Now a debate has arisen about the true author of this strategy. According to an article by Premiere magazine's Anne Thompson — and posted on the magazine's web site — this fool-the-audience device may (emphasis on that word) have been lifted from another script, Chris Gerolmo's The Laws of Madness.

Madness was a seriously regarded project at one time. It was developed for two years ('96 through '98) by Beautiful Mind producer Brian Grazer and partner Ron Howard. At one time Universal had approved a $50 million budget, Gerolmo tells Thompson, and Brad Pitt had attached himself to star. Howard was interested at one point in directing it, but later passed this opportunity over to Gerolmo.

On the other hand, this could all be a lot of air. Goldsman told me over the phone Monday that he suggested using this same story strategy in pitch meetings late in the summer of 1998 with Warner Bros. producer Stephen Reuther and WB production president Lorenzo di Bonaventura, when the rights to Sylvia Nasar's book about Nash were still in play. He says he pitched the same thing to Imagine's Grazer and Howard later that year. Imagine co-chairman Karen Kahela, in a separate phoner, was also adamant that the idea was entirely and originally Goldsman's.

To be sure, Goldsman's script doesn't spill the beans about the nature of Nash's delusional relationships until page 70, which is well into A Beautiful Mind's second act. Gerolmo's Madness — which tells another real-life story about a brilliant young man, Michael Laudor, who was felled by schizophrenia only to thrash his way out of the grasp of the disease — reveals the truth of things by page 32 or 33, or near the end of his story's first act.

Grazer is quoted by Thompson as saying that Gerolmo "doesn't deserve any credit" and that The Laws of Gravity and A Beautiful Mind are "two different movies with two different themes about two different people." But I managed to read an April 1998 draft of Gerolmo's script last weekend, and the similarities are easy to spot.

At the very least, the Gerolmo script makes Grazer's statement that A Beautiful Mind is about "a different theme" highly questionable. As Thompson's piece points out, both are about "love conquers schizophrenia" in telling a story about "a young man with a brilliant career succumbs to paranoid madness, [but the] love of a person close to him saves him from life in a mental ward."

On page 24 of Gerolmo's script, Kevin is pursued down a quiet suburban street late at night by persons unknown driving a black LTD convertible, and who start shooting at him with a device identified as a "Tech-9." He later claims his assailants are probably spooks from the "defense department." This later turns out to be illusory. In A Beautiful Mind, Nash and Parcher (a government agent played by Ed Harris) are pursued in their car by Russian agents, who fire at them from their own vehicle. This also turns out to be imaginary.

On page 38, a Dr. Parker — Kevin's psychiatrist — shoots down Edward's optimistic hope that his son may fight off the disease. Parker says there's only "a slim chance" that his son will recover [and] "a far greater chance he'll remain institutionalized for the rest of his life … I think it's wise to prepare for what may be a very long siege." In A Beautiful Mind, a psychiatrist named Dr. Rosen (Christopher Plummer) explains that Nash "can't reason [his] way out of schizophrenia" and that the disease "is degenerative … some days may be symptom-free, but over time you're getting worse."

Still, there's no question in my mind that Goldsman's is the far superior script. I frankly don't get why Imagine was interested in Gerolmo's in the first place. It's all right — "earnest" is one word that applies — but no great shakes. There's no "pens" scene, no big second-act surprise … it's just a step-by-step, guy-goes-crazy-and-eventually-gets-over-it story.

For his own part, Gerolmo has released a statement saying he hasn't seen A Beautiful Mind and "for that reason it would be neither appropriate nor gracious for me to comment on it." (Actually, it's revealed in Thompson's story that Gerolmo has an unopened Mind DVD on his coffee table. An obviously hurting Gerolmo explains, "I haven't been able to watch it.") But he adds that he wishes "everyone involved the best of luck in the coming awards season" and that he certainly doesn't have "any plans to file any kind of a grievance with anybody." Translation: Gerolmo, no fool, doesn't want to hurt his employability or his deal at Universal by raising a stink.

But I can also understand why some people reading Thompson's story, or who've read Gerolmo's script, might feel that Grazer and Howard were a tad unfair to the guy by not giving him any kind of shared credit (a "story by," for instance) for inventing what appears to have been Imagine's first exposure to the fool-the-audience idea.

This story is obviously a bit of a sticky wicket on top of the rap about Goldsman's script ignoring most of the facts Nash's life. Who knows if it'll affect Goldsman's chances of winning the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar on March 24, or if Academy members will just brush it aside? (Goldsman's screenplay has also been nominated in this category by the Writers Guild, which will hand out their awards on March 2.)

Imagine's Kahela was aghast when I suggested Imagine might have appropriated Gerolmo's idea without giving him fair credit for it. She relayed what Goldsman later told me about his Warner Bros. pitches. She also explained the difference between the two scripts. Gerolmo's had "created paranoid fantasies based on real people in Michael Laudor's life," she said, "but Goldsman created real fantasies based on fake people in John Nash's imagination. They are two very different things."

"This is incredibly personal and important and serious, for me," said Goldsman, 39. (He was referring to growing up in a home surrounded by mentally disturbed children, which was run by his parents.) A fool-the-audience strategy for A Beautiful Mind "was the construct I had in my head and heart when I first pitched it," he explained.

"What I'm proud of in A Beautiful Mind is that it creates an entire world that is as comprehensive to the audience as to the main character," he said. "And when the rug is pulled, the primary experience is one of betrayal … it's creating a world view and then inverting it … I'd like to believe in this context it's really unique."

In her story "A Nearly Beautiful Mind," Thompson reports that Grazer's Imagine Films had developed and had once planned to produce The Laws of Madness, before switching focus after Laudor lost it and murdered his pregnant girlfriend in June 1998.

Two months later, Imagine, deciding Madness was now dead because of Laudor's tragic act, bought rights to Nasar's A Beautiful Mind. A few months after this the company hired Goldsman, whom Grazer was initially reluctant to use, to adapt it into script form.

Thompson reports that Grazer "worked on the narrative device with Goldsman and was adamant that the writer fool audiences into believing Nash's delusions." I've been told confidentially that Grazer has claimed in an interview that the imaginary-characters aspect was his own idea, or at least one he'd been pushing. And yet Grazer is quoted by Thompson in last week's article as saying it was Goldsman who "had the idea of living through an alternate reality."