We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dylan Quercia a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Dylan, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?
Chess is hot. It is popular and in the mainstream. The success of the Queen’s Gambit has led to an explosion of interest in this centuries old game. This has in turn provided me with a lot more clients to teach privately for my “Coach Q” chess coaching brand. And, it has provided me with the opportunity to make chess related documentary film in my first film “King Chess” (2024 release date) and my forthcoming film “The United States of Chess.” (In Post-production) I will illustrate this through a story about how my director wife Gloria Iseli and I were able to get distribution for the first project, King Chess.
We had filmed King in chess at the 2018 Berlin Candidates Tournament and subsequent World Championship. We captured 8 players in Berlin duking it out for a seat at the World Championship. This was all very exciting at the time and we had just gone out on a limb to put together the project within a month and film it. Since an American, Fabiano Caruana, won the Candidates Tournament, we also followed him to the World Championship. When 2019 came, the excitement had worn off and we were just exhausted. We had 50+ hours of footage and no good way to fund the post-production. So I went back to my day job of teaching chess and didn’t think about it until the Queen’s Gambit hit in 2020.
The Queen’s Gambit was a massive culture bomb. Suddenly parents everywhere were asking me about chess and the mainstream media went wild for the show. This gave us hope and in mid-2020 we received some funding to make the film! It took another year to finish the post-production and get it into the festival circuit but everywhere we showed it, the audiences loved it. We won the audience award for Best Documentary at the Golden State Film Festival. This then in turn got us meetings, real Hollywood meetings where executives were saying how interested they were in chess content! Long story short we have signed with an indy distributor and King Chess will be released worldwide in 2024!
Not to mention that a good friend of mine was so inspired by the project that he wanted to create his own film. This gave us the idea of forming a new production company called “Brilliant Move”. The idea is still in its inception but I believe there is a cottage industry ready to be built for the niche of chess. I signed a deal to write, direct and produce a new film called The United States of Chess and we are even developing a Travel Show! It’s an incredible time for chess related media and I believe it will be a big business!
Dylan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a chess expert that has successfully taken my passion for chess and used it to create a full time profession bringing together many areas of education and entertainment. I got into chess education in college when I needed a job while studying to become a lab scientist. Despite my love of science, I quickly realized that teaching chess was my real passion in life. This has brought me an incredible number of opportunities including a four minute spot on ESPN’s SportsCenter.
I am at heart a very creative person. I have been an actor from a young age and was the drama club Vice-President in High School. I fell in love with my wife over her beautiful ideas to create movies and T.V. So, what I aim to do for chess students and entertainment professionals alike is inspire them to be creative and artful in how they approach chess. It’s not just some ancient game. It is a past-time that everyone, no matter what creed, gender, skin color, or even language they speak, everyone can come together to enjoy the art of this game.
What sets me apart from others in creating chess education and media is that I think big. I want to make movies and T.V. not just short form content. I started by writing 3 kids books and then expanded my vision for creating content from there. I want to create real art that people will appreciate for generations. And, I want to give back to the community that has given me a beautiful career!
For my newly formed company “Brilliant Move” I want to create partnerships with media companies interested in producing high quality chess content. Whether that is movies, T.V. or reality, I have a great team in L.A. that can take a project from start to finish.
I am also passionate about my writing and am starting a sub-stack with a working title called “Beyond the 64 Squares”. My goal here is to create long form profiles on chess players in a way that has not been done before. I have a wealth of content to draw from as I am a Top Blogger on chess.com and have interviewed 40-50 top personalities in chess over the last year.
As you can see, all of my projects in the chess space synergize so please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have a good idea or want to hire me/my company for any content creation!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One big lesson that I had to unlearn is that you can do it all yourself. On my first documentary, King Chess, we thought we could easily run sound without hiring someone. But, we were completely wrong here as trying to do it ourselves almost led to the footage being unusable. Luckily, we had a great connection to fix up the sound in post but it was costly and time consuming! If it’s an essential position, like a sound engineer, make sure to just budget for that position! Now, it makes sense if you CAN’T raise the money but be creative and check into every possible source for funding before skimping on someone essential! I even tried to do this a second time and lost a really great interview! You can’t do everything yourself so don’t be afraid to lean on your team or hire the right person!
How’d you meet your business partner?
I met my current business partner, Srikanth Bangalore, at a chess club! Now, of course not everyone can do that but it is the subsequent relationship that we built over the years that led to him funding the film we currently have in development, The United States of Chess. I had known him for nearly 10 years before he approached me to help him start a non-profit! This then led to the creation of the film which is already bringing income in for my new production company, Brilliant Move! You really never know how you will inspire people!
Contact Info:
- Website: coachqchess.com, kingchessfilm.com
- Instagram: coachqchess
- Facebook: Dylan Quercia
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-quercia-b65a6a25/
- Twitter: coachqchess
- Other: My Blog – https://www.chess.com/blog/CMCoachQ My 501(c)(3) Non-Profit – https://www.chessprodigies.com/ Coming soon – https://indychess.substack.com/
Image Credits
Former World Champion Gary Kasparov Youngest Grandmaster, Abhimanyu Mishra