Nathan and Howard

I don’t know what it says about me that it’s not terribly uncommon for me to watch movies or television shows about people who are deeply mentally ill and identify strongly with the protagonists.

Watching The Dropout, for example, I found myself thinking that while I could not understand or identify with Elizabeth Holmes’ ferocious professional drive or Herculean ambition, I saw a lot of myself in the profound difficulty she experienced connecting with other people or understanding emotions or the world around her. 

I also identified with just how painfully awkward she was in her day to day life, even as she was able to turn it on and be confident and assertive when the occasion called for it.

I just watched Rules Don’t Apply for Control Nathan Rabin 4.0, The Fractured Mirror and the Fractured Mirror book. Like seemingly everyone, I have long been fascinated by the life and legend of Howard Hughes.

He’s a fascinating dude. There’s a reason they make lots of movies about him. But watching Rules Don’t Apply, I found myself identifying strongly with Hughes as a human being for the first time.

The movie takes place in 1958, when the then-fifty-three-year-old Hughes was at a crossroads in his life. He was not yet a notorious recluse hiding away from the world, refraining from bathing and pissing in jars but he was on his way there. He’s struggling mightily to hold onto his business empire and what’s left of his sanity.

I could identify with Hughes as someone with intense mental illness who was extremely high-functioning but even more than that I could relate to Hughes’ deep desire to be left alone.

There’s a great scene in Rules Don’t Apply where a moneyman played by Oliver Platt desperately wants to give Hughes four hundred million dollars he needs but only on the grounds that he meet with him in person, if only for a handshake and a minute or two of pleasantries.

Hughes needs the money but he cannot bring himself to spend even a moment with someone he doesn’t know. I would meet with strangers if there was even 400 dollars riding on it but I understand and share that awful, awfully relatable impulse to hide from a world you do not understand and does not understand you, in part because you do not understand yourself.

The difference is that Hughes was a public figure worth billions with thousands of jobs dependent on him holding it together enough to prevent total ruin. He was super fucking famous, a household name. The stakes were high. Disappearing wasn’t really an option for him when he chose to be a recluse.

The same is not true of me. I can disappear from the world with the exception of my family life and this website/podcast/self-publishing house without seemingly anyone paying attention.

True anonymity was ultimately the only luxury Hughes could not afford. In that respect I am fortunate that the same cannot be said of me, even in a digital age where it’s both easier and harder to opt out of just about everything but the essentials.

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