"How many good documentaries about chess are there?"

That's what I'd been asking myself lately. Finally, a couple of days ago, I actually remembered to google best documentaries about chess, and people, there are a ton of documentaries about chess, and lots of them are really good, and you can see a lot of them on YouTube, the whole movies.

The thing is, I'd seen chess in movies, and while some of the movies were good movies, such as Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows and Searching for Bobby Fischer (meh, it's not terrible), the chess in them isn't really worth much.

So then we go to the documentaries, and in the ones which are made by real chess players, everything that's said and shown about chess is way over my head.

So if I were going to make a documentary about chess, it would have to have the same problem I was just complaining about: it wouldn't be about chess per se, as about the personalities of people involved in chess and what have you.

But maybe I could write about people who make documentaries about chess. And those of them who are half-decent chess players themselves, I could try to find other interesting things to say about them, rather than do something humiliating such as filming them trouncing me in chess.

How about a chess tournament where all the players have made movies about chess? And then make a documentary about that tournament? Eh? Eh?

Let me answer the question many of you are asking yourselves: no, I see no evidence that I would be good at making a movie, about chess or anything else, a documentary or not.

I could write a novel about a fictional chess tournament contested by real filmmakers who have made good documentaries about chess. A novel which actually has nothing to say about chess. "A spine-tinglingly mellifluous melange of fact and fiction, dreamy fantasy and necessary substance. A masterpiece." (The New York Times)

Another idea for a documentary: a documentary about people who are fascinated by chess but who are terrible at it. Like me.