One Kaua’i resident got to hear his name on national television Sunday: Tev Goldsman of Kapahi, father of Academy Award-winning writer Akiva Goldsman, who wrote the screenplay for “A Beautiful Mind.” The Oscar winner said: “And I’d like to dedicate
One Kaua’i resident got to hear his name on national television Sunday: Tev Goldsman of Kapahi, father of Academy Award-winning writer Akiva Goldsman, who wrote the screenplay for “A Beautiful Mind.”
The Oscar winner said: “And I’d like to dedicate this award to my three parents, Tev Goldsman, Mira Rothenberg and Elizabeth Lee, who taught me that when understanding people who suffer from mental illness, it is good to have a beautiful mind but a greater gift still is to discover a beautiful heart.”
The movie follows the story of John Forbes Nash, Jr., a mathematical genius who overcame his battle with schizophrenia during the 1950s and 60s, winning the Nobel Prize in 1994 for his work in game theory.
Tev Goldsman has been a full-time social worker for the Kauai Community Mental Health Center for over 10 years, after moving to Kaua’i from New York in the late 1980s.
His son was raised with children who went through the family’s therapeutic nursery group and home for teens, and became head of the treatment program by the time he finished college at the Queen Anne School in Maryland, according to Goldsman. Akiva’s upbringing taught him a lot about living with schizophrenic people, his father said.
Goldsman and his wife at the time, Mira Rothenberg, operated the Blueberry Treatment Centers in upstate New York from 1959-1985 for children diagnosed with psychological disorders including schizophrenia.
“(Akiva) always saw how things evolved and understood them from a very personal level…He could make things understandable to other people,” Goldsman said.
Akiva, or “Kivie,” as he’s known to family and friends, was practically raised by his “third parent,” Elizabeth “Zizzie” Lee, a live-in caretaker who has been with the family from a few days after Kivie was born, according to Goldsman.
In his Academy Award acceptance speech Sunday, Akiva said: “…I’d like to dedicate this award to my three parents… who taught me that when understanding people who suffer from mental illness, it is good to have a beautiful mind but a greater gift still is to discover a beautiful heart.”
Today, Tev and Akiva are still very close; they talk on the telephone about once a week, Goldsman said.
“We’re father and son, of course; but we’re also friends,” Goldsman said. Goldsman noted a common thread to his son’s work in that many of the movies he works on have something to do with mental illness or psychologically disturbed people.
“He always wrote,” Tev remembered, “He was always afraid to submit (his work).” However, Tev told his son that submitting his writing was the only way he’d find out whether he was good enough.
Eventually, Akiva’s screenplay for 1994’s “Silent Fall” was produced, only to receive lukewarm reviews and a mediocre box office showing. “Silent Fall” was about an autistic boy who witnesses his parents’ double murder. Akiva has since succeeded as a screenplay writer, having written the scripts for major Hollywood feature films including “Lost in Space,” “Batman Forever,” “Deep Blue Sea,” “Batman and Robin,” “A Time to Kill,” “The Client” and “Practical Magic.” Though these movies were popular with the public, none received as much critical acclaim as “A Beautiful Mind.”
“No one thought it would be a boffo box-office (hit), but it is,” Goldsman said. “A Beautiful Mind” picked up Oscars for Best Movie, Best Director (Ron Howard) and Best Supporting Actress (Jennifer Connelly).
Akiva’s next project is an screenplay adaptation of the book “Memoirs of a Geisha,” written by Arthur S. Golden.
