Saturday
Apr122014
Chess on TV and In The Movies
Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 11:09AM
Reader Kevin Connelly wrote in to say that while TV surfing this morning he came across an episode ("Knight Errant") of the old western series "The Rifleman" in which chess played a major role, and recalled an episode of Kojak where a Fischer-like character kills one reminiscent of Botvinnik.
I know there have been various lists and summaries of chess in the movies (here and here, for instance), but are there any good summaries of chess on TV?
Reader Comments (12)
Try out this one http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/ . OK, its not out until later in the year but it covers the life of Alan Turing. Matthew Goode plays the part of Hugh Alexander or as he is more commonly known in chess books C.H.O.D Alexander - born in Ireland - British champion - Won Hastings in 1953 - beating David Bronstein in the process.
I am sure there will be some references to chess in the film and hopefully our beautiful game won't get the Hollywood treatment - remember Knight Moves ...
There is a neat chess scene in Law and Order or one of the spinoffs of a kid playing bullet chess against himself, spinning the board quickly to play both sides of the board. The scene was at the end as the credits were rolling out. I have not been able to find it on youtube.
Here's one from the tv show Numb3rs. They even used some fancy opening names like Grunfeld Defense, Sicilian Defense, and Nimzo Indian Defense to sound legit!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kQ1vPiODV4
[DM: This was only semi-painful to watch! Since it's all going to be mumbo-jumbo to most of their audience, why can't they at least get the mumbo-jumbo right?]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078211/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_83
I have mixed feelings about this one, because it exploits the champion going crazy stereotype (yeah, Bobby Fischer) once again. But the acting of Bruno Ganzo (most known by playing Hitler in Downfall) makes it totally worth seeing.
I still remember an old Columbo episode, "The Most Dangerous Match", in which a mentally disturbed chess master with a delicate constitution, played by Lawrence Harvey, has a breakdown before a big match when he loses a coffeehouse game to his rival, of whom he is already deathly afraid. Knowing that he'll be eaten alive, Harvey's character pushes his opponent into a hotel trash compactor. Needless to say Columbo is onto him from the beginning and the detective begins harassing the chess master in his usual way, leading to a hilarious scene: the master is giving a simultaneous exhibition but Columbo's persistence has him so badly flustered that he plays into a Fool's Mate.
Apparently Peter Falk was fond of chess. I dug up an old Edward Winter column featuring Falk photographed with Viktor Korchnoi: http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter77.html
[DM: I went to the U.S. Open in Pasadena in 1983, both to play and to watch the Kasparov-Korchnoi Candidates match. The match fell through that time around, but Korchnoi played in the tournament (sharing first with Larry Christiansen), and I recall Peter Falk came to watch the tournament at least once.]
Oops, forgot to add a link at the end there. Here's a list Bill Wall put together of chess-themed TV episodes.
http://www.chess.com/blog/billwall/chess-and-television
"DM: This was only semi-painful to watch! Since it's all going to be mumbo-jumbo to most of their audience, why can't they at least get the mumbo-jumbo right?"
What made it painful to me was that they had the character Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz) say he was positive it was the Sicilian Defense. He is the main character of the show and is the mathematical genius. If anyone on their team was going to be the chess expert, it should be him. Throughout the series they often show Charlie playing chess against his father, played by Judd Hirsch, so he is clearly familiar with the game.
[DM: Yes, though as I recall his father always beat him.]
The scene would have made a lot more sense for the first guy claim it was a Grunfeld (which is a plausible mistake for a non tournament chess fan, because both openings start 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4), and then for Charlie to say no, it's actually a Nimzo Indian Defense. It didn't make much sense for the math genius to claim it was the Sicilian (which has no resemblance to the Nimzo Indian) and for the supporting woman character to get the right answer.
[DM: It was all nonsense, because 2...e6 had already been played when the Gruenfeld guess came out, while the Nimzo guess was also stupid (but slightly less so) as it came before 3...Bb4 was played. Bah humbug!]
There's a pop culture thing where really bad chess moves "confuse" the master so much that they don't know how to handle it.
Chess has been featured in several episodes of Cheers. I can't remember which episode it was, but there was one episode where Sam was playing against Frasier. Of course Frasier was the better of the two players, but Sam was cheating. He had a microphone in his ear and had Norm relaying him the best moves from a chess computer. Sam's excuse for the headphones was that he was listening to a baseball game.
Frasier, being the smart guy that he was, was aware that Sam was cheating, and finally called him out on it. Sam tried to deny the accusations claiming it was the baseball game, but Frasier caught him out by telling him the baseball game had already ended a while ago. So Sam took off the headphones and now had to finish the game on his own. He played a move, and Frasier commented on what a horrible, nonsensical move it was. Frasier then attempted to expoit the poor move by Sam, and then Sam's next move was checkmate! So Frasier was good enough at chess to keep up with the computer moves Sam was making, but Sam played such a horrible move that it confused Frasier so much he allowed himself to be mated in one!
Frasier also played several games against Woody, and Woody always got the better of him. Woody wasn't the brightest of characters and Frasier was the smartest, so presumably Woody's stupid moves defeated Frasier. Although Woody Harrelson does like chess in real life!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy7gwQQ2PC8
Another example from a teen show which I can't remember which one, but I remember the situation. There was a computer chess program that was taking on all comers in which I believe was a grade school. All of the best players were going down one by one, and were no match for the computer. Then, the worst player takes his turn. He plays such a terrible move that the computer has a meltdown and plays a move that allows it to be mated in one! Not only Frasier can be fooled by stupid moves, but also computers!
Also in my personal experience I've had questions about this. When they find out I study chess, they ask what if they do something completely unexpected and play a bad move that I haven't studied? I don't know, maybe I will be so shocked at how bad it is that I will allow myself to get checkmated! lol Although sometimes things like this happen in tournament chess. The player makes a bad looking move, does a face palm, and the opponent falls for the trap and does get mated. So sometimes that does happen, but it's just funny how pop culture shows that masters can only play well against good moves, and easily crumble against terrible moves.
[DM: Pleasantly for me, lots of club players seem to believe this myth. I can't recall how many times lower-rated players have avoided their favorite openings in exchange for junk or at least openings they don't know, on the grounds that I'll know what to do against their favorite openings. Well, sure, I'll have some ideas, but what makes them think I won't know what to do against the junk they play instead? All they do is handcuff themselves.]
>Since it's all going to be mumbo-jumbo to most of their audience, why
>can't they at least get the mumbo-jumbo right?
Treating the question as non-rhetorical:
although I (obviously) agree with the sentiment, I would suggest the answer
lies in the question, more specifically in the word "most". In the chess case a few
permille of the viewers are offended by ignorance. If they don't consider it
cost-efficient to ask an expert to confirm basic facts in other disciplines where
this figure is 10 or 100 times higher (medicine, physics, linguistics, to pick some
that has annoyed me in the last week), how could one expect chess to do better?
[DM: I understand your point (and basically grant it), so I need to clarify the point I intended to make. What was irksome was that they had writers or staffers who knew enough to mention three real openings. Given that they had that going for them, they could easily have gone all the way and used them correctly.]
But it is true that the "I think it is a Sicilian! No, I think it is a Grünfeld!" dialog should have
been avoidable even by a non-specialist script writer, if given five minutes thought
and a look at Wikipedia.
[DM: Exactly.]
I wonder if the Kojak episode Kevin recalled was actually the Columbo episode. "The Most Dangerous Match"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069906/
If not, does anyone know the name of the Kojak episode?
One episode of Columbo, "The Most Dangerous Match", has chess theme. I found an excerpt here, a simul: https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=190960077601176
The best thing that can be said about the chess of the episode is that there is a white square in the lower right corner of the board. In the excerpt, at about 1.50, white (grandmaster, world champion challenger perhaps?) has just played the daring 1. f4 e6 2. g4! However, he is absolutely devastated as his even more cunning opponent outfoxes him with a brilliant tactical shot (which I leave to the reader to infer).
One episode of the old "Columbo" series involved a chess champion who, haunted by the possibility of failure in an upcoming match against his archrival, murders him. It was an entertaining episode, and apparently Peter Falk, the actor who portrayed Columbo, took a keen interest in chess himself; this write-up by Seirawan appeared shortly after Falk's death in 2011: http://en.chessbase.com/post/peter-falk-death-of-a-che-player