'MIND' GAMES RON HOWARD AND RUSSELL CROWE AIMED FOR THE TRUTH, BUT MISSED SOME FACTS.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Historical accuracy in movies has become such a hot-button topic in movies in recent years (think ``The Hurricane,'' ``The Insider,'' ``13 Days,'' ``U-571,'' etc., etc.) that the makers of ``A Beautiful Mind'' aren't even going to pretend that their movie is a true story. Director Ron Howard calls it a ``simplification''; his producing partner, Brian Grazer, says the movie is ``inspired by'' the life of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsmith calls it a ``stab at the truth, but not by way of the facts.''

Russell Crowe, who plays Nash, puts it this way: ``There's three big story points you've got here - you've got genius, madness, Nobel Prize. Everything else is really irrelevant as long as you stay true to the spirit of the story.''

Just the facts

The story of Nash as told by ``A Beautiful Mind'' is this: Brilliant, anti-social mathematician does groundbreaking work in a number of fields - game theory, quantum mechanics and number theory among them. All the while, the tendrils of schizophrenia are reaching into his mind and eventually he succumbs - for 35 years. He then conquers his demons and, in 1994, is awarded the Nobel Prize for economics work he had done as a graduate student at Princeton in the 1940s.

When producer Grazer read New York Times reporter Sylvia Nasar's biography of Nash, he knew he had the perfect three-act movie. There was even a love story: Nash had the support of his long-suffering wife, Alicia (played in the movie by Jennifer Connelly), whom he met while teaching at MIT.

Sure, there were elements of Nash's story in Nasar's book that were more troublesome than triumphant: Alicia divorced John (they remarried last June); Nash fathered a child with another woman and abandoned them both to poverty; Nash was a bisexual and had numerous affairs with men, eventually losing his security clearance and job with the RAND Corp. after being charged with soliciting sex in a men's room in Santa Monica.

None of these things made it into the movie, and you won't find any members of the filmmaking team offering an apology.

``It's delicate because it's so interpretive,'' Grazer says. ``For me, the movie was about Nash's victory by simply surviving. It's probably a better subject today than it was a year ago when we started making the movie because people are looking for movies that can be entertaining and life-affirming at the same time.''

Says Howard: ``You couldn't make this movie if you weren't offering a true story because the events are too incredible. People would think it was contrived and not worth watching. But in shaping a life into a couple of hours for a movie, you make a lot of choices. We did not set out to try to make a biopic or the last word on John Nash. Quite frankly, this is an unauthorized biography.''

Typecasting 

Nash himself, now 73 and still teaching in Princeton, N.J., visited the set several times and cooperated with Howard - to a point. One thing that the movie does not gloss over or leave out is Nash's rarefied oddness, his surly behavior and misanthropic tendencies.

``He's not somebody you pal around with,'' Howard says. ``He's mellowed considerably, from what I understand, but he still has an intimidating presence.''

Which, as many directors would say, makes Crowe a perfect choice to play the man. Crowe has famously clashed with strong-headed filmmakers like Ridley Scott (``Gladiator'') and Michael Mann (``The Insider''), all the while nabbing consecutive Oscar nominations and a victory last year for his work in ``Gladiator.'' Howard says Crowe's intellectual intensity was indeed an asset for playing a mad genius like Nash. And he doesn't cop to a downside of working with the actor.

``I don't know quite what occurred, but I don't think I got the uber-intense Russell,'' Howard says. ``There may be a couple of reasons. I'm not contentious, although I am dogged and thorough. And so is he. And I'm very interested in trusting and I'm not frightened of conversations with actors. I have a lot of patience with them.''

Crowe returns the compliment: ``Ron Howard, it seems to me, has got everybody in the world fooled that he's some kind of simple bloke. He's one of the most intense filmmakers I've ever worked with. But he does it in a gentle fashion, and that's because he's organized and he knows what he wants. That's a great platform for me to start working from.''

Selective memory

Crowe didn't meet Nash before filming began, mostly because he didn't think he'd be an accurate witness to the events in his younger life. Apparently, Crowe was right. (At least he says so.) The actor had Howard videotape an interview with Nash, and Crowe says the mathematician either lied about or couldn't remember a number of things about his life.

But Crowe did find some useful information from watching the video interview. He noticed Nash's long, tapered fingers and grew his own fingernails to give some grace that he says ``might have been missing from my sausagelike fingers in the first place.''

When Crowe and Nash finally did meet during the first week of shooting at Princeton, some other decisions the actor had made were confirmed. Crowe had meticulously crafted a halting Southern accent (Nash was born in West Virginia) and had taken to heart a line in the book that called Nash's style of speaking ``Olympic and ornamental.'' If there were a more difficult way of saying something, Nash would find it.

``When we met, I asked him a simple question: 'Would you like coffee or tea?' '' Crowe remembers. ``About 15 minutes later, I got somewhere near an answer from him. Such is the level of examination that he'll put everything that comes his way.

``You know, I said, 'Would you like coffee or tea?' and he said, 'Well, if I have a coffee, should I have it with milk or should I have it with sugar. But if I have it with milk or sugar, would it actually still be coffee, or would it be sugary milk? And if I have a coffee, will that give me more or less pleasure than if I have a cup of tea? And if I have a cup of tea, how can I be sure it's going to be of a density and fullness of flavor that I actually enjoy, because Sri-Lankan teas, Southern Indian teas, are not necessarily to my palate. I prefer Northern Indian teas.' And he went on. I ended up using it in the film. Every second that I spent in front of him, there was always useful information coming my way.''

In the end, most of that information was synthesized, simplified or outright eliminated. Still, Crowe believes the movie authentically captures the spirit of its subject.

``The book is a great read, a wonderful biography, but again, it's a singular opinion,'' Crowe says. ``It's not necessarily the absolute truth. Neither is the movie. But there's an emotional path I believe that we've found and I believe to be authentic.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Russell Crowe in ``A Beautiful Mind''

(2) Oscar winner Russell Crowe opted not to meet John Nash, the man he plays in ``A Beautiful Mind,'' before filming began.

(3) Russell Crowe, left, and Ron Howard discuss a scene on the set of ``A Beautiful Mind.''