Bobby Fischer was hugely important for the American chess community because it put chess on the map - he made it possible for other chess players to make a living.

Every film I make I feel like I am getting a mini-masters degree, it's a wonderful life path and you get to immerse yourself in an intriguing world for a couple of years.

I guess what I get excited about when I'm thinking about projects is that toothy, complex area of goodness and badness and the gray areas of human behavior and existence.

There is so much investment in it of people's labor time that it will never make money. But there are other documentaries that you might make that are sort of on assignment for television that turn around in three to six months. Then the margin can be much be better for you because you're not spending three-and-a-half years on it. So I think if you're doing documentary films, that's sort of the way to look at it.

In the Soviet Union, for instance, the pressure on the chess stars was immense. When Boris Spassky came home after losing that match, he found he no longer had an apartment in Moscow.

It has a lot to do with just sort of trust in the relationship that builds between the filmmaker and the subject. There are some people who will never be relaxed in front of a camera, and in some ways that's my failing as a filmmaker to not put them at ease. It's also a function of time, and if you have that type of time.

When your entire life is focused around one goal and one goal only, and you have no other pursuits, it enables you to achieve enormous mastery.