Jerry Weintraub - When I Stop Talking You

Okay, here's my favorite of the crazy, why-the-hell-not-try-it stories of those years. In the summer of 1972, I got hooked on the World Championship of Chess, which was being shown on PBS and ABC Wide World of Sports, with Bobby Fischer, the American, playing Boris Spassky, the Russian, in Reykjavik, Iceland. The men crouched over the chessboard in utter silence for hours on end. I do not know a thing about chess, have never played it and don't want to-I was relying on the PBS commentator, who moved pieces around a board to explain the game-but I was transfixed by Fischer. He was tall, with blue eyes and wild hair and the slow, graceful motions of a hypnotist or magician. He sat stone still, radiating a weird charisma. It came right through the set. I rushed home every night to have dinner in front of the TV. You could not get me out of the house. I was mesmerized.

Jane finally confronted me.

"What is wrong with you?" she asked. "Have you gone nuts?"

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"You. You sit in front of the TV for hours every night, watching a chess match. You don't know anything about chess, not even the rules."

"I'm not watching a chess match," I told her. "I'm watching this guy Bobby Fischer."

"Why?"

"Because he's a star."

"You're insane."

"Oh, really," I said. "I will show you how insane I am."

I picked up the phone and called Icelandic Airways. I asked when they would next fly to Reykjavik.

Nine o'clock tonight.

"Good," I said. "I want a seat."

I got on a plane to Reykjavik. There was a young guy in the next seat. We started talking. He was a priest and also a grand master at chess. He knew everyone in that world, and had actually played Fischer and Spassky. He asked why I was going to Iceland. I told him I was going to meet Bobby Fischer.

"You're going to meet Bobby Fischer?" he said, surprised. "Do you have an appointment with him?"

"No," I said. "I'm just going to track him down."

"Oh, no," he said. "You can't just track down Bobby Fischer. He doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't go anywhere. He is locked off from the world."

"What? Why?"

"Because he's crazy."

It was the first indication that the goal I had set for myself-get in touch with Fischer, talk to him, pitch him, sign him, make him rich, and take a percentage-would be more difficult to achieve than I had thought.

I reserved a room in the hotel where most of the chess people were staying. The lobby was filled with tables, each with a chessboard, where grand masters were locked in combat. After each move, they hit a button to freeze the clock. Click. Click. Click. It made a kind of rhythm. A group of reporters, mostly Americans, were taking notes in the corner, searching for a new angle on the story. Spassky wouldn't talk to them because the KGB had forbidden it. Fischer wouldn't talk to them because he was nuts. When I went to the desk to check in, one of the reporters recognized me. He came over with a microphone; I was just off the plane, burned out and groggy, and now I was on the radio.

"Are you Jerry Weintraub?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"You represent rock acts, Elvis Presley, John Denver. What are you doing in Reykjavik?"

"I'm here to see Bobby Fischer."

"Do you have an appointment to see Mr. Fischer?"

"No, I don't have an appointment. I don't even know him."

"Then how are you going to see him? He won't see anybody."

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll see him."

"Do you play chess?" the reporter asked. "Are you a chess fanatic?"

"I don't even know how to play chess," I told him. "I don't know anything about it."

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm here because I've been watching Bobby Fischer on TV," I said. "I am glued to the set every night. He's like Mick Jagger. He's like Elvis. The man is a rock star."

I got my key and went to my room-it was the only hotel in Iceland, the rooms were little white cubes-climbed into bed, and passed out. A long, dreamless, time-zone-crossing sleep. The phone rang. I had the receiver to my ear before I had woken up.

Where the hell am I, half asleep in this tiny white square?

"Yeah?"

"Is this Jerry Weintraub?"

The voice was a spooky, otherworldly whisper.

"Yeah, who is this?"

"Do you really think I'm like Elvis Presley and Mick Jagger?"

"How do you know I said that?"

"I heard you on the radio."

He paused, then said, "We need to meet."

"Great," I said. "Where, when?"

I was whispering, too, acting as if someone were listening, as if the CIA had bugged the phones.

"Come to the sixth floor," he said, "take the steps, stand by the door. I will be waiting for you."

I scuttled down the stairs like a crab. (Am I being followed?) When I crossed the landing and stepped through the door, I was standing next to Bobby Fischer. The whole world was trying to talk to this genius recluse, this Howard Hughes. I mean, legions of reporters were camped in the lobby with this one goal in mind, and here I was, having pulled it off without trying, in less than a day. (What can I say? The Lord takes care of me.) Fischer motioned me to follow him. He took me down the hall to his room. It was disgusting. There were half-eaten cheeseburgers, old pizzas, boxes of shit, Coke cans, crap lying everywhere. And the smell! My God, the smell. Here and there, on the floor, on the bed, Playboy magazines were opened, and I am sure he'd been masturbating all over the centerfolds. Fischer was standing in the middle of all this, with an air of "Look what time hath wrought."

"I have no money," he whispered.

"What do you mean, you have no money?"

"The Chess Federation won't give me any money," he said. "I have nothing."

"No problem," I said. "We'll get you some money."

He looked at me. His eyes were intelligent and calculating, but their setting (his narrow, ascetic face, the face of a mystic or monk) was not reassuring.

"You can get me money?" he asked.

"Of course I can get you money," I told him.

"Good," he said. "I want to go bowling."

"Then go bowling," I said.

"I can't afford it," he said. "I have no money."

"I'll figure it out," I said. "By tomorrow, there will be a deal for you."

"Then can we go bowling?"

"Yes," I said. "Then we can go bowling."

He asked me to go with him to the match. So the next night, when Fischer climbed out of his car, with the journalists clamoring for a quote, I was the corner man at his side. I sat behind him as he played. A few days before, I had been watching this scene on television. Now here I was, in the background of the establishing shot. I had gone inside the screen. I played off Fischer, reacted to his every move.

I looked annoyed when he looked annoyed. I looked amused when he looked amused. We drove back to the hotel, huddled together in confab.

Then I took him bowling.

"How are we going to make money?" he asked.

"I've been thinking about that," I told him. "And I have a great idea. I'm going to call my friends in LA. You're going to make a record."

He looked at me like I was nuts. Being looked at like you're crazy by a crazy man is a singular experience. "What do you mean a record?" he asked. "I can't even carry a tune."

"No, you're not going to sing," I told him. "You're going to teach."

"Teach what?"

"The record is going to be Bobby Fischer teaching a six-year-old kid, who knows nothing about chess, how to play. And the cover will be a chess board. And with it, we will include chess pieces in a plastic bag. We'll sell it at Christmas. It will be huge."

I called Warner Music the next day. I sold the deal over the phone, just like that. First of all, the record executives loved the idea of getting a phone call from Reykjavik. They loved the idea of being in business with Fischer, too. He was the mystery man of the moment, a mercurial genius, all over television but nowhere at all. What's more, it was a great idea. The label gave us a lot of money for it. I don't remember the figure, but it was a primary number followed by many zeros. The contract came, Fischer signed it. Then I had another idea, which appeared to me in a vision: Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer playing a winner-take-all match in a glass box on a casino floor in Las Vegas. Could you imagine the scene, the bookmakers and high rollers and celebrities? We would sell it as a heavyweight title fight, the World Championship of Chess. For a minute, I even thought it would happen. I did not yet understand Fischer, and how nutty he was.