Script To Screen: “Searching for Bobby Fischer”
A chess game between two boys from the 1993 drama Searching for Bobby Fischer (screenplay by Steve Zaillian, based on a book by Fred Waitzkin).
Setup: The championship match toward the end of the movie between young Josh Waitzkin and his opponent Jonathan Poe.
INT. BANQUET ROOM — DAY
Poe keeps staring dumbly at Josh’s outstretched hand.
JOSH
I’m offering you a draw.
POE
You’ve got to be kidding.
JOSH
You’ve lost, you just don’t know it.
I’ve got you beat.
POE
You’ve got me beat? Look at the board.
JOSH
I have. It’s mate in sixteen and it’s
going to kill you. Take the draw,
we’ll share the championship.
All of a sudden, Poe isn’t sure what to believe.
JOSH
Take the draw. Take it.
Long pause …
POE
You can’t hustle me … Move.
Josh withdraws his hand and places it in his lap. Nothing
happens for several moments before he reaches out again, grasps
his pawn and takes white’s on f6.
In quick succession then, the twelves moves are made, leading to
a pawn race, both queens coming back on the board a check by
black and … Poe stares at his cornered king, and time seems
to stand still.
A muffled cheer of hundreds of kids erupts from behind the
closed doors. They swing open and the kids pour in.
Poe glances up from the board destroyed. He tries to make it to
the doors and out but finds himself tangled in the mob rushing
in.
As Josh watches his opponent’s desperate attempt to flee, he
feels none of the elation he thought he would beating him, but
something else he didn’t, something deeper.
Here is the scene in the movie:
Questions to ask to analyze the scene:
* What elements in the movie scene are the same as the script?
* What elements in the movie scene are different than the script?
* Regarding the differences, put yourself in the mindset of the filmmakers and speculate: Why did they make the changes they did?
* How did the changes improve the scene?
* Alternatively are there elements in the script, not present in the movie, that are better than the final version of the scene?
* Note each camera shot in the movie version. Which of them does the script suggest via sluglines or scene description?
* How does the script convey a sense of the scene’s tone, feel, and pace through scene description and dialogue?
* What ‘magic’ exists in the movie that is not indicated in the words of the script? How do you suppose that magic emerged?
I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this terrific scene from Searching for Bobby Fischer.
You may download the script here.
Thanks to Teddy Pasternak for the suggestion.
One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of From Script to Screen, a weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
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