Genius vs. the True Story
This article fact-checks the film.
http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/genius/
Thank you for the link. It sounds like they stuck very close to actual events.
I have been really excited for this movie.
Some of these events I was familiar with, I am from NC and I know quite a lot about Thomas Wolfe, but I have only read Look Homeward Angel and The Lost Boy. I have had a copy of You Can't Go Home Again, for years, but I haven't revisited Wolfe since the mammoth Look Homeward Angel.
I am so happy to see the death bed letter was real. That was the first thing I googled when I got home. I was certain that was fictionalized - glad to be wrong.
For some reason I was thinking Thomas Wolfe never regained consciousness after the surgery. I remember reading about the latent tuberculous that settled in the brain, and I knew he died at Johns Hopkins, but I thought I had read that when they tried to operate that the pressure in head literally exploded and they just sewed him back up and let him stay in a coma and pass away quietly.
The only thing missing that I wish they had kept was the stuttering, I heard it early on, just a little, but I thought it would pick up as time passed, but it actually seemed to drop. This is something that Wolfe struggled with whole life, especially when he was emotional. Supposedly he would give lectures sometimes and he had trouble with the audience because of his stuttering. If anyone has read Look Homeward Angel, you know his alter ego Eugene Gant stuttered, and it was a tremendous source of embarrassment and rage for character. We can imagine the same for the man. I believe he managed it pretty well as he grew up, but toward the end it became more of a problem again.
There was also the jerky body hand and body movements. Again, that started off well in the film, but seem to level out. Several of Wolfe's descendants have Tourette Syndrome and that sometimes is presented a theory to explain the choppy body language and stuttering.
Another thing that would have been nice to see, but I understand how it could have interrupted the story was that Thomas Wolfe (who was a large man) stood and cheered very loudly for Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. There are stories (not sure of the validity), that he was sitting just rows down from Hitler’s box and the ruckus Wolfe created over Owens really got on the Furor's nerves(Please God let that be true).
To his credit, Wolfe was enamored with Germany, but he did write that he could see something ominous coming out of the country. Wolfe died before the world truly understood what was happening, so he didn’t write that in hindsight.
"Several of Wolfe's descendants have Tourette Syndrome and that sometimes is presented a theory to explain the choppy body language and stuttering. "
I'm wondering where this piece of information comes from? It's not that I disbelieve you but I'm very curious as I've never read or heard that anywhere before. What descendants are you refering to exactly? (since Thomas Wolfe had no children - or no legitmate ones at least)
I got that information out of a lecture several years ago. Look Homeward Angel was one of the books in a series on southern classics put on by the North Carolina Humanities Council.
The scholar who spoke on LHA had done research on Wolfe and he is the one that made the Tourette Syndrome comment. At the time he was speaking the genetic studies were current. I think it may have been Joe Bethanti from Appalachian State University, but I have heard more than one lecture on Wolfe so the Tourette's comment may have come from another scholar.
You are right, Wolfe did not have children, but he had several siblings and they had offspring. The extended family was pretty large.
The professor's point was that several of the offspring had Tourette's to varying degrees, so there is a theory that this could have played a role in Wolfe's mannerisms and outbursts.
This movie shows some ticks early on, but they get away from it, but if you read Look Homeward Angel, Eugene really struggles with stuttering and some flailing, he also knows that he loses his temper and cannot reel it back in. The book is a novel, but Wolfe himself said Gant is basically him.
There is also a lot to be said about his parents, as I mentioned elsewhere they are worthy of a movie themselves. In the novel the father is always between God and alcoholism and there is nothing between. That part is pretty accurate too, this family was well known for it antics. That suggests that some of the over the top behavior could in fact be related to a genetic cause, Tourette's or something else.
So
as long as we r sharing talk
I heard
but I don't "know"
but I heard
from a very good friend of ours
that tHom p s s d off some very very powerful "advanced" thinkierz
with his antics
at the olympics
so
they infected him during his visit 2 that Prague of the states "sea-attle"
with the weaponized version of the encephalopathy
very sad
terrible loss
where would we b if he had been allowed 2 write
der hund verzehrt mein kind