Bobby Fischer in Reykjavik
Though I made a film called Searching for Bobby Fischer, I never actually met him. I never had the opportunity during the writing or making of the film because -- as young Josh Waitzkin says in the opening of the film -- after his stunning achievement in Reykjavik, Iceland, Bobby Fischer made "the most original and unexpected move of all ... he disappeared."
No one knew where Fischer was back then in the early 1990s when we were making the film. Someone must have known, of course; no one can live on their own in total obscurity. But nobody who was talking to me had any idea where he was.
But then, just as we were finishing shooting in the fall of 1992, something terrible for a film with a philosophical title like Searching for Bobby Fischer happened: He was found.
He surfaced in Belgrade, and I thought, What rotten luck for me, that after years of being invisible and inscrutable and shrouded in myth, Fischer turns up bragging about a high-priced rematch he's organizing against his old Russian adversary, Boris Spassky.
To my great relief, though, just months after dispatching Spassky and collecting his money (and an arrest warrant, but more on that later), Fischer made another surprising move: He disappeared again!
Now he was rumored to be living ... everywhere. In Manila. In Tokyo. Spotted in Budapest. Believed by some to be playing chess games anonymously on the Internet. He was a ghost again, underground, and this pattern of appearances and disappearances -- or wanderings -- became the routine of his latter years -- his 'latter' years, like with any prodigy, and most professional chess players, beginning after an early pinnacle at age 29.
For most of his life then, the last 35 years of it, Bobby Fischer was far less famous than he was infamous. His great accomplishments in the '60s and '70s were over, and he now ran afoul not of gambits on a chess board, but of the laws of nations, and grew more and more bitter and unstable as he roamed the world as a fugitive.
His first brush with the authorities came in 1981, when he was detained for two days after being mistaken for a bank robber in Southern California (after which he wrote a lurid pamphlet about the experience called, I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse!)
His last arrest -- and the extradition battle that followed -- came in 2004, in Narita, Japan, as he tried to board a flight to the Philippines using a revoked passport.
This legal trouble, most of his legal troubles and expatriate status, stemmed from his participation in the Spassky rematch in Yugoslavia in 1992 in defiance of the UN's embargo and the US Treasury's warnings. It was this arrest warrant that eventually caught up with him in Japan. (He won the match in Belgrade, by the way, and pocketed $3 million dollars.)
The young half-Jewish American, who during the Cold War beat the Russians at the game they had so long dominated, who came to symbolize American intellectual might -- and for those who could use the rhetoric, the superiority of Capitalism over Communism -- now railed against America and Jews with hatred and vengeance.
The day after 9/11, Bobby said:
This is wonderful news. It's time for the US to get their heads kicked in. Finish off the US once and for all. Fuck the US. Fuck the Jews. They're murderous, criminal, thieving, lying bastards. They made up the Holocaust. They are the worst liars.
This kind of rant from Fischer was not, sadly, a rare one, and you can't help but wonder how he got to this place. Did it begin after his first arrest, or when he was told he'd be jailed if he ever returned to the US, or did it start much earlier, in his youth, in Brooklyn, in school, in the streets, at home, in the smoky corners of chess clubs, these kinds of paranoid thoughts beginning to form in the head of a boy who seemed to all to be concentrating only on the beauty of a chess position on the board?
The film Searching for Bobby Fischer, despite its title, wasn't really about him, but rather what he represented to the chess world, to chess teacher Bruce Pandolfini, to chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, to his parents, and to us: the distance that is sometimes narrow between art and science, success and failure, genius and madness, and the great price one often has to pay for great talent.
Bobby Fischer died of kidney failure on January 17, 2008, in exile in Reykjavik, Iceland -- the same city where he became the World Chess Champion in 1972.
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Fischer made a lot of goofy statements years before he defeated Spassky to become World Champion, and had many chess fans as well as everyone else wondering about the link between genius and madness. Possibly because a number of world-ranked Grandmasters in prior decades also led some bizarre lives.
Does anyone beside me think it was brain-dead stupidity for the UN and the US to embargo chess matches in Yugoslavia?
You may want to vist [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/arts/19bobb.html]
An interesting article, but MAINLY there's a link here that allows you to view 3 games played by Fisher & several of his opponents, move by move.
NYT - January 19, 2008 - An Appraisal
Fischer vs. the World: A Chess Giant’s Endgame
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
There may be only three human activities in which miraculous accomplishment is possible before adulthood: mathematics, music and chess. These are abstract, almost invented realms, closed systems bounded by rules of custom or principle. Here, the child learns, is how elements combine and transform; here are the laws that govern their interactions; and here are the possibilities that emerge as you play with signs, symbols, sounds or pieces. Nothing else need be known or understood — at least at first. A child’s gifts in such realms can seem otherworldly, the achievements effortlessly magical. But as Bobby Fischer’s death on Thursday might remind us, even abstract gifts can exact a terrible price. ...
For those wondering about what happened to Josh Waitzkin, he is now working equally hard at his martial arts training (Tai Chi/pushing hands) and his chess. I am sure he is a more balanced individual for this approach to life.
It is a shame what happened to Fischer who I have considered an artist of the game from my teen years on. I am not sure where his anti- semitic bile comes from but it does take the luster off of what would otherwise be an outstanding career. As far as his paranoia goes, it was found out after the championship with Spasky that the Soviets were in fact spying and doing other dirty tricks to mess with his mind. Whoever made up the joke, "just cause your paranoid don't mean they're not out to get you", may have had Fischer in mind.
In a way he reminds me a little bit of John Nash who inspired the book and movie, A Beautiful Mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash
He was a brilliant mathematician who, it turned out, had schizophrenia. His life seems to have turned out better than Fischer's though. He won the Nobel prize in economics in 1994.
he has proven that he is a genius.
and these are his comments.
consider them. fully.
what have you done.
how do your comments
stack up to his.
perhaps he is right.
he has more credibility
than you do.
he has proven himself a genius.
think twice before you attack him.
for what it's worth, the united states, murders many of its citizens every year by denying them employment or medical services or social services. imagine a 911 (you know - the planes and buildings exploding) every couple weeks, every year. this is america's negligence. this is america's sin. this and making countless lives hopeless, and when they fall, and turn to crime, incarcerating them. america is a trap. play the game and you're a whore, don't play the game, and you're a criminal. america sucks. bobby fischer spoke some truth, then died. he was a genius. consider his thoughts. really. consider his thoughts. he was a genius.
amen.
A few weeks ago I saw an interview of Bobby Fischer on (I'm not sure, FOX, MSNBC). In this interview, Fischer took dead aim in criticising the ruling communist party of the current Russian Group. By that I mean Putin and company." I thought to myself at the time 'Man, he is really taking a chance with his life here, being so critical of these communists. It might get him killed". Now I find out he has died from 'kidney failure' I have my doubts as to the cause of death. We may never know the truth but we do know that the old guard is still practicing selective homicide when it suits there purpose.
I read an interview that Mr. Fischer allowed back in the 1990's. He claims that you never compensated him for the use of his name in your film. Is that true? Did you use this man's name without his permission and without compensation?
Not that you'll ever answer me.
PA Firefighter
Very nice tribute. "Searching" is one of my all-time favorite films. These are just two of my favorite scenes:
Josh struggles with a difficult chess position. His teacher (Ben Kingsley) says "let me make it easy for you" and sweeps all the pieces onto the floor. Josh solves the problem looking at the blank board.
Ben Kingsley's character berates Josh for lacking Fischer's arrogance and contempt, not just for his opponents, but for the world. Josh's simple reply: "I'm not him" is the core of the film.
Such a sad sad ending to a life that was once so revered. The other American World Chess Champions, Morphy and Wilhelm Steinitz both slipped into mental illness too. I really believe Bobby suffered from Asperger's syndrome, be clearly fit the pattern that shows obesession in a narrow field and an inability to engage in constructive interpersonal relationships. So sad. Because of him, I got interested in chess and played it for 30 years first, over the board, then gravitating to correspondence and then internet play. Sadly, I gave it up because now too many people can cheat on line with computers. I've now switched over to bridge, which computers cannot cheat as much on line. His Fischerrandom Chess was an interesting variant, his Predecessor Capablanca also proposed a variant with additional pieces, a Chancellor and Archbishop. It's only a matter of time before Chess mutates to another form
What a wonderful movie, cast and message. I never tire of watching it and it never ceases to move and inspire. As soon as I saw that Bobby had died, I wondered what Josh was thinking. Whatever happened to the boy, Max, who played him in the movie - terrific little actor.
Heroes have scars. Heroes have just the one moment that defines them. Beyond their defining moments, they are drunks, or cheaters, or insecure, or just assholes - like the rest of us. Certainly, this is the case for Bobby Fischer. In his moment, he lifted our spirits in a unique and memorable way. That is what made him famous - that is the Bobby Fischer who gets acknowledged. When we insist on a full accounting, we end up with no heroes - no Jefferson, no King, no Churchill, no heroes at all - just drunks, cheaters, and assholes.
Nice eulogy. And a great movie.
Maybe Russian scientists came up with some really bad drugs to give Bobby Fischer for the sake of their national, okay, forget it. But I used to play chess at Buck's Rock Summer Camp in the early '70s with Peter J. Winston, then rated the best 13-year old chess player in the country. People eventually expected Peter to become the next Bobby Fischer, and sure enough he disappeared as well, in the late '70s. He was never found. It is easier for me to believe there's something funny going on then to think there's something contained in great chess playing that makes a person want to disappear. And the Russians were suspected of being capable of a lot of things back then (not that they're so great nowadays). From what distance might they recognize a person as a future threat?
It is really nice to see a well thought-out article and equally thoughtful (most of them!) comments.
Just set me thinking: are we as a society any better or freer than the soviets or present-day Chinese, who we denounce for ill-treating their dissidents? I understand sanctions, etc. but we did hound a harmless genius, just for being a bit "mad". We made his life hell with that warrant for doing the only thing the poor fellow knew how to do well, play chess. You can't expect a brilliant mind to just swallow it all and turn himself in. Unfortunately he paid the price.
Collectively, we didn't come out any better either. We have much to learn from a little country like Iceland that gave him peace and the space to be himself.
RIP
PS.love the movie. still watch it when i need inspiration
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