Jamie Foxx as a mentally ill musician takes to the streets of Los Angeles in "The Soloist."

He's not performing for the public. If he has an audience in mind at all, it's the German composer -- he's placed himself in the shadow of Beethoven's statue in Pershing Square in Los Angeles.

The guy says his name is Nathaniel Ayers and that he went to Juilliard.

His story checks out, and Lopez writes it up: A prodigious musical talent grows up in the ghetto, earns a scholarship to Juilliard School to play the cello, succumbs to schizophrenia.