Rewatching Real Genius From The Vantage Point Of 2022

by Travis Mateer

If you do an online search about space lasers in 2022, you might run across a variety of memes mocking a particular political party and the space force projection being worked on as terrestrial power centers move to weaponize space.

When I rewatched the 1985 movie REAL GENIUS, starring Val Kilmer as a goofy nerd unknowingly working on a weapon for the CIA, I didn’t recall the opening sequence involving a space laser, and I certainly didn’t remember hearing the phrase “the rabbit is in the hole” being uttered by a military figure off-screen.

What I did recall about this movie is the basic narrative of a high school prodigy, Mitch Taylor (played by Gabriel Jarret) recruited at the age of 15 to attend “Pacific Tech”, a university modeled heavily after Cal Tech’s campus culture, along with MIT. Here’s a link and a screenshot that backs this up:

The character shown above is “Lazlo Hollyfeld”, a former child prodigy who snapped and now lives in the steam tunnels. I wonder if there are any REAL world examples of gifted youth made to snap by a University program?

The steam tunnels at Cal Tech are actually a thing. I even found a story about a professor connected to the Manhattan project who spent the night in the tunnels after losing a bet.

I’m sure you’ve all heard stories about Richard Feynman, who used to be a physics prof here. It’s well known that he picked locks and opened safes while he was working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. He also taught a class on lock-picking to undergrads for a while. But, what’s less well known is that he once spent a night in the steam tunnels, sleeping on this mattress. The story goes that he once made a bet with an undergrad about some physics fact that the undergrad thought he’d gotten wrong. Anyway, the forfeit he agreed to if he was wrong was that he’d have to sleep in the steam tunnels for a night.

While this stuff is interesting, how does it apply to what’s happening today? Maybe it will help to explain why I decided to watch this movie again in the first place, and it begins with the collapse of FTX.

Normally I’d say drug use and group sex is a private matter, but when that behavior potentially fuels a multi-billion dollar crypto-scam that reaches deeply into geopolitics, well, it might be something to take into consideration beyond the salacious and (in this case) disgusting mental images that may accompany serious inquiries.

I’ll let the New York Post frame this part of the growing scandal:

The in-house performance coach at FTX claimed Tuesday the doomed crypto firm’s headquarters in the Bahamas was a “pretty tame place” — despite rampant speculation about its executives’ sex lives and alleged substance use.

Online gossip alleging the group lived in a “polycule” — or network of polyamorous relationships — surged after CoinDesk reported the executives “are, or used to be, paired up in romantic relationships with each other.”

Dr. George K. Lerner, a psychiatrist, reportedly served as a therapist to disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and an adviser to many of the firm’s employees. Bankman-Fried and his ex-lover Caroline Ellison were reportedly part of a 10-person group that ran FTX and its sister cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research from a “luxury penthouse” in the Bahamas.

When I think of island getaways and nerdy academics, this is what immediately comes to mind.

Another thing that pops into my head is a different crypto-trader and what he claimed about Puerto Rico.

Getting back to the movie, 15 year old Mitch Taylor finds himself in a room with an adult woman who gets away with being a sexual predator because she’s a woman. We find out later in the movie she first wanted the 12 year old Lazlo, but he snapped after discovering his brain was being exploited by the CIA to create weaponry. Don’t worry (SPOILER!), she ends up with the adult version of Lazlo at the end, showing up in an RV with a plan to go to a “survival place in Wyoming”. Are you fucking kidding me?

The permissive sexual environment depicted in Real Genius isn’t just intended to entice teenagers to make a buck for Hollywood, it’s an actual reflection of the culture that has permeated this area for a long time. I’m thinking of Jack Parsons, the infamous scientist who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where our very own Bryan Von Lossberg once worked.

Before getting to Bryan’s JPL provenance, here’s some perspective on Parsons and the occultist he became “enamored” with, Aleister Crowley, from a New York Post article about Parsons:

Parsons attended one of Crowley’s OTO masses, led by “magicians,” in LA in 1939, and became enamored with the odd leader’s beliefs in hidden dimensions and the religion’s unique sexual freedom. Participants were encouraged to swap partners — three decades before the sexual revolution.

Two years later, Parsons and his wife, Helen, were members of the OTO. The group was a strange blend of actors, opera singers, scientists, German expats and others who subscribed to Crowley’s teachings — particularly the no-strings-attached canoodling.

I wonder if this kind of behavior still permeates the culture at JPL? Maybe someone should ask Bryan Von Rocket Scientist.

Isn’t that fascinating? I think it’s fascinating. And here are a few more fascinating things to consider about this movie before I wrap this up.

Considering all the Epstein/MIT/vaccine connections in real life, I was rather shocked to hear the following line casually tossed out by Val Kilmer’s character, Christopher Knight. Here’s a screenshot of the dialogue:

Another interesting decision made by the filmmakers who created this piece of 80’s cinema can be seen near the end, when the youngsters must apply their prankster skills to thwart their military/intelligence handlers. The original target for the military testing of the laser is a motorcade that has a very obvious JFK assassination look. To drive this home, an extra at the end of the movie is briefly shown wearing a sports jersey with the number 22 prominently displayed.

Instead of hitting the motorcade, the pranksters program the laser to blast their mean professor’s home where a tinfoil covered ball of un-popped popcorn awaits. For those familiar with Philip K. Dick’s experience with a pink beam of light, the conclusion of this movie is synchronistically revelatory.

The relevance of how youth are “educated” by the institutions that seek to use them for agendas that don’t necessarily correlate with their own physical, mental and/or spiritual needs has never been more critical to understand than it is today, as shows like Stranger Things continues the psychological grooming of those intelligent youngsters who stand out early in their development, repackaging actual human experimentation as “entertainment” to keep their intuitive defenses down.

To wrap this up, I was going to include a song I made up yesterday while working on this post, but instead I’m going to post a documentary about Aaron Swartz, titled The Internets Own Boy. Why? Because it might be instructive to see what happens when someone as brilliant as Aaron tells an institution like MIT information should be free and accessible.

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