Posted on April 15, 2016 at 3:46 pm
“The Dark Horse” is based on the true story of Maori speed chess champion Genesis Potini, who struggled with bipolar disorder but taught underprivileged children to play chess.
Here is the real Genesis, who died in 2011.
Posted on April 14, 2016 at 5:27 pm
B+| Lowest Recommended Age: | High School |
| Profanity: | Strong and crude language |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | Drinking, drugs |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Gang related violence, domestic violence |
| Diversity Issues: | A theme of the movie |
| Date Released to Theaters: | April 15, 2016 |
The extraordinary actor Cliff Curtis is renowned for being able to play almost any ethnicity, one reason he was an affecting Jesus in the recent Risen. Here, though, as in “Whale Rider,” he has a chance to play the part of a person of his own ethnic heritage, the speed chess champion Genesis Potini, who had bipolar disorder. Curtis shows us that Genesis is a person first, not a group of symptoms. In a meet, wanting so much for the kids he has trained to have a chance to succeed, he cannot restrain himself from shouting encouragement, and we see how painful it is for him to feel like two people at once, the one who cannot control his impulses and the one who understands what he is putting at risk.
Robertson also gives us an honest, unflinching look at the community where Genesis has come, after being released from the mental hospital with a fistful of pills and the direction to find something to care about. The only place he has to go is the home of his brother, Ariki (Wayne Hapi), and Ariki’s son, Mana (James Rolleston of “Boy”). Ariki is a member of a gang that hangs out, gets high, commits petty and not so petty crimes, and spends a lot of time in not so petty macho posturing. He does not like having Genesis there and soon kicks him out.
Genesis sees a flier for a program that provides enrichment services for needy kids and decides that this will be the purpose that will help him maintain equilibrium. He volunteers — waking the director up in the middle of the night to offer his services, and against his better judgment, the director accepts, warning Genesis that if he shows up, he cannot let the kids down. Genesis impulsively (he does everything impulsively) tells kids who have never seen a chess game before that they will be competing at a big tournament in six weeks. Before they learn how to play, he lets each of them pick a chess man to take home as a totem, and to bring with them every day so that the set can be a team again. It makes them into a team as well. He uses the money Ariki gave him for rent to buy chess sets for the kids and he sleeps outside.
Genesis’ splintered reality and lack of impulse control may be advantages for speed chess. All of the possibilities are laid out before him but that does not make him hesitate. But chess is a game of rules and it provides a certainty, order, and mastery that Genesis and the kids he teaches can hold onto and build on. Mana has to decide whether he will follow his father or his uncle. Genesis has to try to be the man Mana and the kids need. It might get corny but for Robertson’s unaffectedly gritty settings and understanding that modest gains can be enough for checkmate.
Parents should know that this movie includes violence, child abuse, drinking, drugs, mental illness, and extreme poverty. Characters use very strong language.
Family discussion: Why was helping the children so important to Genesis? Why was having Mana in the gang so important to his father?
If you like this, try: “Searching for Bobby Fischer,” “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” and “Endgame”
Posted on April 14, 2016 at 3:42 pm
James Napier Robertson is an actor turned writer and director from New Zealand who played hundreds of chess games with the real-life champion who inspired his film, “The Dark Horse,” and with the actor who had to learn chess — and put on 60 pounds — to play the role, Cliff Curtis. In an interview, he talked about the late Genesis Potini, the Maori speed chess champion who struggled with bipolar disorder and worked with underprivileged children, teaching them chess and a lot more.
Robertson said he considers himself “fortunate” to be a chess player. “I think it depends who the teacher is who is bringing chess to you that decides how revolutionary it might be. And I think with Genesis that was one of the things that I was immediately drawn to — his ability to take a game that normally you would think could be quite esoteric and sort of boring almost to people everyone else had kind of written off and thought that they are not going to be academic let alone interested in something like chess. He would make them love it and get excited about it and kind of open up the personality of the game and of the characters within the game. So I think that that’s what’s exciting about it for me, particularly in the way that Gen could weave his magic within it as well.”
He first saw Genesis Potini in a documentary, “and I was immediately struck by this guy, this incredible character and how intelligent and articulate and sort of philosophical he was but also how there were contradictions to his complexities and the eccentricities. So I immediately went and met with Gen and as soon as I walked into his house he was standing there in pink crocs like the character is wearing in the movie and tights and he had some nunchucks and he did like a nunchuck dance thing for myself and Tom, the producer. Of course we just sort of stood there stunned like, what do you say? And then I sat down across the chess board with him and we played a game of chess and I managed to lose but lose gracefully and hang in there long enough that I think it kind of opened up a modicum of respect for me from him that I appreciated the game and that I wasn’t kind of a tourist in that regard. I actually cared about what he cared about. We played hundreds of games of chess, hundreds and hundreds and we just talked. We talked all about his life and his experiences and things that had happened to him and in the meanwhile I started putting together a screenplay.”
Potini was taught by Ewan Green, a New Zealand master, who then taught Curtis to play for the film. “So there was a beautiful kind of symmetry. Me and Cliff still play fiercely to this day. Just two days ago we had another few games and he wanted me to very proudly state that he won the most recent one. It really depends on the day that you ask that, who is currently on top.”
Although Curtis is probably the internationally best-known actor from New Zealand and, like Potini, is Maori, Robertson did not initially consider him for the role. “I hadn’t thought of Cliff really because as talented as he is he is a slim, good-looking guy and Gen, the real Gen that I knew was a big guy with bad teeth and funny haircuts and so it just seems like such an incredible leap. Cliff actually got given the script by an actor that we were looking at for a different role in the film. And so Cliff got in touch with us and we started talking on the phone a lot for days and days and days just discussing the possibilities. And then really in the end for me it came down to two things that I felt he would need to do: one was put the weight on and the second one was to method act the role, to stay in character for the entirety of the shoot. And he thought those were both completely insane ideas and there’s no way he was going to do them and fair enough, but in the end I think I just kind of wore him down and he eventually saw the light in that sense and so he put on close to 60 pounds in a little over 6 to 8 weeks, a lot of milkshakes and a lot of beer. He read that the beer was a very good way to quickly fatten the body up and he stayed in character for the whole of the shoot. Once we were shooting, there was no Cliff Curtis there was only Genesis, he would stay and wear the clothes all the time. There were some mornings I showed up on set at 5:30 in the morning and my first ID told me Cliff’s already here, he’s been here half an hour before everyone because he’s been wandering the streets all night and he just walked to where we are shooting. So the commitment from that man is remarkable. Once he got his head around it he was in.
The film is wisely very frank about the realities of both mental illness and the poverty and violence of Potini’s community. “A lot of the exploration of that in the film came initially from my conversations with Gen and really discussing in-depth, as much depth as he was comfortable discussing, his own experiences, also talking closely to his family and friends about things that Gen had gone through in the past. I did an immense amount of research and very kind of respectful study into particularly what the more extreme aspects of bipolar can be. We all to a lesser or greater degree can relate to the ups and downs of bipolar disorder. Often the temptation for a film is to take something like that and then manipulate it to kind of help a narrative to tell the story in the way they want. Right from the beginning that was something I was never prepared to do. I always made it very clear and drew a line in the sand with that that the film will be an honest, respectful but unflinching look at what that really feels like and what that’s really like for someone to go through. It was important that the film not try and disingenuously portray that there’s some sort of happy ending cure to that, that in a way if we win a tournament or if we achieve our goals in life somehow that fixes all or problems because it doesn’t and that’s not how life works. And that was something that I had to really fight for because obviously in order to make a movie you need a lot of money and with that comes very strong opinions on what will work and what won’t work and what people might want to see versus what people might be put off. I know there was a lot of fear that the film’s honesty in that way might be too much for people to put up with. So I had to really kind of go on a bat for that and say that I firmly believe that people will be far more connected and moved by something that feels like a respectful and truthful depiction rather than something that’s manipulative.”
The children in the movie were not professional actors. “These kids come from backgrounds pretty similar to the characters they were portraying in the film. One of the things was finding it hard to limit how many of kids we had because there were so many incredible kids that we found out there. I feel extremely lucky that we got the kids that we did in the film but some of them like the boy that plays Murray, there was no Murray in the script but my casting director, Yvette, she was like “You’ve got to see this kid he’s just like the most amazing kid you’ve ever seen”. So I watched a clip of him and I was immediately like ‘He’s got to be in the movie.'”
Because the kids were not trained actors, Robertson drew on his own background as an actor to make them comfortable. “It’s pretty intimidating on the set. There’s all these cameras and lights and they’ve never been near anything like this before in their lives. We played a game. I told them, we were going to play a game and they would all pretend to be the characters the whole time. It was funny because about three weeks into the shoot when they had known each other two months I walked past and heard one of the girls lean over one of the boys and say, ‘What’s your real name?’ So they really took this game to heart.”
As for the Maori community, “To be honest, they have just been the most incredible supporters of it. If they weren’t it wouldn’t have been possible because again it was so crucial that it was an authentic portrayal and if it wasn’t people would know that, the real people would know that and they would hate it for that. So again I was always conscious of the fact that this has to be a film that not only can feel honest to people that watch who don’t know anything about this kind of community or the situation but has to feel utterly honest for people. And one of the things with gangs for example is I’ve seen quite a few films and really great films, really, really stunning films but the way the gangs in New Zealand or elsewhere can be portrayed in an almost sort of romantic sense or in a kind of action sense where they are all muscular, oiled up and doing kung fu kicks and fighting and they look badass and it’s all really cool. But that’s not what gangs are really like. There’s a lot of sitting around, there’s a lot of nothing to do, there’s a lot of bad health because of choices made. It’s more of a sad environment and that is what I wanted it to be in the film. I didn’t want it to feel like another version of the action hero gang members; I wanted it to be realistic and that ultimately brought a lot of support. Most of the guys in the gang roles in the film are gang members or ex-gang members and sometimes from different gangs. I was scared because you can’t have these guys from different gangs on the set at the same time, because they normally want to kill each other but the truth of the film was something they really responded to and wanted the story to be told so that so they wanted to be part of it, so it kind of brought them together. And the actor who plays Ariki, the brother in the film, had never acted before in his life, this is the first role he had ever done, he was actually in one of New Zealand’s worst gangs for 15 years and he left because he saw his own son wanted to follow in his footsteps. So for a lot of these guys that are in the film they saw the movie as an opportunity to try and show the young men coming up, this isn’t what you think it is. Like there is a truth to the gang lifestyle that’s hard for them to try and explain but maybe the movie can show. I didn’t want actors that sort of come in and pretend and portray and then leave to a completely different life. I wanted the real people.”
Posted on September 23, 2015 at 3:18 pm
“Endgame” is a heartwarming family film inspired by the true story of a championship middle school chess team from a school in a poor Texas community. It stars “Modern Family’s” Rico Rodriguez and two actors from “Napoleon Dynamite,” Efran Ramirez and Jon Gries. Writer/director Carmen Marron talked to me about why it was important to her to tell this story.
How did you first hear about this chess team?
It was like three years ago actually I was working on another project and one of the producers on the other project was approached by the executive producer of “Endgame.” He knew her; they were both from Texas. He started writing a script about the story of what was going in Brownsville and he was like, “I would really like to make it into a movie and can you help me with that?” It was low-budget, they didn’t have much money. So she knew what I did with my first film, Go for It
I grew up really poor in Chicago, one of 10 kids. My dad always raised me with the belief that one person can make a huge difference and so I felt like this is the perfect example of how this teacher in the third poorest community in the time in the US really turned it around and created so much faith and hope just for the love that he had and the belief that he had in these kids. He showed that you don’t need money, you don’t need the resources if you really have that hope and he turned it all around. It was amazing! And to see these kids, and how resilient they are. It reminded me of those kids that I worked with when I was a guidance counselor. These kids are put through so much at such a young age and you see what their potential is if they have adults around them who can make them believe that what they are going through is just going to make them stronger, it’s not going to ruin their future.
Why chess?
He said that he had it in his classroom and it didn’t cost any money. It’s very costly to put together a team and uniforms. And it’s about critical thinking and it helps keep the kids focused and in the classroom in their seats. That’s what these kids in detention weren’t able to do. And so he started doing that with them little by little and they were so perceptive. It just goes to show how resilient and so very resourceful they are. They are always thinking, they are always trying to figure out how they can survive really but he was just using it to make them analytical.
I liked the way you portrayed the culture of chess, shaking hands after every match, which you use to great dramatic effect in the film.
Yes, in addition to the analytic skill, it is important to teach them good sportsmanship and respect and to be able to look at the other kid in the eye regardless of who they are. And what he used to say is when he started the team, these were inner-city kids with no money. He put the uniforms together were just T-shirts and he said that when he first took them to Dallas the first year nobody even looked at them. They treated them like they were invisible, like they weren’t even contenders. So he wanted to teach the students that confidence. No matter who you play against, no matter how rich this kid is or what prep school he comes from you just look him in the eye and you wish him well and you have that sportsmanship which I thought was so beautiful.
It was great to see such strong female characters.
I think that’s my personal mission as a filmmaker. I did that with my first film and I am going to do that with every film. I really do believe and I think that what I learned as a guidance counselor that there really is such an imbalance of women role models or girl role models for these girls and so I really need to start creating stories that can show these young girls, older girls, older women as powerful role models and heroes and leaders in their own rights. It’s really important to me. That’s the mission that I have that I am going to continue to do because these young girls that I work with are just so hungry to try to identify with public figures. Unfortunately they are looking up to Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears and all of these women that really don’t care to be role models. And so I really want to create these characters that just have so much inner power, inner strength in them and intelligence and leadership. It is really like an obsession for me.
Now why was it important to you to include an undocumented character who was deported?
That was actually one of the requests of the executive producers because he is an attorney and he deals a lot with immigration law and also it was an issue that the coach said that he came across. Some of these kids on the team were undocumented. And so I really wanted to show that whether they are born here or not, they are living the American life just like the other kids and they are going through the journey together. You see the huge safety net that they don’t have under them that all the other kids have because all of this uncertainty with immigration laws and it shows the double burden that they are also dealing with as they are growing up but how they are also handling it with grace as much as possible.
Was it a challenge to work with so many young actors?
Well I completely understand is definitely, definitely a whole world onto itself working with kids I didn’t even know. But I have always worked with kids. I was a guidance counselor and I have a Masters in Educational Psychology so my goal is always to make a difference with kids through education. And so that was the easy part. The hard part is that dealing with the child labor laws because you have to treat them as employees in a way because you have this movie to make. I made the movie 19 days and these kids can only work six hour days and they have a teacher who has to spend time with them. When working with kids you have to be focused. You have to make sure that the kids are all on the same page before you even begin and that you just know. You have your vision and you know what it is because you really sometimes only have the one chance and you have to move on.
How do you go from being a guidance counselor to being a filmmaker?
That, I would say was divine intervention. I never wanted to be a filmmaker, to be honest with you. I always knew that I wanted to make a difference in society and that I was going to work with kids and with women but I didn’t know how. As a guidance counselor I loved what I did. I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. And then after about my second year, maybe after my first year I was thinking that I was making a difference with 600 kids. How can I reach much more? How can I reach the inner-city kids in Chicago? How can I reach them in LA and Texas? I was in Phoenix at the time and I didn’t know. I just knew that what I was doing at the school, I wanted to try to help more kids and so honestly I prayed a lot and it came to me when I was praying, when I was meditating and the answer was, “You have to tell what you’re trying to teach, how you are trying to inspire kids you have to make movies so that you can reach more.” And then from there I just followed my heart. Honestly I went to the library and I checked out a book on how to write a screenplay and then I just started writing, watching movies and then I just packed up my car and my dog and my laptop and moved to LA with a script.
“Bread and Roses,” I recommend that to everybody because when I saw the movie I moved to LA and for two years people basically laughed at me telling me that I had no idea what I was getting myself into, I didn’t know a thing about filmmaking. It’s like the worst industry to get into, to break into. Even when you are in it is even worse to try to move up. I remembered just feeling so dismayed and then I watched “Bread and Roses” and it just brought me back to life and I was like, “Those are the types of movies I want to make.” And then actually I reached out to Ken Loach, who directed it. I wrote him the longest letter on how I want to make this inspirational movie that revolves around inner-city girls and it deals with dance because I used to be a street dancer, blah blah blah and I wanted him to direct it and I wanted to be very raw and honest like “Bread and Roses.” And two weeks later his assistant calls me from London, wakes me up at seven in the morning and he says, “Ken and I read your email and he really wants me to tell you that you need to direct your movie.” And told him I don’t know how to direct a movie, I don’t know how to do anything like this, I just wrote it. And he said, “No, you really do. Your email spelled it all out and no one will have that passion like you. The hardest part is having the money and once you have the money everything is going to fall into place.” And so from there that’s when I just made the decision.
Posted on January 18, 2015 at 3:56 pm
Ostracized at her posh new uptown school and shaken by the death of her beloved grandmother, a 10 year-old downtown girl finds an unlikely mentor in the form of an irascible chess-master, who uses the game to teach Max lessons in resilience, perseverance, and how to embrace inevitable change. “A Little Game” stars Ralph Macchio, Janeane Garofalo, Rachel Dratch and Olympia Dukakis, and will be available on VOD on January 20, 2015. We are very excited to be able to premiere an exclusive clip.
