SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER (1993)



If you’re ever standing around awkwardly at a cocktail party with my father, just mention this movie and watch his eyes light up: you’ll instantly have a new friend and at least half an hour of fresh conversation fodder. Before he retired, you see, my father was a public school teacher who worked with “gifted and talented” students – and no, despite the beliefs of every pushy parent in America, not all of their little darlings are technically “gifted” – but Joshua Waitzkin, the real-life chess prodigy at the heart of screenwriter Steve Zaillian’s directorial debut, would definitely qualify. And that’s the character’s problem: as the saying goes, “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promising.” Waitzkin (portrayed with believable, naturalistic grace by a then-eight-year-old Max Pomeranc) has undeniable talent, but worries his gift will ultimately rob him of a normal, happy life. The movie comes down to a battle for Waitzkin’s soul, with Ben Kingsley’s joyless mentor on one side, urging the boy to use his abilities to win at all costs (like World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer), and Laurence Fishburne’s laid-back speed chess guru on the other, reminding Waitzkin that Fischer’s exclusive focus on winning eventually drove him into bitter seclusion. The notion that winning and happiness aren’t necessarily the same thing is a rare theme in Hollywood (and the U.S. in general)...which is exactly why my Dad and me both dig this film so much.

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Rescue Dawn, Werner Herzog's most recent feature film (as a directors; Werner the part-time actor can be seen on-screen, imaginatively cast as a character called "The German", in Zak Penn's comedy The Grand is just now coming out on DVD in England, which means that, as water to a man just having crossed the desert, we can turn to the British papers now to be refreshed and refortified with that most wonderous of all things, Werner Herzog interviews! Will he profess his newfound enthusiasm for working in the Hollywood system or damn the whole of cinema as a fraud and a humbug? Will he discuss his latest hobby, whether it's butterfly collecting or grave robbing? Will he he recall those carefree days when he killed him a bear when he was only three? Talking to Marc Lee of the London Telegraph, Herzog decided to go for the set' em-up-and-knock-'em-down approach, a Teutonic, Klaus-Kinski-flavored variation what we in the States used to call "the ol' bait and switch." He told his interlocutor that he not only hadn't seen any movies before he was eleven but that, up to that point, he hadn't been aware that the form existed. Lee, hearing what in a normal Q & A would be an obvious set-up, ventured that "it must have been a shock to encounter these magical, bright, flickering images for the first time." "No!" replies Werner, transported back to that magical time when he and the art to which he would devote his life first caught each other's eye. "It was not a shock. There was a travelling projectionist who came to this tiny little village in the mountains and showed a couple of films in the school, and they didn't impress me at all. It was not a shock; it was just very disappointing. The films were so lousy. One was about Eskimos building an igloo. And I could tell - because I had grown up in the mountains and in snow - that these 'Eskimos' had hardly any idea about how to shape something with snow. They were just doing a lousy job. Then there was a cut, and suddenly the igloo was built perfectly." And don't get him started on how fake it looked when the Eskimos pulling their steamboat up a mountain.

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Now that the Academy Award nominations have been announced, we can all buckle up and wait to find out who the lucky non-winners are. Don't get us wrong: an Oscar win has a lot to recommend it. It bestows upon the recipient not just bragging rights but a new, higher pay ceiling and, if he doesn't screw it up the way Kevin Spacey did, a privileged glow and a long-term shot at juicier roles. But as anyone who's spent ten minutes reading about Cary Grant or Alfred Hitchcock knows, there's nothing that sets a major Hollywood figure apart like never having won an Oscar — that is, a real Oscar, and none of that special lifetime career achievement bullshit. Then, every time someone writes a profile of you, they can set aside a moment to tear their hair out over the fact that you never got the big prize — and everyone, including the people who'd never given it a second's thought before, will automatically do you the honor of agreeing that, yes, it is a shocking thing now that you mention it. In recent years, the sudden realization that Paul Newman and Martin Scorsese, to name two examples, had never won Oscars set off palpitations in the entertainment media, and cries went out urging the Academy to do the right thing, to make sure that they did not go to their graves un-Oscared, even if it meant honoring, by association, such lesser works as The Color of Money and The Departed. It's hard not to feel that, by finally joining what sometimes seems to be the majority, these men lost a little something that had previously set them apart from the likes of Red Buttons, Cliff Robertson, Roberto Begnini.

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