Comment: It’s of great concern that Alan Turing’s life is being rewritten for the benefit of Hollywood
Julia Turing writes of her anger at the decision of producers of the upcoming Alan Turing biopic to change aspects of the gay scientist’s life and to reportedly include fictitious scenes in the movie script.
I have made several attempts to contact the producer of the movie Imitation Game to express my great concern over his liberties to rewrite the story of Alan Turing by adding fictitious scenes in the movie script that never happened. I was never contacted nor consulted as to the appropriateness and accuracies of the script since I know a great deal about Alan Turing.
Through Alan’s incredible innovative genius, by thinking outside the box, which was not understood by many of his colleagues at that time, he contributed a great deal to the human race in a very short period of time. From the foundations of mathematics and computer engineering in hardware and especially software designs, pioneering the idea of Artificial Intelligence, to the mapping of biological growth in his paper “Morphogenesis”, a radical leap forward in mathematical thought in “fir cones”, not to mention his contribution to Britain during WWII; saving not only his country but the entire Western civilization as we know it from the dark destructive power of hate from the dictator Adolf Hitler, who came very close to taking over all of Europe and then the world.
Alan Turing received as a reward from his government for his tremendous accomplishments the death sentence after prolonged inhumane torture which played a part in his death.
I do not understand why Black Bear Entertainment cannot focus more on Alan’s achievements which would easily make a mind blowing three hour film rather than adding fictitious sex scenes that never happened and changing the whole make-up of Alan Turing’s personality, making him into someone he never was not to mention, picking an actor who doesn’t even come close to looking like Alan.
It not only is a terrible disservice to the true story of Alan M. Turing but it also robs the audience, who may not know much about Alan Turing, of the true greatness of the man and how he has impacted every one of our lives throughout the whole world since the end of the WWII. I believe that if Alan Turing had lived out his whole life, we here in the United States would have greatly benefited not only in our computer advancements and in robotics but NASA would have gone much further in our space exploration by having far more advanced computers working our complex problems.
The computer HAL-9000 in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ would have become reality and propelled us to having a moon base by now because of that kind of radical advancement in computer design and AI in our robotic technologies, power through Alan Turing’s radical “leaping outside of the box” way of thinking would have been the model to follow. Alan Turing’s mind was one so gifted and rare that it cannot be measured in an IQ number attached to it, his was so rare that it measured one in every several hundred years. I also believe that England, not the United States, would have been the leader in advanced computer engineering design and the leader in software technological innovations in (A I) for the rest of the world to follow.
Alan Turing was also a tremendous athlete at the world class level not a clumsy klutz like so many of my brainy friends I’ve known throughout my life. If not for a foot injury Alan would have made the Olympic marathon team for England! What a story for a movie that would make!! Alan was known not only for his eccentricities in his innocent childlike behaviour, loving and adoring children (saving my life as a child), he was also known for his great humble humility and charity towards those in need. What a touching story that would make into the script.
There is a great deal of material of ‘Fact’ in the story of Alan Turing to make a fantastic movie without resorting to fiction. I can only hope that the script writers at Black Bear will here our message on this issue.
