'A Beautiful Mind'

Some people can’t see Princeton without picturing Russell Crowe heaving a huge desk out of the window above. This is just one of many Princeton-filled scenes in “A Beautiful Mind” (2001), directed by Ron Howard. The film tells the story of Princeton mathematician and 1994 Nobel Prize winner John Nash GS ’50 (Crowe), documenting his life, work and, most memorably, his struggle with paranoid schizophrenia. Though the movie is fictionalized and takes many liberties when representing Nash’s life, the Princeton that he attends as a graduate student in “A Beautiful Mind” looks much like our Princeton today.

In some of the more recognizable scenes, Nash is mocked by classmates near an East Pyne arch, plays the strategic board game “Go” on Cannon Green, mingles at a luncheon in the slums and attends a math faculty meal in the Rocky Common Room. Students today who are barred from vertically exploring most Princeton buildings might be jealous to see Nash and his hallucinated friend Charles drink from a flask on the roof of Campbell in the movie. For the more detail-oriented, the finicky iron window latches in the movie will look familiar; Nash is seen writing many of his equations on Princeton’s windows.

Crowe, along with co-stars Jennifer Connelly and Ed Harris, descended on the campus for filming during Princeton’s 2001 spring break. Some 1,800 students responded to a 2000 casting call to appear as extras in the movie, and a few were chosen. Others who were hanging around campus over spring break tried to catch every glimpse of the cast they could. Apparently enough was enough by the time Meredith Moroney ’02 snapped a photo of Crowe — he famously flicked her off and continued with the scene. An unconfirmed legend also has it that eight members of the men’s rugby team mooned the cast and crew from above Blair Arch during filming. Perhaps as a result of these events, Crowe said the following in an interview with the Princeton Packet: “It was fun being surrounded by so many students who really do consider themselves in the milk-and-honey elite of this country because they couldn’t care less if you were making a film there or not ... because of that ultimate arrogance.” Ouch, Russell. Very ouch.