Matt Drudge's "exclusive" report on A Beautiful Mind challenged

Following Thursday's announcements of the Golden Globe nomination, Internet columnist Matt Drudge posted an "exclusive" report on his Web site regarding the Russell Crowe film A Beautiful Mind and the fact that "repeated homosexual references" from Sylvia Nasar's source book were left out of the film.

Nasar's book notes that mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr., whom Crowe portrays in the film, was arrested in 1954 for indecent exposure and that he had had "intense friendships with men that had a romantic quality." The book also talks about Nash openly kissing colleague Jack Bricker in front of others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a letter written to Nash referring to his "personal long-awaited 'gay liberation.'"

Mitchell Fink of the New York Daily News reports that "Drudge obviously hasn't been reading The Advocate, The New York Times, New York Observer, or the Daily News, which have all mentioned the gay angle reported in Nasar's biography along with the fact that none of this appears in the film."

Beautiful Mind screenwriter Akiva Goldman (Batman and Robin) tells Fink, "Nash has a son with a woman [other than his wife], and neither are dealt with. Everything in the movie is structured around telling the story of genius, madness, and the Nobel Prize. In order to do that, tremendous portions of this man's life had to be omitted." Goldman adds another reason that he and director Ron Howard did not explore the gay side of Nash's life: "John personally says he's not gay or bi. We tried to be true to his life and the relationship he had with his wife, Alicia, and she says he's not gay."

Ironically, Drudge in 1998 fervently denied allegations that he himself is gay.