications that are brought up by his illness, which is schizophrenia that we find out in the, in the narrative of the movie, we find out like about halfway through the movie. And then it basically, you know, you spend the whole first half of this movie thinking like, Oh, this is a, you know, a beautiful math story that no one cares about. And then you find out, oops, he's not actually a secret government agent. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's very, he's very not. Well, he is actually kind of, and that is like the weird phenomenon of this movie is like, his life actually was during like the height of the scientific expansion post World War II. And so like he was kind of really close to the world that he thought he was in, which I think is, you know, and I think in the movie, they played up really well to make it very believable. So I think for a lot of people, like they don't know the big twist, like it is a twist. But yeah, actually in his life, he thought he was like the president of Antarctica, you know, his delusions were a little bit more than like big brother, which I think is very fun. Yeah, for sure. And I like the part where we start to kind of reveal what is happening and what he's facing. And his colleagues are like, I don't like, I don't know, like technically he is a brilliant mathematician who could be being contacted by by government agencies. So like, we don't know if he is or isn't like, if he was, we couldn't know. It's an interesting time because the United States at this moment is in the middle of its own form of paranoid, in a lot of ways, delusion. And so if you are a person who's potentially tapable by these institutions who are themselves going through a large paranoid form of at least institutional psychosis, I bet that that didn't make it easy. Yeah, I mean, we also have like the biggest name drop of the movie with Oppenheimer. And if you make any movie about 1950s, 60s, Intelligencia, you have to mention Oppenheimer. I think it's contractually obligated. But like, this is the world of basically demonizing intellectuals, of trying to socially demolish people's careers. And we did a lot of it through, I mean, it wasn't just, you know, it wasn't just the sciences, we also have like the entire government disposable intelligence state against the Black Panther Party, you know, things like Cointel Pro were specifically geared towards incarcerating Black people who were also diagnosed with schizophrenia at like absurdly high rates as just a form to like incarcerate them and get them off the streets. Like schizophrenia has been used as a weapon against people. And, you know, that's not to say it also isn't a harmful thing in and of itself sometimes. But I think that's just like the American psychology of this era is so, I think, fascinating in a darkly fascinating way. But, you know, John Nash's story kind of stands out as, you know, one of those things like where it's not the government's fault. It's like, we can actually chalk this up to like actual psychotic illness and not just like people in the government dreaming up crazy conspiracies to do nefarious evil. Yeah. And he, so a little bit about the arc of his life. He has a group of friends. Where are they going to school? They're going to Princeton. It's a Princeton. He has a group of friends slash adversaries. Like he's a hard guy to be friends with. Later in the movie, he finds out he might be Josh Lucas's friend and he gets like vaguely emotional. He has his group of friends. He believes himself to be their collective intellectual superior has a series of realizations that that may not be true or he's potentially just like in an isolated fashion, the intellectual superior, but has no idea how to go about applying it be a person who's pleasant to be around in any former fashion. And that leads to a little bit of an undoing, like stress spiraling. And fortunately, he has the friendship, the close friendship of his like extremely charismatic kind of gay roommate, Charles. Yes. Charles is a D.H. Lawrence scholar. You know, he's doing his PhD in English, who is, you know, obviously, when you're a PhD student, you get, you know, you get roomed up together like normal, you know, so you got a mathematician and a D.H. Lawrence scholar living together and just having a great time drinking, drinking the beers with the boys and stuff. Like that's really what we're supposed to believe for the first half of this movie. And when the truth comes out eventually, the choice of him being a D.H. Lawrence scholar is very funny to me. Like when the truth of the matter comes out about who and what he is, the fact that he is focused on D.H. Lawrence, I was really having a lot of fun with because I don't know, we'll get there. We also have, I was so delighted to see 20 years late to the game that we have Dacian Confused, Adam Goldberg and Anthony Rapp who play friends in that movie as friends in this movie. And I tried to see if there was casting rationale for it and there isn't. It just worked out. That's amazing. It just seems like the casting director was just watching movies and been like, we'll take them, you know, bring them. Woodward and Bernstein from that movie worked just fine over here. So yeah, he's got a number of friends. We're really setting the stage for how brilliant he is, but ill-equipped he is. Like he's brilliant, but ill-equipped, including his pickup line several times in this movie in order to have sex is just straight to, I don't know the words that one has to say in order for the sex to happen. So can we just do this expert? Yeah, he's really trying to give us a Mark Zuckerberg way of finding success in this. Because we find out, you know, like in the movie, in the narrative, that basically his Nobel Prize winning mathematical breakthrough happens because he's trying to get laid. Like that's it. And you're like, oh, this is how we got Facebook. Like, this is not a great experience. But he does have this moment where he's meeting Paul Bettany's character, Charles, where he says, I, like my, you know, kindergarten teacher told me I had two helpings of brains and not enough, and no helping of heart or something like that. And that's kind of like just this lingering character trait that we get. Like we don't really see a lot of personal development within John Nash during this movie. Like he doesn't undergo a lot of, I don't think a lot of drastic character development other than just dealing with his schizophrenia. You know, like there isn't, there isn't so much a character arc there as there is just a, he is just thrust along with the plot of the movie. Which I like, I kind of love. Like I love that that is what we end up doing where it's like his arc isn't in a specific sort of development where you're like, he's 20% better. His arc is like, he learns how to manage. He learned to love people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like he learns how to manage. And then you see the fruits of that management, which I feel like is really important. And it would be, I think it would like probably be a great deal cheaper if it was like, and now he hugs. Like, you know, it actually, he goes out every weekend with the guys again, and they're having a great time and they're all now 85 years old. Yeah. Although we do, I was shocked to learn that the couple did not spend decades married. That was a really interesting. Yeah, there's two real life things. If we want to try to detach from the movie for just a second, there's two real life things that I think are fascinating about this. One is not fascinating for people, but I still wanted to say it. But the, yes, him and Jennifer Connelly's character, Alicia is his wife, and they were divorced for like decades. And actually, John Nash lived in her like guest room for a while, just paying rent. Like, she was still like a caretaker for him, but their marriage had dissolved for quite a long time. And then they remarried later in life once he stabilized and stuff. But yeah, their relationship is not quite what the movie makes out to be. And then also a thing that we don't get because this movie was made in 2001. This is just a fun fact for everyone, just because of my personal connection. Him and his wife died while giving a lecture to some type of Nobel Peace Prize committee. So they were over in Europe, and he was over there. And him and his wife died tragically in a car crash. I think they were both in their early 90s or late 80s. And they died on the day that I graduated college. So it was this weird phenomenon of where I was like literally moving out of my dorm, reading Twitter about his death. And you're like, did I do this? Yeah, right. I am absolutely sure that I thought that I had somehow constructed this because six months prior to that, I had gotten part of his math equation tattooed on it. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, you're showing me the tattoo right now. I have his, I have part of his dissertation that I found online. That was my first tattoo that I got. And so I was like, oh, I'm like literally wearing skits of frontier on my sleeve now. And then I killed John Nash. It was terrifying. That's just the consequences of my own action. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. So we have like a couple, I mean, obviously it's, you know, it's Hollywood. It's also, it would be hard, this movie's already 215 with their marriage together. Yeah. It would be hard to slip it, slip that in. It would be a real iron claw couldn't go as far as to kill all the brothers because it would be too much plot. So yeah, he's in college. He eventually like gets it together and like finds some focus with regard to like one of his theories. He has like many theories that are that exist in his name or not theories. What would those be called? Laws? I don't know. It's, you were going to see how much of a philosophy major I was coming right up. It's, it's mathematics. It's a flimsy line between law and theorem and hypothesis. And you know, it's, yeah, but he was got a lot of things with his name on it. Yeah. And he finds the path in order to do that. And as part of finding the path and finding the success that comes with that, he gets an appointment at MIT. He brings along again hilariously Anthony Rapp and Adam Goldberg. They're just along, they're always along for the ride. They're always along for the ride. And for no real reason, you're just like, these guys are fun every time we visit with them, but they're not, you know, they're just around. They had to incorporate the real life people. That's definitely like the filmmaker where he's like, okay, we need characters to be in the movie longer. You know, it's like, we need to have more recognizable faces in the background of these shots. Like, let's get these guys. Absolutely. And he's a bad boy. Like, he is not cut out for the professor life. He finds it a nuisance. He hates the students. He thinks that he's wasting the students time and worse, the students are wasting his time. We do have a meet cute with Jennifer Connelly who comes into the room and illustrating what he brings to the table, which is cranky smart man and what she brings to the table, which is person who can, who has people skills, we sort of get to know them together. But he is like really frustrated with the life of being an academic, understandably, and getting extremely bored. And then he gets recruited by Ed Harris, I think, in order to basically fight the fight the Russians. He becomes like a cryptographer. So he's he's trying to break Soviet codes and because the Soviets are putting codes in like the headlines of the newspaper and stuff. People magazine and time. Yeah. You know, they use modern publication methods. Totally. That guy also says a really great thing where he's like, he says something about like, McCarthy's a fool, but that doesn't make him wrong, which is just like, again, an articulation of where America is at this moment. Yeah. For being a like made up, you know, hallucination, the guy's politics are pretty spot on for the era, you know, like, he's got his finger on the pulse. Like he knows what's up. And he's getting real obsessed and scared. The kinds of engagement he has to go through with Ed Harris goes from just like when he first starts out, they implant a diode, which communicates, I don't know, it's a thing. And then he it starts there. And then increasingly, things are getting more erratic. We're like, at some point, he's in a car where he has is given a gun and they're shooting back and forth with another car and things like it's above his pay grade as professor turns cryptographer. Yeah, he's just he's certainly like his life devolves. It becomes a matter of chaos where he is incapable of doing even like the normal parts of himself. And like, so we have our early on, he's like, he's, you know, he's doing his job. He's kind of, you know, working as professor, mathematician, cryptographer, all that type of stuff. And then over time, you can see just the like psychotica obsession with his own mind. You know, that's how we understand the movie as it progresses on. And, you know, that's a that's a pretty like true to life situation for a lot of people with schizophrenia is like, it's, you know, like when people talk about psychotic breaks, it's not like a flipped switch. It's not like just hears normal and hears psychotica. For a lot of people, it is just like this gradual descent into something. And I think the movie does like a pretty good job at showing that it's like, yeah, he's, you know, he's just progressively becoming incapable of living. Because like in the set design or the art design of the movie, that happens by way of, you know, we start with when he's beginning this series of delusions, we start with the like, you know, Charlie red yarn on a board kind of connecting the dots situation in his office. And then over the course of the movie, there are just new layers and new layers and like almost like wheat pasted posters up in like, in Manhattan, there's just like layers and layers and layers of like paper that represents the series of delusions that he's having. And we don't necessarily notice it as first time viewers until someone draws attention to it where they're like, there's a problem and then suddenly now that there's a problem, you zoom out and look at all of that. And you're like, oh, yeah, we probably should have noticed the problem this whole time. That's like, I think this is one of my favorite parts about this movie is like, and the way that I think about it in my own life is like, people talk about invisible illnesses, and I don't think there truly is any real thing as invisible. It's just about the degree to which you like know a person. Like if you know a person, you can always see their illness. Like you can see it manifested in so many intimate ways in their life. And so for me, that that's a part of this movie that I kind of really do love is you start seeing the little parts of him that are like chipping off. And like, I think of that for myself, like where it's like, you know, visually, like if I'm just at a coffee shop, you know, a stranger won't know that I have schizophrenia, but my partner or someone with me that has seen how my eyes dart, you know, or that like my attention gets flustered or, you know, just like these little things like these are schizophrenic parts of me that a stranger would have no idea about. But like to everyone else, like these are very visual signs of schizophrenia, you know, being an active part of my life. I really love that. I mean, I, you know, it's we can joke and I will always joke about some things that Ron Howard does. But I do think like with regard to like the visual representation of this journey, it's fascinating. And it's like, it's pretty well done, specifically with how the movie is designed. Yeah. So who we meet earlier, Jennifer Connelly is a student. All right. And they marry. His life is obviously changing. She I can't remember if it's around this time that she gets pregnant, but soon she's going to get pregnant. His hot kind of gay roommate, the D.H. Lawrence expert arrives to visit him. And he brings with him a little girl who is his sister's daughter. And his sister is died in a car accident. And so he now is the guardian of this girl. And Paul Bettany's Charles and the little girl come to see Nash deliver a speech at Harvard. And everybody watches him, especially his former roommate, watches him kind of unravel a little bit, thinking that there are agents at the speech who are coming after him. He leaves the speech. He confronts the agents. He punches one of them. And then he gets taken down and drugged by who we eventually realize weren't agents at all. They were, I think, healthcare professionals. Is this what we're led to believe? Yeah, they worked for like the local sanitarium. And I think what's fascinating about this is like, this is like true to life. You know, the symptoms are not, you know, the symptoms are like a manifestation of cinema because it's very easy to portray a hallucination, you know, in some sense. Like they just created a person, you know. But him giving a lecture and then being immediately hospitalized, like being kind of constrained at the event, is actually what happened to him in real life. And what led to like the first medical intervention in his life was he was giving a lecture, guest lecture, I think at MIT maybe. And basically what happened was he just made no sense to like the entire public. Like it was a room full of like other famous mathematicians and, you know, scholars of all different sorts. And he just like went off on this rant that like everyone in the audience knew like, oh, something's wrong. Like it became very apparent that even he did not have any like attachments to reality. Like he was inventing his own math in front of them. And like it became entirely conspiratorial. And so it was like then that they decided like, oh, he needs help. Yeah. And when he awakens, he is under the care of Christopher Plummer, who plays Dr. Rizan, Christopher Plummer, who his entire time he was alive looked exactly the same and was the same age the whole time. That's when I was startled, because I was like, how old was he in this movie? And why did he film this last year? Or like, you know, like, I was like, you look like that in the sound of music. Like, how's that possible? He was whenever he was doing, I should learn it because I was like, I age, I want to age like Christopher Plummer did. Yeah, he's under his care. He is the one to reveal to everybody. Oh, and while this is happening, Nash sees his roommate in the room with him and thinks that this is all done on the part of his roommate who is a Russian spy. You know, and I have, I have people in my life who have sort of like untreated schizophrenia. And I will know that things are in a way when, you know, me and a handful of like friends start getting texts that were like secret Nazis and stuff. So like, I know that this, at least in my personal experience, that this like, this specific delusion can be common where it's like, they're like, you know, and have some sort of secret, like all of the, and especially it can be damaging because it's like all of the people who could potentially be helpful to you are the ones who are assigned, you know, for an agency in one way or another. They're broadly called delusions of persecution is basically like you are being hunted in some capacity. And they're like extremely common. It's one of like the most common forms of delusions. And they obviously like there's nuances, you know, like, is someone a spy or is someone a cop or are they doing this because they're trying to harm me? But these are like hallmark symptoms of schizophrenia. Yeah. And he's going through that with his roommate, D.H. Lawrence, specialist extraordinaire Charles. And it turns out, as we are about to learn that Charles doesn't, does not exist. Yeah. The little girl does not exist, which we he'll start to learn because he realizes that the older he gets, she does not age. And he is introduced to this new reality. Everyone in his life is introduced to this new reality in which he has it is known that he has schizophrenia. I don't know, like, by the time he's diagnosed, and I don't expect you to have the history on this, but like, what do we know about schizophrenia in the fifties? It seems like a rough time to be getting the diagnosis. We know a lot about schizophrenia in the fifties. However, rough time is 100% accurate. Yeah. I mean, it's largely an era of just institutionalization of just like locking people away. And, you know, it's not quite the asylum era that we had in like the late 1800s, but largely schizophrenia, I'm not saying there hasn't been new research, but like, we've known the basics of schizophrenia for, you know, since the early 1900s. And so, yeah, it's not that surprising from like the medical standpoint of the show. And then also we have like, their treatments. And actually during the 1950s is when we see the introduction of thorazine, which is the first antipsychotic medication ever used. And so, you know, in this hospitalization, he's made to undergo insulin shock therapy, which it was a very, very common. That was, you know, the era of lobotomies was slightly lessening at this point. Because I mean, really, I think when this takes place, his hospitalization is in like the early 70s or late 60s. So, lobotomies are a little bit on the out. But yeah, it's just kind of like you are watching him suffer under medical treatment, which is also like a hard thing. It's like realizing a person needs help, but also realizing the help that sometimes its own harm is like one of these very big parts of schizophrenic stories, I think. Well, and he goes through this whole, you know, there's this back and forth about they realize what he needs for treatment. He's going through the treatment. The treatment is horrifying in the ways that the treatment is horrifying. It also leads to, you know, his frustration with side effects, including, and this is like so fucking real, like erectile disfunction. Like I think like a lot of times, like people forget that in any situation that requires treatment and intervention, it is a reality in which the treatment and intervention itself is very difficult to deal with the side effects of and to like sort of take on head on. And a lot of times people are like, well, why won't they just like do the thing that they need to do? And it's like, well, because it fucking sucks. It's like, if you're a, if you're a or can fucking suck, it's like, if you're, you know, struggling with alcohol overuse or whatever, and people are like, why don't you just stop? It's like, well, drinking rule. Whatever that, whatever that this I've learned how to be social or whatever, it's like that process is not inherently as easy as it looks from the outside. And he is facing that struggle and it's affecting his personal life. And then the lack of treatment is affecting his personal life. And so he's really the center of the movie is him having a series of spirals that are either from over treatment or lack of treatment. Yeah, it's at this part in the movie that basically it's, I think it's like the, you know, from about 55 to 75% that mark in the movie is really just the struggle of therapies of different medications of different, you know, these types of things. And that's really like the story as it changes is like he's struggling to take his medication, even when he's on his medication, he's struggling. And this is the part of the movie that I think still hits me so hard, because it's the part of my journey that I think, you know, my diagnosis story that happened almost 15 years ago, like I can relive it in some sense, but the act of taking medication of thinking of going off medication of those types of things, those are the parts of my life that I will like probably forever have to reckon with in some capacity. And that's the part of the movie that like hits the hardest for me. We actually have this moment where he's holding his child, because he and his wife had had a child by this point, he's holding his child and he is just blank faced, unresponsive to this child that's just screaming in his arms. He's not moving in a muscle, he's just sitting there and his wife has to take the child from him to like care for the child. And like that's like the actual visual that like, I think probably, you know, said, I'm maybe we watch this 10 times, probably eight of those times have just gotten me to like hard cry, you know, at that moment where it's just like, I can see a person stripped of their normalcy and see so many times in my life where that's happened. And I think sometimes this happened because of the illness and sometimes it happened because of the medication. And that's a really hard thing to live with is realizing like, sometimes medication makes you a hollow person. And that is devastating to to reckon with. Right. And I imagine from anything I've been through on the mental health front that, you know, it's not simply a matter of like, you get a diagnosis and there's some fixed treatment and it's that forever life was one way and then you have the treatment and then life is different. I imagine that there's like, you know, continuous ups and downs and check ins on how stuff is working and what is working and and then just like the confidence in the plan and, you know, sort of there's a lot that's going on in diagnosis. Whereas if people have not struggled with anything and I'm so happy for them if that's the case. But like, there can be assumptions where it's like, well, I just assumed that it's like, you know, if you find out your car is running kind of funny and you get that thing fixed and your car is not running funny anymore. It's like, that's got some other components, unfortunately. I think I think a lot of people think medication is a cure. Like a lot of people think you like you take the pill. Okay, like that's it. Like, you did it and it's like, that's not how almost any, you know, like even chemo drugs have like some of the most profound worst, you know, side effects. Like it's one of those things that like you have to live with the choice of whether you're accepting help or not. And a lot of things just don't have an easy solution, especially in the medical field. And I think watching this movie is, you know, I think a lot of schizophrenia stories specifically want to revolve around like the spectacle of schizophrenia, like the most startling examples of how it's impacted. And this is one of those movies that I think Ron Howard commits to showing like the tiny small moments that he is just like, he's struggling to, you know, hold a normal conversation on his porch with an old friend. And you're like, he's not the most social person from the start, but he's struggling to like kind of form a coherent thought. And I, you know, that's something that I've dealt with so many times. And I think almost anyone that's taken an anti-depressant at some point did not get on the right one at the start. You know, like we've all gone on medication that has like really disrupted our life in pretty negative ways. And like that's, you know, Ron Howard does a great job at like elucidating that part of most people's journey. The thing that when I am, you know, friendly with someone or someone in family or whatever who is realizing in whatever area of their life, maybe treatment is a good idea, however that looks or getting it sort of figured out or looking into it or whatever. Like the thing that I always try to like underscore and remind, I think it's important to do here is that like, there's a very strong chance that like your first experiences with that will not be not even not right. It's a diagnosis process. So there is like a lot of like, does this work? Does this not work, whatever, whatever, but like to be prepared for like that therapist did not be correct for you or that dose did not be correct or like that approach did not be correct. And there is going to be some back and forth and like, don't be discouraged by that upfront and use it as an opportunity to check out of the process because it can be extraordinarily discouraging. Yeah, I think for people with schizophrenia, like the average and like maybe someone will have the exact statistic in the in comments or something. But like the, I think it takes almost six years for people to find the right dosage of medications to like lead to a point of stability typically. And this is combinations of drugs at different doses and stuff. And so this is like a very standard thing within mental healthcare of like, it takes a lot of different combination, it takes going off things, going on things like trying things again for a second time. Like this is like a part of finding that medication cocktail that like is a gruesome, horrible experience for a lot of people. And you know, we see that kind of happening right there where it's just like, it's not a one stop, you know, solution. You don't just like get a pill and like, okay, like that's, well, you did it. It's like, no, it's, it's actually really complicated. And it takes a lot of time. And I think that's like a big thing that I try to tell people whenever I've done like public speaking is like, there's a lot of healthcare need that a lot of people have with, you know, depression or bipolar or schizophrenia, like people need access to healthcare, that is 100% essential. However, people also just need time. They need the ability to take a step back from some of life in order to like give themselves the like interpersonal resources to deal with these parts of life. And that's not a thing that our system of how we conceptualize disability is ever acknowledging is like the fact that time is just as an important factor for how we process and deal with our illnesses. And yet, you know, like it's just not in a therapeutic sense, time is never taken seriously. And, you know, not to, not to be a bummer, but I would say it's quite possible that capitalism in the state that we have a find ourselves in, as the thing that dictates the rules of the culture and society isn't a huge fan of us taking time. No, I mean, it strips us of our ability to contribute to the system. And if we don't contribute to the system, we are what disability scholars would call like we are the surplus. We are like what is unnecessarily added on top of society. And so, yeah, I think it's just, it's a really complicated thing that it requires like people to understand like the nuance of illness, but also just like an empathetic and compassionate understanding that, you know, people maybe are really trying their hardest when all they are doing in life is like watching reruns of a TV show for six months straight. Like sometimes that's okay. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So we get to a point where we're in and out of treatment. Charles and Marcy, who's the girl sort of become these symbols of for the rest of the movie of like his relationship with what is and is not, I guess. And he's trying to get to a point where, you know, I think like you as a viewer, like, well, one day they'll be gone. And when they're gone, he's succeeded. Yeah. And they are sort of like a very visual part of that journey and about like how that may actually not be the case in his situation. And it's about sort of figuring out how he manages the relationship with that. In this process, he ends up going back to this is the part that like lost me the most, but I think it's like how he essentially becomes like reintegrated into academia. He goes back and becomes goes back to me with Martin Hansen, who is again, his adversary from the beginning of the movie. They have like a friendship, but they have a what is it of their frenemies ultimately. It's a it's an academic rivalry, you know. Yeah, absolutely. They're real dicks to each other. And is he at Princeton and he like returns to Princeton? Is that ultimately what's happening? Yeah, I think Hansen becomes like the department chair of mathematics is how I understand it at least. He becomes the department chair of mathematics. And so when John, you know, later in his life is needing a place to just like exist, you know, in public, you know, he comes to Hansen and says like, can I just hang out in the library? Can I just be around? Yeah. And his frenemy has lightened up a little bit, apparently, goes to bat forum a bit, despite the fact that it is like he's still having great difficulty. He has some episodes sort of like outside of his office in front of a lot of kids who are now visually very in the 1960s. And then, you know, he eventually gets back into the school, audits classes, and then works his way over the next like 20 years into becoming a professor again. Yeah, I was just going to say to your remark about the 60s, the costume design in this movie is wild because they never change the era in which these people like it's hard to follow time in this movie because it's supposed to take place from like basically the I think the 1950s until when he's awarded his Nobel is like, I think 91 or 92. And so it's supposed to transpire 40 years. And the suits all look like they were made in 1962. Like we don't know aesthetically that anything has really like changed other than, you know, a good makeup job at the very end of the movie. It's so funny. Again, like we're sort of like edging along. And Alicia in the movie, like there's one time where she has like three wisps of gray hair. And you're like, OK, well, she's getting older. And then we see her at the end. And she's an old lady. And you're like unrecognizable. It's wild. Yeah. Or he's just Russell Crowe. You know, we had seen her in the movie, like literally on screen three minutes ago. And she was like, you're like, you're still Jennifer Conway. You're still so hot. And then you're like, this is someone different. You're still Dario Argento's phenomenon as Jennifer Conway. And now you're a different person. Yeah. So a Nobel guy is there to be like, we're considering you and I'm here to make sure you're not too crazy to get the prize. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's this touching again, like we're just doing amalgam moments to like wrap everything up in the movie. There's this touching moment that while that guy is visiting, there's some weird academic honor of the pens. Yes. Some weird. Academia is just cults from top to the bottom. Oh, for sure. Because earlier, his I don't know, the guy he looks up to is played by Judd Hirsch in the movies, sort of academic superior is like, look, this guy is getting honored by all these people who give him pens. And you're such a loser that that's never going to happen for you. Yeah. We have a check off's gun with something entirely invented. This isn't a real thing that exists in academia. Like this is not like this is not a tradition at Princeton. So it's very funny that he invented, like I just imagine Ron Howard being like, how do we show that this guy is respected? And you're like, I don't give him some pens or something. And so he just makes this thing up. And yeah, that's amazing. I think Princeton had to like issue a public statement that they're like, yeah, we don't do that. That's not I mean, this is also the era, you know, 90s of like colleges coming under heavy skull and bones. Yeah. Coming under heavy fire for their secret societies. And so I think they were like, no, no, no, we don't we don't do that. Like even though this looks good, it's not a thing we do. Sure, it's not. And then at the end of the movie, at least before they died, I guess. Oh, sorry to spoil the real life story too with it. Yeah, I don't know, please. I mean, you know, it's I'm late to the game. But we learn that he's still teaching and he walks to school every day. And we assume that by that point, like you said, he's in his 80s. I love this scene when the Nobel Prize guy comes in Russell Crowe standing by the door because all the students are getting out and all the students are walking out and they all clearly have some rapport with him, which is very sweet, at least in the context of the movie. And the Nobel Prize guy is like, hi, I'm Jean the Nobel Prize guy or whatever. And he says to one of the students, he goes, is he real? Can you see him? And she's like, yeah, I can tell you one, I have had to do that many times in my life. I love it. But also, this is my little fun fact of like, I told you I've watched this movie on many dates. And I also every single time I've watched it with a date, they've been like, if you need to ask me, you can't like when that scene comes up, they're like, if you ever have to ask me about a hallucination, like, I wanted you to tell me like, I'm a safe person. And I was like, oh, this is this is going well. So like, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. If you're gonna I mean, God, that's good. Like if someone if someone has an adverse reaction to that scene, yeah, watch the movie with someone as soon as possible, right? I think that's that's just been my general like disabled journey of dating is like, I have to tell people very early on and it's not it's not so much because I really like love the idea of like, getting really deep and intimate. But like, it's gonna come up at some point. And I would rather people not be in my life that are not going to be cool with it. Like, I don't really want to spend six weeks or two months or whatever, getting to know someone that is like, not going to be able to like, even, you know, like, not be a good person about it. I don't know how like, sure, better to say it. But like, this is also a real thing that I've had to deal with. Like, I went on a date years ago. I'm sorry, this is just me like, Oh, let's take it. Like, you heard the show hashing out some of my dating ills. But I went on a date years ago. And we were just talking, we'd been talking on, you know, Tinder or whatever for weeks at that point. And then we finally went on a date. And during dinner, I told her I had schizophrenia and then I like worked in nonprofits and like, the date had gone super well up to that point. And then she excused herself to the bathroom and never came back. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And it was like right after that conversation. Wow. Wow. Wow. And yeah, I was like, Oh, she's like, I hate nonprofits. Yeah, you're right. It was actually the non probably it wasn't the schizophrenia. It was actually just like the, the nonprofit industrial complex that she had a problem with. Unlike now she's like Adam Smith was right. Yes. Yes. Yeah. How could someone not be for profit? That's crazy. That's fucking wild. Well, I, you know, the thing that I'm not, this is not an excuse for that person. I'm not even suggesting as much, but I think like, I know a bunch of people in my life who are seemingly fundamentally good people and extremely challenged at showing up in particular. And like, I like, I remember I've been with like good friends or whatever and some shit will go down and they don't show up in a way that I'm like, don't love this. Yeah. So I think like honestly, any situation where somebody has a piece of media where they're able to go like, this is a thing that I experienced or how I experienced the world. It's helpful for me to go through this with you to kind of know where you would be at on it. God, I wish everyone had some version of that. That's not just like, I love clerks because I'm a cranky man. I mean, for some people, it's the secretary, you know, some people that is their intimate movie of their of their personhood. But I mean, I think like a lot of people find media that resonates with them, like whether it's like through an illness or through a characterization or how races portrayed in a movie, like I think it's great when people have media that like speaks to their soul in some sense, or at least, you know, maybe not their soul, but at least speaks to like very intimate parts of them that like they would otherwise have trouble conveying because it does. I think that's where like cinema is a shared language. It's a way to have conversations with people and to broach difficult subjects because I mean, I think in a lot of the best movies, a lot of the movies that I love are able to do that in really phenomenally complex ways and sometimes through humor and sometimes through drama. But like, I think that's what like watching movies with people should be. It should be these conversations about like how we think and feel about, you know, little small parts of people's stories. Well, yeah, I know I have I have friends who are watching how people are responding to sinners and taking notes, you know, or like sorry to bother you or whatever you're like, that is an alarming take that you have about them. So that's yeah, I think I do think that that is important and it's good to have stuff you can experience with people and be like, where do we land on this? Yeah, it's very no, I think when I watch this with another person, I'm just like watching them being like, are they screaming now? Are they like, you know, like, no, I think I think for the most part, I think that's what I honestly, I think that's why I enjoy this movie so much is like when I talked about, you know, calling Ron Howard hyper palatable, I think with a story like schizophrenia, I think that's kind of a good thing in this circumstance, because I think so many people want to dramatize it to hell that they create something very othering about schizophrenia is like, Ron Howard has a, you know, he has a magnificent way of composing a movie entirely of middle shots, and of letting you see everything and all the emotions, but of not like catastrophizing something at the same time. And so like, yeah, I think that's what I I think it really hits for me because it's like, oh, this is a, you know, while it's not factually true, you know, like his symptoms were different, you know, he didn't actually give a Nobel speech, like that's that's a thing invented out of the magic of cinema. But like, he still did a, you know, a fairly good job of portraying like what John's life might have honestly felt like in some way. Right, which is that itself is fascinating. And I think like a lot of movies don't actually do that. They account for the facts of the situation, they don't account for the feeling of the situation. To like be able to properly convey by like telling you, the viewer a story that you believe is happening as text and then being like, now imagine if you found out that that text was not real, but you believe that it was real. It did like a great job of illustrating sort of the vibe of something rather than the facts of something. Yeah. What what do you think like, what works for you outside of it just being an experience that resonates with you? Like, I imagine it'd be a real bummer if there was a movie that resonated with you and like you didn't ever want to watch it again. Yeah. Like you keep coming back to this. Yeah. I think it's simply because it's a very honest portrayal of mental illness. And I think mental illness can be very easily catastrophized or on the opposite side of the spectrum, it can be minimized. And I think what Ron Howard is able to do is just let the illness linger. For the second half of the movie, we are never really given a scene that does not center like the idea of John struggling. And like the fact that we have a sustained 45 minutes where we're just seeing him constantly in the ebbs of flows of his symptoms, I think is really wonderful. And so, you know, I think it's a very proficiently made movie. The acting is all fairly good and the script is good. And so, I think as a movie, it stands well. But just as something to consume where I get to think and experience the emotions of mental illness, I think it does as good a job as most movies that aren't like metaphorical. I recently watched Train Dreams, which I think is like one of the most marvelous movies about isolation and of loneliness. But it's all told through like a very inhuman way, not inhuman. But like, it's so much about the aura of these people's lives. It's about the environment. It's about like nature. It's about where we are in the world. And so, it has all these like really big themes that I think are beautiful and I think are important. But like, Ron Howard's not trying that. He's not trying to give you like some crash course, you know, scholarly interpretation of schizophrenia. He's just telling this one guy's story and, you know, he's happening to do a good job. I'm curious how you liked this movie. I think I've, you know, I've given it quite a, you know, conversation. But like, how did you feel about this? Because it is, it's one of those movies that certainly has not like, it's a best picture winner that not a lot of people are gleefully revisiting at this point. Yeah. So, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it reluctantly because I, again, when I donned in me as to why we were covering it, I was like, this, we've had Eric Garcia on Talk About Rain Man. Which is a great episode. I have like listened to that episode like two or three times now. I love it so much. Yeah. So, I didn't know if we were doing an Eric Garcia and I didn't know, like meaning like watching it and being like, here's all the things that that movie got wrong and here's what that means for me. I didn't know if we were doing this because it was like resonance. So, I enjoyed it knowing I know nothing. Right. And I think that that was sort of important. I enjoyed it again, just from the like, we are in the, when's Fight Club came out, 99. We're in the Fight Club, I See Dead People movie, this like era, we're in the golden age of switcheroo narratives. And so, this is sort of a great example of that. And I'm really revisiting that in a big way while watching this. And I also feel like while watching it, like when you go to a restaurant that all your friends with like good enough food tastes say is the best food they've ever had and you go and you're like, I could see it. I feel that way because it very much feels like a movie that was swinging for best picture. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. You can see all of those elements but you can't necessarily always feel the depth working in a cohesive way together. You know, like Russell Crowe is great. He's Russell Crowe. This is like kind of the Russell Crowe show with like a bunch of stuff around, like again, from like the art direction, I think really works. But like, it feels a little messy as well. It doesn't necessarily feel like this would have been the best picture I saw that year. This might not even been like the 10th best picture, but I enjoyed it. It wasn't the best picture because it beat Lord of the Rings and the Fellowship of the Ring for best picture, which is still like one of the most heartbreaking things because it's like I deeply resonate with this movie, but the Fellowship is my favorite Lord of the Rings movie and it's just like one of my favorites of all time. So it hurts a little bit, but you know. Yeah, totally. I mean, that's how I was like, I get it. Like I get this. I get like why it won. I get sort of its role. But like, because I don't have a personal relationship with the themes of this movie necessarily or at least the text of the movie, I'm probably never going to watch this again. Yeah. But I would recommend someone to. Yeah. And I probably won't watch it until I, you know, until I have another date with someone where I have to watch it again. But no, I think it's, it's one of those things that like I've watched it a lot and I've watched it more times than like, you know, to me, it's like a comfort movie. It's like, it's almost, you know, it's not really a movie that I recommend to people. I think it's a fine movie for people to watch, but it's also not one that I'm like, you know, really, you know, someone to go off and check out. But I do think it's like worth the time. And I do think there are still, you know, we're 25 years after this movie. I still think like we could have more stories about mental illness, you know, I think like. For sure. So, you know, and also Ed Harris does play like a creepy fun bad guy in this that I think is actually really fun. God, for a guy who is just like a handsome guy in the 20th century, the second, the 21st century. And here's was just a weird creep in every movie from that point forward. Good for him. Good for him. Well, this is a question I feel the weirdest I've ever felt asking to any of the movies. Nathan, in a beautiful mind, a movie you relate to because it speaks to some of the financial needs of your schizophrenic soul. We know that Nash is the father of a young child who eventually becomes a Harvard age child. Who in your view is the daddy of this movie? You know, I'm going to go in my feels again for this one, but I'm going to talk about Josh Lucas's Hanson because this is the moment in the film where he like accepts him back into Princeton that I think still hits for me almost every time because we have these moments where it's like, I think John Nash is trying to return to normalcy. He's trying to have a life beyond his illness. And for me, having someone be like, okay, I'll help you do that. Like that has been some of the most instrumental moments of my life of, you know, in my mid 30s now and like having friends just have the space for me to try and return to friendship and return to normalcy has like meant the world to me. And that's not always the experience you're going to have. And so he's both a hot guy, but also he's extremely kind and caring about someone that I think the world by and large does not think deserves it. And so yeah, I just I find that like both emotionally and like relationally so fulfilling that I think he's my daddy for this one. But I'm curious who your daddy is because in this, there's some there's some good choices maybe. It's gone. It's really this is a hard one. I mean, I would like to yeah, it's so this is difficult. I was like, I was sort of drawn to potentially saying Alicia would be the daddy because God was her plaitful for decades and decades. And I apparently their son is schizophrenic as well. So I think she spent a good deal of time in a caretaker role. And then as an advocate, which is really great. So I think I would say like real Alicia is the daddy of this movie. You know, I know sort of being in that position, which is a position I've only been in for short periods of time, not decades of my life is a lot and takes a lot and requires a lot. And I, you know, I appreciate that. And I think that that's, you know, that's not always an easy move. But yeah, I would I would say her for like the text of the situation. And then Plummer, who's like his character is like a kind of a villain, but not really a like, I think because it's Christopher Plummer, you're like, I should distrust you, but you're actually doing the right thing here, I think in a technical sense. But Christopher Plummer, anytime he's on screen, it's hard to not say that he is the daddy of the movie. And I think what you said about Paul Bettany, this is the era in which no gay character was ever gay. And I think like that's, you know, he's he's something special in this, but that is just kind of the Paul Bettany charm. Yeah, this is what I wanted to talk about. Also, I just unfortunately, in opening up the personal life of Paul Bettany found out that he's still a close personal friend of Johnny Depp. But anyway, the real bummer, this is the thing I wanted to say about the delusion is Paul Bettany plays a character who is a D. H. Lawrence, whatever, doctor, doctor, a doctor of Lawrence, which means that Nash's delusion came up with that specifically. And so I don't know if that was rooted in the reality of the matter, if that's something the movie made up, but it's wild that it was a Lawrence specialist. Like it's like a literary pervert. That's really great. I love it, especially considering like Lawrence had a gift for Gab that could get him fucked. And Nash was devoid of that completely as we saw in several scenes. You know, maybe I'm just not giving Ron Howard enough credit, but I do think the reason they chose D. H. Lawrence as the as the specialist for this character is simply because Ron Howard thought that sounded cool. I don't think there was a lot of, I mean, maybe there was, but like I honestly think like I mean, I think I think Ron Howard just looked at a list of like famous authors and was like, we can't do Shakespeare. That's a little too boring. And you know, if it's, you know, I think he's just like, you know, Dante, who cares about Dante, you know, it's like, I think he just he just went with that. Oh my God. I think Joyce would have been really like the ideal character. Give us a James Joyce. Joyce would have been a man. And it Joyce would have also, I think, jived a bit more with this guy's personality. Yeah, added layer to it. He just like enters the movie shirtless and bold. I was like, I'm in. Sign me up. I don't yet know about this guy's friendship with Johnny Duff. I don't yet know that Jarvis is a scumbag. Well, I'm glad we did it. Yeah, I think it's like I think we said, it's just it's a strange movie. It's totally imperfect. I mean, it's it is a movie trying hard for the awards season. And when you watch those types of movies, it does leave a little bit of a lingering bad taste in the mouth. However, of those types of movies, it's not the most offensive. You know, it's not a green book. You know, it's it's something that a lot of crash. Yeah, exactly. I think it's just it's Ron Howard doing Ron Howard things. And this is about the highest praise that I can give him is that, you know, I enjoy sitting through this one. Great. Put it on the cover. Have you gotten blurbed yet? No, I haven't. That's the one for like the criterion release. Yeah, I think it's a well made movie. But I don't know. Watch it with your, you know, your local schizophrenic and see what they have to say about it. That's really watch what you say about it. Yeah. Oh my God. Thank you, Nathan. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much. All right, everybody, that is it for this week's episode of You Are Good at Feeling Spock House about movies. Thanks, Nathan, for being here. Thanks to Miranda Zickler for producing and editing this episode. Thanks to y'all for showing up. Thanks to y'all for supporting us on Patreon and Apple Podcast subscriptions. We could not do it without you. Thanks for remembering that you, my friend, are good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, of course, to Fresh Lash for providing the beats that make your episode sound so sweet. I am glad we all get to do this together. It means the world to me. Thanks for showing up week after week. We look forward to connecting with y'all again very soon.