Chilly Gonzales: Ivory Tower

“Chess we can!” The planet’s hippest pianist Chilly Gonzales—a frequent collaborator of indie songstress Feist and current holder of the Guinness World Record for longest piano performance—puns and cavorts his way around the checkered board in Ivory Tower, an off-the-wall comedy (penned and produced by the musician) about family, ambition and putting your pawns in the right place. Gonzales himself stars as Herschel Graves, a champion chess player on a spiritual quest to reinvent the game as “jazz chess,” a freewheeling mode of artistic expression in which no one—and everyone—is the winner. The film, which premiered in the UK in late August in tandem with the release of Gonzales’s new album, also called Ivory Tower, features some fantastic supporting performances from dancefloor titan Tiga (who plays Herschel’s sanctimonious, squeaky-clean brother Thaddeus) and brash electroclash queen Peaches (who’s strangely heartbreaking as the unlikely love interest, a downtrodden former installation artist), as well as members of Gonzales’s real life family (his mother’s performance is a surreal treat). Today we feature an exclusive clip of the film, jumping into one of its most climactic scenes as Thaddeus and Herschel prepare for the movie’s pivotal chess match. You might have heard accompanying track "Never Stop" before—it's currently being used by Apple in their iPad ads.

Making movies and Jazz chess: hear more about Gonzales's new obsessions in our interview.