Friday, March 04, 2016

Doctor Fever Much, Brad?

The plight of a Mexican immigrant has caught the attention of Brad Pitt.

The actor-turned-Oscar-winning-producer (he won for 12 Years a Slave, and he was nominated again this year, for the indispensable The Big Short) is overseeing the development of Dr. Q, a Disneyfied take on the real-life story of Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, who went on to become the current head of brain tumor surgery at John Hopkins, one of the leading hospitals in the nation.

Quiñones-Hinojosa crossed over when he was 19, making his way by working on Californian farms to save up, learn English, and go to school (Harvard, no less) to make something of himself.

And, boy, did he ever.

Eat that, Donald Trump.

Anyway. Enough of that.

Pitt is also working on producing a Tony Kushner-written adaptation of He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter’s Quest to Know Him by Mimi Baird and Eve Claxton.

Looks like Pitt has a doctor thing going on these days.

Dr. Baird, FYI, was a medical wunderkind back in the late ’20s, early ’30s, who did research on the biochemical root of manic depression, a condition from which he suffered. Obvs.

His work saved lives, but his findings were vetted much too late to help him. His condition cost him his family, and, eventually, he was lobotomized, dying in his mid-’50s in 1959.

Photo: TheWrap.com.

Update: Pitt is also working on bringing the young-adult novel, Illuminae, to the screen. Because he prolific like that, yo.

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