It’s unknown if Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash ever picnicked. His biographer Sylvia Nasar doesn’t mention any. Undeterred by the lack of biographical information, Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldman invented a picnic to add narrative interest showing Nash’s quirky personality. It’s an afternoon date on which Nash makes love to his sweetheart Alicia Lande.
Howard’s problem was to overcome Nash’s tendency to be passionate about mathematical game theory and cool about his relationship with Lande. Presuming Howard means the picnic to be comic (I hope), Nash recites his “feelings” as if reading a mathematical theorem. “All right. I find you attractive,” he confides to Lande, “Your aggressive moves towards me indicate you feel the same. Still, the ritual requires we continue a number of platonic activities before we can have intercourse. I am proceeding with these activities, although, to some extent, all I want is to have sex as soon as possible.”
Unable to resist, Lande kisses him. (What keeps Russell Crow and Alicia Lande from breaking up in this scene beats me?)
The cast: Russell Crow as John Nash; Jennifer Connelly as Alicia Lande
See Ron Howard. A Beautiful Mind (2002). The screenplay is by Akiva Goldsman based on Sylvia Nasar’s biography A Beautiful Mind (1998); Sylvia Nasar. A Beautiful Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999; Akiva Goldsman. A Beautiful Mind: The Shooting Script. New York: Newmarket Press; 2002