'Sleeper'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
See, my fed-up point for the crazy/genius thing was A Beautiful Mind. If you're so smart, how come you don't know about all the paranoid schizphrenics who aren't geniuses? Paranoia -- and the inability to regulate leaps of logic -- is not genius; it is paranoia and word-salad! Read a book about functional intelligence some time!
Whew, got that off my chest. See also: my vast and enduring hatred of that dratted movie Camille Claudel.
Is there any medical research linking creative talent with mental illness?
Yeah, but it was conducted by a unlikely team of brilliant yet flawed researchers with a childlife capacity for wonder but a bunch of terminal brain tumors in their bipolar heads. The only way the research was ever published was through the machinations of their dedicated-albeit-emotionally-stunted wives and wisecracking magical Negro sidekicks.
Oh, Cor, bless you. I TOTALLY needed that laugh today.
Don't forget the inspiring crippled guy.
"I've got a spike through my head! A spike! Through my head!"
Thank you, Corwood, thank you.
How is it there's no online video of Kevin McDonnell with the spike through his head? Here's the whole speech:
Yes. I've got a spike through my head. I've accepted it. Why can't you? I've got a spike through my head, a spike through my head, spike through my head, a spike through my head, a spike through my head! It's hard to look at, isn't it? Look at it. Read it. It says 'Pennsylvania Steel'. Yes I know I should be dead. Yes, the doctors say I'm a freak of nature. But there's one thing I *do* know damn it! I'm alive, and I love you. And that's the hardest thing of all to accept, isn't it Connie?
I have tended to notice increasing creativity going hand-in-hand with increasing flakiness as a general trend, but it's not universal enough to be certain that one indicates the other.
I'm not laying this all at your feet, bonny. I just have seen it both far and near, excuses being made, or even people "understanding" that talent must come with a price.
While I'm always glad to spark conversation, my tongue was shoved so far into my cheek I might have looked like I had the mumps.
And Corwood made me snort and then glow with amusement. Perfect.
I'll add my own personal pet peeve to the genre of excuses for flakiness/creativity/doom...having been abused as a child.
I'm lookin' at YOU KPAX and all the other, "He's a whacknut serial killer!'
But, but, he was abused as a child!!
Well, alright then, let's give him a hug." Rubbish
So, yeah. I can see where you are coming from.