The Bit Player
A documentary biopic of Claude Shannon, the originator of information theory. Because Shannon died in 2001, interviews are reenacted, very plausibly, by John Hutton as Shannon, with other actors as Shannon’s wives and the filmmakers. Shannon hated to be bored, and he was bored a lot; he hated to cheat, and he felt that not working when he was at work was cheating. You can see from this sketch (though it doesn’t mention it) how Shannon could have lived in the same apartment building at Lévi-Strauss, at a time when Lévi-Strauss was desperate to learn about computing, without meeting him. Shannon spent an astonishing amount of time making hilarious toys, including a ski lift between the porch of his shore house and the beach, constructed with Marvin Minsky.