'Mind' Games

Image credit: A Beautiful Mind: Eli Reed

Crowe, who is up for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Nash, also spoke out at the luncheon. ''To quote the sort of things John Nash was saying in the middle of his hospitalization and at a point where he was absolutely overtaken by schizophrenia... is beyond irresponsible,'' Crowe told USA Today. ''This is a fellow who thought he was getting messages from aliens through The New York Times. He also thought himself the governor of Antarctica. He was a very sick man.''

Of course, word of Nash's anti-Semitic ravings, his abandoned mistress, and his out-of-wedlock child are not news. Biographer Sylvia Nasar discussed them all in her 1998 book ''A Beautiful Mind,'' on which the film is based, and she, too, believes that Nash is being smeared. She published an essay in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times complaining that the media have distorted these controversial elements of his life, both in the recent articles and in several that appeared when the movie opened a couple months ago, including Entertainment Weekly's review of the book in the magazine's Jan. 25 issue. At the time, there were many articles mentioning that Nash's alleged bisexuality was also left out of the movie, stories which Universal blamed on Miramax, whose ''In the Bedroom'' is a rival for Best Picture.

Miramax denied planting those stories, just as Drudge denied to the Hollywood Reporter that a rival studio had alerted him to Nash's anti-Semitic outbursts. Similarly, FoxNews.com's Friedman denied to EW.com that any studio was behind his decision to follow-up Drudge's story, which he says he spotted on the Web and verified via Nasar's book. ''The only reason I did it is, my column was short, it was really easy, and it was right there.'' Of Snider, he says, ''I liked her movie. I like [director] Ron Howard. I like Universal. There's no conspiracy.''

Friedman's website, like the New York Post, is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which also owns 20th Century Fox, distributor of rival Best Picture nominee ''Moulin Rouge.'' But Friedman says, ''I didn't like 'Moulin Rouge,' and I said so in my column many times. Fox has never said a word to me about promoting or criticizing their movies.''

''I can absolutely tell you the story was not planted with me at all,'' MSNBC.com's Walls tells EW.com. ''I'm an equal opportunity basher. I don't have a dog in this fight.''

''There are a lot of allegations flying around town against all sorts of parties,'' says Ric Robertson, the Academy executive administrator who oversees the rules regarding Oscar campaigns. If Universal and Imagine's accusations are true, he says, such actions are not strictly forbidden but are ''against the spirit of what's supposed to be going on right now: Academy members making qualitative judgments about great films.'' He said the Academy would consider more stringent guidelines this summer during its annual policy review, and that violators could face the ultimate punishment: having some of their tickets to the Oscar ceremony taken away.

Though EW.com is a division of AOL Time Warner, as are New Line (distributor of Best Picture candidate ''The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring'') and Warner Bros. (whose ''Training Day'' features Denzel Washington, vying with Crowe for Best Actor), no one from Universal or Imagine has called to complain that this article was planted. Not yet, anyway.

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