New Jim Carrey film, 'Lost' and books show 23 is more than just a number

February 22, 2007|By Virgil Dickson, REDEYE.

The human body has 23 pairs of chromosomes. William Shakespeare is believed to have been born and died on April 23. The number on Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls jersey for most of his career was 23.

Twenty-three--call it the new 13. But is it lucky or unlucky? Or is it just a number like any other? Those are the questions being brought to the big screen Friday in the film "The Number 23," which stars Jim Carrey as Walter, a man who reads a mystery novel about a detective who has a compulsion for the number 23. As a result, Walter becomes aware of many occurrences of 23 in his own life.

Fernley Phillips, screenwriter of "The Number 23," loosely based his script on the 23 enigma, an actual belief that all events are somehow connected to the number 23.

The new movie, along with many books and TV shows such as "Lost," have helped give 23 a cult status among conspiracy-theory lovers. Just type "23 enigma" into a Web search engine, and you'll find scores of sites that debate the theory and give believable and far-fetched examples of 23 coincidences.

To many conspiracy buffs, the 23 enigma adds up to trouble. For example, believers connect the enigma to 9/11 by adding up the date, Sept.11, 2001, in this way: 9+11+2+0+0+1=23. But in order to tie the enigma to Adolf Hitler, they must change the equation when adding up the date he killed himself. April 30, 1945, only adds up to 23 when they drop the 30: 4+1+9+4+5=23.

But whether the number is good or bad, Phillips said, "is something that the number doesn't have any control over. It's what the person has control over. How you react to stuff is totally up to the person."

In the film, the more Carrey's Walter looks for the number, the more he sees it--everywhere. He met his wife when he was 23. He met her on Sept. 14--thus he adds 9 (Sept.) and 14 and gets 23. He adds up the letters in his full name and gets 23.

Walter becomes obsessed with the number to the point that he believes it controls his destiny--and he freaks out.

"The 23 enigma seems to offer a clue as to how our consciousness works in that the more we look for 23s, the more we find them everywhere," said Lance Bauscher, director of a documentary about author Robert Anton Wilson, who explored the 23 enigma in his books.

"If you're looking for conspiracies you're going to find them," Bauscher said. But, he added, even Wilson was stumped by the 23 enigma. "As Wilson suggested, there are so many synchronicities and weird coincidences associated with the number 23 that it must mean something."

Anthony Aveni, a professor of astronomy and anthropology at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., had never heard of the 23 enigma, but said that after the popularity of such novels as "The Da Vinci Code," people find hidden meanings in numbers and words. The reason for this, he said, is that society has become more distrustful of religion and government.

"They look for answers to difficult questions by searching out secret words and numbers in hidden messages," Aveni said. "Numbers, like words, are a means of expressing our ideas." Screenwriter Phillips said people may be giving too much power to the number 23. "I think you could do this with any number," he said.

But for Damon Lindelof, co-creator and executive producer of the ABC drama "Lost," "it is a good lucky number. The first thing I do when I get to Las Vegas, every time I go, is I drop $50 on the number 23. It hasn't hit yet, but one of these days ..."

Lindelof has been fascinated by the 23 enigma since his childhood and has made the number part of the mysteries on "Lost." Jack Shepard's seat on doomed Oceanic Flight 815 was in Row 23. Twenty-three passengers from the tail section of the plane survived the crash. And the number is among Hurley's winning lottery numbers--4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42--that end up bringing him and the other survivors bad luck.

Though Lindelof said the number 23 is often purposely used on "Lost," he sometimes is just as surprised as some fans when it pops up. Conspiracy or coincidence? It's a perfect illustration of the 23 enigma.

"People add addresses up on houses [we film in] and say it equals 23," Lindelof said. "And we're like, 'It does?' "