A Matter of Life and Death (film) afterward. David Niven was a fan of chess. Peter and June play chess while they await Dr Reeves. Then Conductor 71 "borrows" a chess book Peter has accidentally knocked off the table, Alekhine's "My Best Games of Chess". After the trial is won, Conductor 71 throws the book from the stairway; June finds it in his jacket pocket "to serve the 'was it a hallucination or did it really happen?' motif of the film", according to Mig Greengard. He also noted, "Lots of chess in movies past and present, but I can't recall another prominent appearance of a real chess
The Life and Death of Peter Sellers his film career. Director Blake Edwards is played by John Lithgow, and the film exposes some of the behind-the-scenes personality conflicts between Sellers and Edwards, which contributed to their unhappy and tumultuous working relationship, despite the success of their films. In the interview for the film, included on the DVD, Edwards credited Rush with portraying Sellers' characters with uncanny similarity to the real Peter Sellers, and in 2004 claimed that it was the best acting he had ever seen Rush perform. Actor Geoffrey Rush stated in interviews that the film was itself structured to be reminiscent of a Peter Sellers