I saw a sneak preview of Pi in Westwood, CA after finding a strange rack-card at Tower Records. The front of the card had the symbol pi and the digits printed i

I saw a sneak preview of Pi in Westwood, CA after finding a strange rack-card at Tower Records. The front of the card had the symbol pi and the digits printed in microscopic text in the background. The back had two showtimes, one that very night and one the next. This was 1998--the fledgling Google had no information on the film. I went to see it and was absolutely gobsmacked. I forced my friend to come to the second showing with me. The math was fascinating to me but the thing that really made an impression was that computer. I could find no information at the time but later searches turned up that New Yorker article on the Chudnovsky brothers. Given that Aronofsky grew up in New York, I would not be surprised if he heard about the Chudnovsky brothers in the Russian Jewish community.