After a long and earnest (probably still on-going) discussion in comments about plagiarism, collaboration and communication far too interesting and labyrinthine for me to sum up (though who knows, maybe I can keep the cycle of followup posts going), we finally got a truly exciting and original idea: when is somebody gonna make a movie about Ed Witten? If string theory is confirmed at CERN, it would make a great ending (and if it isn’t, Hollywood can just change the story).
EDIT: Of course, I wrote this when my brain was too addled by thinking about string theory and the ethics of collaboration to be thinking straight. Witten is a lovely guy, and deserves better than to have anybody make a movie about him until he decides it’s a good idea. Besides, Thomas is right; Grothendieck is where it’s at, movie-wise, at least.