The film Bobby Fischer Live, a "bio picture about the controversial life of the most famous and best chess player who has ever lived," is due for release in the US on August 1st 2009. It is produced and directed by Damian Robert Chapa, 46, who started his career with the cult film "Bound by Honor" (or Blood in, blood out) and went on to star in Under Siege, Street Fighter (with Jean-Claude Van Damme) and Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills. Today Chapa heads Amadeus Pictures and develops, produces, writes and directs in his own productions. For the new film Bobby Fischer Live he appears as lead actor, director, producer and writer.
The trailer is posted on YouTube (click on the image) and shows a number of key scenes. Above is, we assume, Boris Spassky (played by Jaime Campos) facing Fischer (played by Chapa), with Lothar Schmid standing in the background.
The premiere of “Me & Bobby Fischer” kicked off Green Light Films’ Bíódagar film festival on April 16. The director is Friðrik Guðmundsson and the film centers around Sæmi Pálsson, carpenter, retired policeman and unlikely Fischer companion, as he ventures to Japan and back to deliver the late chess grandmaster to exile in Iceland. “I wasn’t really interested in Bobby Fischer," says Guðmundsson amazingly, "I was only interested in Sæmi and his friendship with Bobby Fischer. They were totally different types. Like Yin and Yang. It’s difficult to imagine that they would have been friends.”
There is comparatively little footage of Fischer himself. The crew followed Bobby around Reykjavík for a brief period of time, almost too brief for those interested in delving deeper into the psyche of the protagonist. A full review of this film, interestring and somewhat disturbing, is to be found in the Reykjavík Grapevein.
Trailer of the film "Me & Bobby Fischer" by Friðrik Guðmundsson
Want to see the real Fischer for a change? Here's footage from an interview we had not seen before, though of course everybody has heard the key soundbites from it.
World Champion Bobby Fischer on chess skills and female players
