Author: Larry S. Tamarkin
Date: 10:00:11 10/31/98
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I certainly dint want to get into this very much, but I guess I just can't help it. So please note that I'm much too biased against the Waitzkin family for screwing me out of even that book credit to be (completely), objective. If I did take a viewpoint, I'd have to agree with you, especially as I had the experience of Josh cruelly laughing in my face, as he crushed me in a blitz game at the Marshall, to impress several of his friends that were standing around us. Of course none of us are perfect, & fame tends to glamorize people, often more than they deserve. But I read passages from his own book, (which I did the diagrams for), where he tends to portray himself as some kind of extra kindly soul (giving a homeless man a $20.00 bill, after winning the master title). The comparison with the real guy, seems pretty phony to me. Being humiliated by a so obviously better chess player is also one of the less enjoyable things I'm going back too, but is part of the game, and something else that we chess-players, striving for improvement, must 'steel' ourselves for in order to improve, as chess is also at least partly, a vicious game. But naturally, since Waitzkin is portrayed as such a 'saint' in this movie, (and his own book), I feel compelled to say that he is really much like any other wizened, privileged 'street tough' in the chess world. Probably one of the reasons he is as good as he is. I think Fischer once said that, 'Chess is not for nice guys' (or maybe Karpov said that!?). However, I should mention that I know Bruce Pandolfini for many years. (He is nothing like the character Ben Kingsley portrayed in the movie, & why they portrayed him as Irish I have no idea:) He is a much more interesting character then the one portrayed in the movie, and has at times in the past been a real friend to me. I Have met Fred, Josh & his mom all separately, and many of the other people illustrated in the movie, which portrays the chess world of 1980's NY in very broad strokes indeed. Also the Vinnie character in the movie was an incredibly obnoxious, putrid individual. (example; I played Vinnie all night once, at the Chess Center of NY in the early 1980's, losing all of next weeks paycheck to him, while he hurled curses and belittling comments at me. I promptly paid him all of the cash in my pocket and the next week, most of my paycheck. What did I get for my honesty - Years of this creep cursing me out whenever I entered the same chess club environment. He ultimately died of Aids, but was given a 'tender' obituary in Chess Life, by Sal Matera, but you will find few people in the chess world that have a single nice word to say about this person, even though he has left our world - They are too hurt! It was a travesty of the movie producers to make a hero of this so obviously disgusting character. But that's Hollywood. They got a few things in the movie right, but very few things, and it was all twisted for the sake of what is actually a very conventionally told story. The movie was well acted, but all in all, just a movie, taking reality, finding some of its flavor, but almost none of it substance. (But maybe they got the personality of Fred to that teacher right, I don't know?!). There is more, but I'm all tuckered out, remembering the above just now. I gotta go pack some boxes... mrslug - the inkompetent chess software addict! On October 31, 1998 at 11:28:20, Fernando Villegas wrote: >Hi Larry: >Of course support is a very different thing. What the father or Waitskin did >does not seems to me being just support. He definitively pushed the poor boy. Do >You remember that part of the movie when a teacher talks about the "chess >things" and then the faher gets angry and say that the kid will be better in >that chess thing a lot more than she will ever be in his craft? >The idiot surely believed he had crushed the teacher with that broadside, that >he has proved something, but is not the case. The teacher was right. The chess >thing was taking too much of the life of the kid and the fact that Waitzskin was >going to be better chess player than she will be as a teacher was not relevant. >Better to be an average happy boy that an angished chess genius at 8 years old. >I love a lot this game but I never considered to put my daughters to play it. I >would consider that a painful lose of time in a moment of his lives where >another things are a lot more important than to know how to play the Ruy lópez. >Waitskin was avictim of an stupid father, one of those guys that are all the >time trying to use his children a test of how good they are as a family, a >religion or etnic sect or whatever. >Fernando
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