We don't expect them to stick with every boring fact, but time and time again we find out that the entire point of the story has been totally fabricated. So what's the point of basing it on a true story at all?

As we pointed out in the previous installment , it seems the least we can ask of a movie that's based on a true story is that it, you know, be based on a true story.

6 A Beautiful Mind

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The Hollywood Version:

John Forbes Nash was really smart. He was also really, really crazy. When he wasn't working on the concept of governing dynamics, he was having hallucinations of Paul Bettany, seeing hidden messages in newspapers and getting recruited by Ed Harris to break codes for the government, all while running from Russian spies. Which is even weirder when you find out all of that shit happened in his head.



"On your mark. Get set. Crazy!"

The hallucinations became more frequent and, as hallucinations are prone to do, they drove him batshit insane. Fortunately, his loving wife stood by him, Nash committed to a medication regiment and, over time, learned to ignore his hallucinations just in time to win the Nobel Prize in Economics and Crazy in 1994.

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In Reality...

There's no denying Nash was both brilliant and afflicted with a bad case of the crazies. But filmmaker Ron Howard was widely criticized for glossing over the life of Nash as well as making up the whole "seeing people who weren't really there" thing. Nash did hear voices, but that's it--his hallucinations were entirely auditory.



"Mr. Howard, 'auditory' doesn't mean he put shoes on his hands, it- OK, you don't care."

The movie completely ignores the fact that John and his wife divorced in 1963, just six years after being married, and never got remarried until 2001 (in addition to the whole insanity thing, the fact that the real Nash dabbled in boning dudes probably didn't help their marriage either). The film also manages to not mention his anti-Semitism, which the real Nash says must have been a side effect of his illness.

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At the end of the film, Nash mentions to a friend that he is taking new medication, and he makes a heartfelt speech dedicated to his wife when he accepts his Nobel Prize.

The truth, however, is that both of those things were complete fabrications. Nash stopped taking any medication in 1970, and his continued instability--probably in large part due to that refusal to take medication--led to his not being allowed to make an acceptance speech for fear that he might whip out his dick and start screaming racial slurs at imaginary Jews.

So while the real Nash probably wouldn't have made the best protagonist of a Ron Howard film, we're definitely adding him to our list of "Celebrities Who Need to Get on Twitter."