We'd always been intrigued by the time period when Dr. Nash went to Europe, after resigning from M.I.T. This is right after his initial breakdown. He arrived in Europe, in Paris, at a time that was fraught with a lot of political protests against the arms race. And it was also an incredibly hot summer. There was a heat wave going on. There was a story about the fact that a car had spontaneously combusted on the streets of Paris. We thought this was a potentially wonderful metaphor for what was happening with John Nash at the time. So there was this idea, this hunt for trying to find an old Citroën that we could explode and capture on film. Alas, we never really made it that far, but we did find some stock footage of a burning car that seemed to perhaps fill the void.

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