![]() But he’s completely absent from the story-obliquely referenced only once when one of Harmon’s love interests, Benny Watts (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), is referred to by the wrong name. The prodigious rise of Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is a teenager in the 1960s, would have overlapped perfectly with Fischer’s rise toward the world championship. Not accidentally, I think, Fischer has been excised from the world of The Queen’s Gambit. The chess community in The Queen’s Gambit is far more benign than the hostile, madness-inducing, chess-as-battlefield-of-the-Cold War image that has cemented itself in the American psyche. The Queen’s Gambit, the novel, appeared more than two decades later, arriving in a burst of productivity just before Tevis died. The Hustler appeared as a short story in Playboy and was then made into the classic Robert Rossen film of the same name, starring Paul Newman and Piper Laurie. ![]() There’s no particular reason you should have heard of Tevis, apart from the fact that many years ago he submitted a thesis for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop entitled The Hustler, about pool shark Fast Eddie Felson and his alcoholic writer girlfriend, Sarah. Chess movies have come and gone ( Searching for Bobby Fischer and Pawn Sacrifice, also about Fischer), but until now the limited subject matter and the difficulties inherent in rendering a largely cerebral pastime on screen have prevented the game from enjoying a full-on international blockbuster. ![]() Scott Frank’s show The Queen’s Gambit, based on Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel of the same name, is the Netflix breakout success of the year, rivaling the popularity of the documentary Tiger King and threatening to supplant the international reach of the multiseason Spanish hit Money Heist. ![]() At long last, the game of chess is ready for its close up. ![]()
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