Was it difficult to raise the money and get the greenlight for a film with such complex themes?

Well, yes and no. The studio was eager to make the movie. They just wanted to make it inexpensively. Therefore we all took cuts in salary. I took zero, which I don't regret.

You must have really believed in the material to have taken zero?

I did. I was very excited about, if the movie were good, how good it could be. If it works, telling this story could be very positive, a celebration of the human spirit in a way. It gives you a sense of what mental illness is.

Last year you worked on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," which is a very commercially viable film. Do you think "A Beautiful Mind" is a much tougher sell?

Oh, most definitely. I think that I've made more overtly commercial movies in the past which can afford you the luxury of making a movie like this every once in awhile and taking a shot like this.

How did you make it inexpensive for the studio?

Well, they just had a number in their heads of how much this movie should be made for. They certainly didn't think it was an art film but it didn't have the allure of being a big audience draw. I mean, doing a film about someone's state of mind and about their mental health essentially doesn't seem to be something that would draw a lot of people.

Do you think there's a bigger audience for films like this one now that everyone is feeling more introspective since September 11th?

I think there's a better audience for this film now because it has such great human themes. I occasionally need someone or something to pinch me and say, "Hey, your life is great," because I can be whiner and say, "Oh, poor me." You know, you get caught up in your own psychodrama - we all do - and then you see someone who has much worse problems than you do and you rethink that. This is such a magnification of that. This is someone who had every obstacle you could think of.

Did this film have a lot of personal resonance for you since you struggled with dyslexia when you were younger?

Yes. And I also have a son who has a very serious learning disability. So, it's a world that I have tremendous interest in and a lot of compassion for. I literally got straight F's in school. In my generation, there was no help. Now there are names and labels that can help you understand things. But in my generation it was just, "Hey, you're stupid."

How did you personally overcome the negative labels that were thrown at you?

The only thing that helped was success really. It was a fluke that I became a swimming champion in high school. Literally a fluke. All my friends went out for swimming and so I went out for swimming. The coach said take lane 8, which was the worst lane, and I broke the city record in 100m Butterfly.

Later in life the same thing happened with writing. Someone said I should write a script so I wrote the story to "Splash." It wasn't a good script but it became a good script and a good movie. I guess I just had a lot of will. And certainly John Nash had a lot of will. This movie is a bigger illustration of what I went through.

Does Imagine Entertainment have any other projects in the works right now? Are you starting a "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" sequel?

No. But I do have the rights to "The Cat in the Hat" and "Oh, the Places You'll Go." We're putting "Cat in the Hat" together now.

You're also involved in a project called "Blue Crush." What will that be about?

That's a girl empowerment movie. I took up surfing as an adult and I love it. It's based on a story about these surf girls from Rolling Stone. It's like "Top Gun" for girls because it shows these girls riding these huge, powerful pipeline waves. I've already cast one girl who's a surfer, another is Michelle Rodriguez, who was in "Girlfight," and the other is Kate Bosworth, who was in "The Horse Whisperer" and was an Olympic equestrian. She has the will and desire of an athlete.

You know, I have a daughter. I've become a woman empowerment person because I think women give away their power to men and that's shitty. And these girls resist doing that. And they find their own way.

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