Consulting for the movies

As some of you know, I am working as a mathematical consultant for the movie Starship Dave, a new Eddie Murphy project (currently slated to be released in the U.S. on May 30, 2008) by the producers of Norbit. Naturally, this means that it's probably a waste of 2 hours of one's life to see the full movie, but there's one particular scene that you'll want to see (or at least I want to see).

I got this gig because of my connection to Gary Lorden (who was contacted because of Numb3rs), and my assignment was to come up with a "unified field theory" for Eddie Murphy to show a class of elementary school kids (and to tell them learn that to understand everything). The amount I'm getting paid for what amounted to 2-3 hours of work is, to put it mildly, a much higher rate than I get for my day job (you can ask me about this offline).

I decided that instead of using conventional things that have been proposed for field theory that I would adapt a "chaotic field theory" that one of my postdoc advisors (Predrag Cvitanovic) came up with. Among other things, I actually understand the equations in his research, so it's easier for me to soup that stuff up in a sensible manner (keeping in mind I'm supposed provide an equation that doesn't exist). I was also requested to perhaps come up with a picture that "looks like a vortex or something" that is supposed to represent the unified theory graphically. The gist was that the equation should look "cool and complicated." The stuff I wrote down, which was souped up but had sensible things like matching dimensions on both sides of the equation (though the contour integral I added came completely out of my ass), but it was too long and it needed to be shortened to fit on the two blackboards (it was originally going to be 4). The prop people did it and nixed things such as matrix components and equal signs. (I am mentioning the equal sign part just to indicate the level of understanding we're dealing with.) There were also some "typos" in which, for example, the gammas I wrote looked like r's or something. When I visited the set yesterday morning, I was asked (and this is almost but probably not quite a direct quote) "On a scale of 1 to 10, how knowledgable would you have to be to realize this equation isn't real?" I don't even know how to answer something like that; it's not exactly a well-defined question.

Anyway, I didn't get to meet Eddie Murphy and the gamma delta beta gamma didn't survive the typos/cuts for space. However, the DEI I inserted is still there, so you should watch for that when the movie comes out. (It's not clear if it will be visible in the scene.)

I was going to post this blog entry later, but there's an extra punchline that is compelling me to discuss this now:

Predrag and I were corresponding today because some French journalist wants to write a layman's article related to an expository paper we wrote. He told me that on an episode of Numb3rs from right before April 1st, the following line was apparently uttered:

"According to the scattering theory of Cvitanovich, the debris could not have gone so far. There must have been a rocket."

And just to show you what kind of reputation I have in the mathematics and physics communities, he then asked me if I was the one responsible for this. (It's just like when I put my Screamer in the entry room of Sloan Annex and people just assumed that I was the one responsible for it. They were right, of course, but still...) I wasn't and I can't find a reference to this line on the web (let me know if you can find it...). I hadn't yet told Predrag about the unified field theory gig, so I guess he was right to ask if I did it. So while he correctly guessed the identity of the murderer, he got the weapon and room all wrong (though there was a Numb3rs connection in getting the gig, as I indicated above).

So I guess the next thing to do is to see if the DEI shows up. We have a story about DEI references in Legends III and we plan to add to it in Legends IV and obviously this particular one will be a great one to discuss in that story (though it will be better if one can actually see it on-screen).