Okay I'll say it... a Bobby Fischer movie has been long overdue

I've just watched a couple of documentaries about Bobby Fischer, and as a avid film enthusiast, I cannot believe that no director or writer has tried to represent Fischer's life a movie! There's so much poignancy in his life and Bobby makes such a great anti-hero. His eccentric characteristics and feats and downfall just cries out a perfect storyline (I mean c'mon guys, that Spassky rematch with all that drama?) 

I'm serious about this people! Am I the only one that feels so adamantly about this? Anyone have any suggestions on how we could help make this a reality? I'm thinking petition might be the only way to get someone's attention. Or maybe the head honchos at chess.com can make some connections with Hollywood 

Hollywood wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot barge pole.

Nowhere near enough Aliens involved, and if they did, he'd end up a hero who saves the world from freedom-hating terrorists.

Is that what you want?

Bobby Fischer was al great American. He mayde a fortune doing what he loved and faithfully followed 'My Country:Love it or leave it.'

From the deepest, darkest ,depths of the psyche,literature has written the tome of madness. Jared Loughner surely knew of it;Hitler's mind was formed by it, and Fischer knew it too. Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Maybe that book should be burned forever.

ever watched "Bobby Fischer Live"?  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1407053/

The idea is bouncing aroud, but "The Pawn Sacrifice" starring Tobey Maguire was postponed indefinitely. David Fincher is toying with the idea. The following link is dated today:

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/461249/Pawn-Sacrifice/credits

   The 'downfall' of Bobby Fischer was just his unwillingness to sell out.

   Milton Friedmann himself said the system was 'flawed'; Fischer saw it as corrupt.

It's all explained in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'.

   The ones who stand accused scream that it is a fraud & forgery.  But just prima facie rationality points to its validity. It cetainly is dangerous stuff. 

I absolutely adore Fischer's chess games, as I'm sure most of you here do.  But frankly the guy was a pyschopath, an eccentric to say the least, and I'm not sure there is any great drama in his life to be immortalized on the big screen.  I'd rather see a movie about Kasparov.  

I think the issue isn’t so much Fischer; unfortunately, it’s chess in general. Hey, I love the game as much as anyone; and I'm a big Fischer Fan, but what pct of the paying public is going to plunk down the cost of a ticket to see a story about someone they know nothing about “playing” a “game” they have little or no interest in? I’m right there with the majority of the chess community – I’d LOVE to see Fischer’s story come to light on the big screen. Unfortunately, I know of maybe one person in my family/social circle who would show any interest in seeing it.

Ignoring that, who would make a good Bobby Fisher on the big screen? Thoughts?

christopher eccleston

@Penquinn: excellent observation: the reason the Josh Waitzkin story went so readily into a film is that it was about a kid whose parents were sort of clueless about his abilities, but recognized them in time for him to do well.  So it's a real fuzzy-feeling story.  (Not to mention the urban connection with park blitz and Fishburne)  I showed the movie to my own son hoping he would get into chess, and he is, but not like Waitzkin.  

There is nothing to make a drama out of Fischer's life except his chess genius.  Maybe his paranoia and anti-semitism.  Dunno.     

Well there was a movie about Bobby in which he was well represented as a focal point- a good taste of him in which a modern day story was developed.

Searching for Bobby Fischer-   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108065/  A prepubescent chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer. Released August 11, 1993

Josh Waitzkin, the subject of this movie, has won the U.S. Junior Chess Championships since the movie was made.

Josh Waitzkin: [about Bobby Fischer] In the days before the event, the whole world wondered if he would show up. Plane after plane waited on the runway, while he napped, took walks, and ate sandwiches. Henry Kissinger called and asked him to go for his country's honor. Soon after arriving, he offended he Icelanders by calling their country inadequate because it had no bowling alleys. He complained about the TV cameras, about the lighting, about the table and chairs, and the contrast of the squares on the board. You could tell them, he said, it's too nice of you. None of this has anything to do with chess of course. But maybe it did. If he won, he'd be the first American world champion in history. If he lost, he'd just be another patzer from Brooklyn.

***SPOILERS*** The movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" parallels the lives of Grand Chess Master Bobby Fischer with that of young seven year-old chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, Max Pomeranc. The movie does it by inserting newsreel footage of Bobby winning the World Chess Championship Tournament in Reykjavik Iceland back in 1972 against the Soviet Unions Boris Spassky. It then jumps back to when Bobby Fischer was a young boy, and man, in the 1950's and 1960's as his obsession with chess brought him the fame and glory that he sought. Yet at the same time denied him the life of a normal boy growing up in post WWII America that his night and day chess fixation cost him.

To be great at anything exacts immense costs.  Fischer is a good example.  No one gets it easy.  But he ended his life a fugitive and isolate.  He's left the stellar games he played.  He died old and ugly and broken and pretty much not respectable.    

If they were to interpret freedom-hating terrorists as America it wouldn't actually require too many liberties to be taken.

Surely you're not trying serve up that tripe....

See, it brings the psychopaths out of the woodwork.