Toby Maguire will be playing Bobby Fischer in an upcoming movie. It will be interesting to see if they portray Fischer's involvement with Armstrongism. The Worldwide Church of God used this guy and exploited him for all they could get out of him. The more money he gave the better they liked him.
I wonder if the movie producers realize that the very buildings that Fischer played chess in are now vacant and can be used for the film. It would certainly add more authenticity to it all.
Given the numerous articles and books that tell the story of Fischer's involvement with Armstrongism and if the movie producers us it, the church will not be portrayed in a positive light.
Tobey Maguire To Star As Troubled Chess Prodigy Bobby Fischer, But Who Was He Really?
The movie will look at Fischer's career in the 60's (which started at the age of 13) through the '72 match from a script by Steven Knight ("Eastern Promises"). Spassky was the Soviet Chess champion twice while Fischer was the youngest grandmaster at the age of 15 1/2, and would be going head-to-head with a player six years his senior. I can almost see the sports movie trajectory it could take, "Miracle" on a chess board (although Fischer had a pretty flawless win record, so a montage of him always being good at chess might be a bit of a drag).
It's Fischer's life after the win that's ripe for exploration. He stopped defending his chess title officially after a dispute with the World Chess Federation in '75, and later got in trouble with the IRS over unpaid taxes from his winnings in a '92 rematch against Spassky. Here's where it gets rocky: Fischer, a Chicago native, never returned home to the States, living as an expatriate in Hungary, the Philipines, and Germany, among other countries while becoming increasingly prickly and reclusive.
What Zwick and Knight will be missing out on in confining the story to the '72 match is the impact the sudden rush of fame and success had on Fischer and how it effectively broke him in later years. In the few interviews you can find with him in his later years, he not only becomes critical of his home country but outright anti-American, and laced through all of that is a weird strain of anti-Semitism (he actually disavowed his own Jewish roots at one time, and you can read an interview where he discusses discovering the doomsday evangelical sect the Worldwide Church of God here).
