founded a psychological consulting firm
while earning his creative-writing mas-
ter's degree from New York University.
Career Crisis
His career crisis came one day when he
was 28.
"I was lecturing at Harvard, and I
looked across the room and realized
that I had spent the better part of a
decade telling parents what to do with
their children, but I didn't have any
children, so what if I was wrong?" he
recalls.
"Then I thought, 'I have become my
mother.' And while I love my mother, I
didn't want to be her."
Goldsman shut down his consulting .
firm and penned a screenplay, Silent
Fall, about an autistic boy who'd wit-
nessed a murder. He describes that
story that would allow him to return
to a subject close to his heart.
When he learned that Imagine
Entertainment's Brian Grazer had
bought the movie rights, he says he
scampered over there and actually
begged him to hire me.
When the go-ahead came, he says
his intention wasn't to write a biopic
but to evoke what it felt like to be
John Nash."
Some have criticized Goldsman for
taking broad liberties with Nash's life
story and for omitting juicy details
such as the scientist's alleged gay
liaisons.
The screenwriter counters that
even a biopic is fiction. You can't
really tell a life in less than a life."
Responding to those who have cited
Nash's alleged anti-Semitism, he
insists that the mathematician, when
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period in his life as "terrifying and
heartbreaking" — but writing what he
knew paid off.
His screenplay became a 1994 Bruce
Beresford film and led to a gig adapting
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A Beautiful Experience
Around 1999, Goldsman read an
excerpt of Nash's biography in Vanity
Fair magazine and knew he'd found a
delusional, "was anti-everybody."
Nevertheless, Goldsman, who
received scathing reviews for his
screenplays for Lost in Space and
Batman and Robin, calls A Beautiful
Mind a beautiful experience.
He says he was "utterly shocked"
when his name was called at the
Golden Globes; his hands shook vio-
lently as he read his acceptance
speech, in which he admitted he'd
never won an award before.
Yet the moment was more than
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every one of those [mentally ill] chil-
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