`... and the geeks (from MIT) shall inherit the Earth'.

Byline: Jim Keogh

COLUMN: FILM CLIPS

Off the top of my head I can recall seeing only two movies set at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and both involved geniuses.

Of course they did. What other kind of human being can possibly gestate at MIT? I am easily awed by anyone who understands the inner workings of those squiggly things - "numbers" I believe they're called - even if the supergeeks are fictional characters. When MIT janitor Matt Damon in "Good Will Hunting" fills a chalkboard with the solution to a mind-numbing mathematical problem, and undergrad Jim Sturgess in "21" wins thousands at Las Vegas blackjack tables by counting cards with his computer-chip mind, I'm duly impressed by their towering intellects.

Earlier this year, I sat in on a presentation given by Nobel Prize-winning MIT Professor Richard Schrock to science students at Wachusett Regional High School. I still don't comprehend why he won the Nobel, and unless the phrase "developed a molybdenum-based catalyst that speeds up chemical reactions and aids olefin metathesis" makes perfect sense, neither do you.

But Dr. Schrock's true display of brilliance was the way he held onto his teenage audience that night, employing personal anecdotes and dry wit to keep them engaged for well over an hour. Wisely, he brought along his Nobel medal for a little show-and-tell. The guy was good.

So yeah, MIT people are smart (though I reserve judgment on the coed arrested at Logan Airport while wearing piece of original "art" strapped to her chest that couldn't have looked more like a homemade bomb if it had "Acme Explosives" stenciled across it). Their grads tend to rule the science and technology worlds, make medical breakthroughs, and even have their own "Doonesbury" character, Mike's daughter Alex.

And yet there remains this nagging question: With all the brainpower teeming inside the school on the Charles, how come they can't figure out a way to get more movies made there?

Perhaps filmmakers simply can't see beyond the egghead/mad-scientist stuff. The heroes of "Good Will Hunting" and "21" presented their own archetypes of working-class kids who could sniff the privilege all around them, but for economic and/or emotional reasons never gain access to that rarified world, except through their dealings with a mentor and the graces of a beautiful woman. Only in the movies, I suppose, does the MIT nerd lose his virginity to Kate Bosworth.

When it comes to cinema at Boston-based colleges, there's no contest. The lion's share of sex, romance, obnoxious students and nutty professors is reserved for one school, and one school only: Harvard.

The two colleges aren't exactly rivals, though the techies did pull a memorable prank by inflating a weather balloon that spelled out "MIT" at the 50-yard line of the Harvard-Yale football game. The news cameras caught that one; the movie cameras typically capture everything else on the Crimson campus.

The list is exhaustive:

Harvard is where Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw fell in love, and Tommy Lee Jones was both a fictional student and, as Al Gore's roommate, a real one ("Love Story").

Harvard is where John Houseman ruled as the imperious law professor Kingsfield who tells his quaking students, "You come to me with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer" ("The Paper Chase").

Harvard is where Reese Witherspoon talked like someone with a skull full of mush, and thought like a lawyer ("Legally Blonde").

A further sampling includes "Harvard Man," "Soul Man," "Prozac Nation," "A Small Circle of Friends," "With Honors," etc., etc. ...

Adding further insult to injury is the fact that except for the obvious exterior shots of the famous dome, Boston University was used as a stand-in for MIT in "21."

Of course BU and Boston College are hardly Hollywood East, and dozens of other colleges ... some of them, yes, with ivy on the walls ... get scant consideration from moviemakers. A search for Wellesley-based movies turned up the Julia Roberts soaper "Mona Lisa Smile" (Local trivia nugget: a Rutland guy supplied the pigeons for a scene in which the birds take off from a bell tower. Woo-hoo!), and something called "Yellow Lights," described in an IMDB.com posting as "`Garden State' in New England with no budget." Can't wait to catch up with it.

"21" is a pretty terrible movie, and perhaps MIT might want to maintain some distance from it. The film implies that a Svengali-like professor played by Kevin Spacey can control what his card counters earn for grades from their other professors simply by placing a phone call to them. If so, then doesn't that make the entire faculty corrupt?

Perhaps MIT is doing the right thing by keeping a low profile. Let Harvard have its love stories, its paper chasers and Prozac poppers. That's movie stuff. In real life, the geeks shall inherit the Earth, even if they do it without Kate Bosworth by their side.

ART: PHOTO

CUTLINE: Kate Bosworth, left, and Jim Sturgess in a scene from ``21.''

PHOTOG: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS