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I've revised an earlier post about the recently-deceased writer John Gregory Dunne and his hilarious book Monster: Living Off the Big Screen. I'm re-reading the book now and decided to flesh out the information a bit. One anecdote I'll repeat here, for those that don't feel like backtracking. During the on and off writing of the Up Close and Personal screenplay, Dunne and his wife & writing partner Joan Didion tackled a science fiction script, for a Simpson/Bruckheimer blockbuster (never filmed) called Dharma Blue. The plot concerned UFO-related goings-on at a mysterious research facility called Rhyolite. Written into a corner, they decided they need a lesson in current physics to move the story forward. Science go-to guy Michael Crichton's suggested dialogue about string theory cracks me up:
[Doctor, novelist, filmmaker] Michael Crichton has for years been our authority about matters medical and scientific. [I called him and said] Michael, tell me about string theory. "For a piece, book, or movie?" Michael asked. "Movie," we said. "You want to know what it is," he asked, "or do you need dialogue?" "Dialogue," we said, "and we need to keep it simple." "John," he said patiently, "It's a movie." We explained the circumstances. "I'll check some people and get back to you," Michael said.A few days before our meeting with Simpson and Bruckheimer, Michael called back with the requisite information, and helped us put it in dialogue form:
A. Most people think of the universe as having four dimensions. Height, length, depth, and time. String theorists have constructed a theoretical model of the universe with 26 orthogonal dimensions.B. Orthogonal?
A. At right angles...
B. But what does it mean that they're doing string theory at Rhyolite?
A. I think it means they're not doing theory any more.
(a beat) It means that...whatever they're out there to study...may appear to exist in more than four dimensions.
(another beat) It means they could be out there to see what 26 orthogonal dimensions looks like when it hits the real world.