Настоящий гений: За кулисами комедии 1985 года.

1985 film by Martha Coolidge

Real Genius is a 1985 American science fiction comedy film directed by Martha Coolidge, written by Neal Israel, Pat Proft, and PJ Torokvei, and starring Val Kilmer and Gabriel Jarret. The film, set on the campus of Pacific Tech, a science and engineering university similar to Caltech, follows Chris Knight (Kilmer), a genius in his senior year, who is paired with a new student on campus, Mitch Taylor (Jarret), to work on a chemical laser, only to learn it will be used for dangerous purposes. The film received positive reviews from critics and grossed $13 million at the North American box office. The screenplay was extensively rewritten, first by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, later by Coolidge and PJ Torokvei. Producer Brian Grazer remembers that when Val Kilmer came in to audition for the role of Chris Knight, he brought candy bars and performed tricks. Kilmer remembered it differently. "The character wasn't polite, so when I shook Grazer's hand and he said, 'Hi, I'm the producer,' I said, 'I'm sorry. You look like you're 12 years old. I like to work with men.'" To achieve the house filled with popcorn for the film's climax, the production team popped popcorn continuously for three months. The popcorn was treated with fire retardant so it would not combust and covered so that it would not be eaten by birds and possibly poison them. The popcorn was then shipped to a subdivision under construction in Canyon Country, northwest of Los Angeles, and placed in the house. To promote the film, the studio held what it billed as "the world's first computer press conference" with Coolidge and Grazer answering journalists' questions via computer terminals and relayed over the CompuServe online service. The dorm in the film is based on Dabney House at Caltech, and Caltech students served as consultants and played extras in the film.

Real Genius was released on August 9, 1985 in 990 theaters grossing $2.5 million in its first weekend. It went on to make $12,952,019 in North America. On Metacritic, the film received a score of 71 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Colin Greenland reviewed the film for White Dwarf #85, and stated that it was "yet another celebration of the anxious wonder of growing up white, middle class and heterosexual in America. The lovable weirdos squabble in the lab, play hi tech pranks in the dorm and party in the lecture theater. Nerds just wanna have fun. Nerds have feelings too. Hug a Nerd today." In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "the film is best when it takes [the students] seriously, though it does so only intermittently." David Ansen wrote in his review for Newsweek, "When it's good, the dormitory high jinks feel like the genuine release of teen age tensions and cruelty. Too bad the story isn't as smart as the kids in it." In her review for The Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, "Many of the scenes, already badly written, fail to fulfill their screwball potential [D]espite its enthusiastic young cast and its many good intentions, it doesn't quite succeed. I guess there's a leak in the think tank." Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert awarded the film three and a half stars out of four, saying that it "contains many pleasures, but one of the best is its conviction that the American campus contains life as we know it." In his review for The Globe and Mail, Salem Alaton wrote, "Producer Brian Grazer craved a feel good picture, and she [Martha Coolidge] turned in the summer's best, and she didn't cheat to do it. There's heart in the kookiness. Real Genius has real people, real comedy and real fun." Richard Schickel of Time praised the film for being "a smart, no nonsense movie that may actually teach its prime audience a valuable lesson: the best retort to an intolerable situation is not necessarily a food fight. Better results, and more fun, come from rubbing a few brains briskly together."

In the MythBusters episode "Car vs. Rain", first broadcast on June 17, 2009, the MythBusters team tried to determine whether the final scene in the film, the destruction of Dr Hathaway's house with laser popped popcorn, is actually possible. First they used a ten watt laser to pop a single kernel wrapped in aluminum foil, showing that popping corn is possible with a laser. Then they tested a scaled down model of a house. The popcorn was popped through induction heating because a sufficiently large laser was not available. The result was that the popcorn was unable to expand sufficiently to break glass, much less break open a door or move the house off its foundation. Instead, it ceased to expand and then simply charred. It was also specifically stated in the program that a five megawatt laser still did not exist, even in military applications, and that the most powerful military laser they knew of was 100 kilowatts. in a home setting that a kernel of corn directly exposed to laser light from accessible consumer level lasers could be popped as reported by TechCrunch. The solid xenon halogen laser proposed and built by Chris in the latter half of the film, though in the realm of science fiction, was based on a theory of the time. Real Genius, through consultant Martin A. Gundersen (who played the math professor), was later cited in an academic publication that detailed the scientific basis behind the laser.

Reports surfaced in September 2014 that a potential television series was in the works. NBC was set to produce the comedy series with Sony TV, Happy Madison and 3 Arts Entertainment. as of December 2017 there were no updates on the production.