Local children of 'The Queen's Gambit' author reflect on father's life, legacy - The Columbus Dispatch

Local children of 'The Queen's Gambit' author reflect on father's life, legacy - The Columbus Dispatch
50 best movies from the 1970s | Entertainment | lexch.com - Lexington Clipper Herald
What Dungeons and Dragons can teach writers about collaboration and crafting narrative, characters and worlds - ABC News

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 02:43 AM PST

Allison Ward | The Columbus Dispatch

Whenever a colleague or friendly acquaintance asks Julie Tevis McGory if she's seen the Netflix miniseries "The Queen's Gambit," she can't help but chuckle a bit.

The Clintonville resident doesn't have the heart to tell them that as a young adult her father, Walter Tevis, sent her pieces of his manuscript for "The Queen's Gambit" as he finished each chapter, making her one of the first people to read the 1983 novel that serves as the basis for the popular show that was watched by 62 million households in its first four weeks.

Of course, she's seen it and loved every minute of it — and she says her dad, who died a year after "The Queen's Gambit" was published, would've loved it, too.

"It's been really surprising and totally taken us by surprise," McGory, 63, said of the show's popularity. "The series could've been bad, but it's not. It's one of the best things that Netflix has actually done."

It helps, she and her brother said, that their father was a master of storytelling.

"He told great bedtime stories," said Will Tevis, 66, of Athens County.

The time since Netflix premiered in late October this coming-of-age story about a young female chess prodigy has been a whirlwind for Walter Tevis' two children. They've responded to media inquiries about their father, worked to republish his books — which include "The Hustler" and "The Color of Money" — in various languages and, most importantly, honored their dad's legacy.

In the meantime, the show has become a pop culture phenomenon, with BuzzFeed ranking the main character Beth Harmon's gorgeous outfits and chess players from around the globe weighing in on the show's matches. (They're accurate and beautifully played.)

The result has been a time of bittersweet reflection for the Tevis siblings as they've watched the world fall in love with their father's stories all over again despite him being gone 36 years.

They've recalled fond memories of a loving father who enjoyed challenging them in competition — Will in chess or pool and Julie in cards or Monopoly — and who stepped away from the literary limelight to be a dad.

But the success of the show is also a stark reminder of what could've been if Walter Tevis hadn't died of lung cancer at the age of 56, on the heels of hitting his stride as a full-time author.

"It would be like Beth being hit by a car at the end of ("The Queen's Gambit")," McGory said. "That would've been pretty tragic."

Feeling of abandonment

In one of the first scenes of the seven-episode series, a 9-year-old Beth is standing in line with other young girls at the orphanage waiting to get "vitamins," which the audience quickly learns are tranquilizers.

This is almost an exact snippet from Walter Tevis' life. As a child, he had a heart condition and his parents placed him in a convalescent home in Northern California, where he was born in 1928. There, staff gave him phenobarbital.

His family moved to Kentucky without him during that time. He'd join them later, but not before the damage of abandonment set in.

"Close your eyes and imagine a little boy saying, 'Don't leave me, don't leave me' and then they leave you in a home," said Will Tevis, who owns a heating and cooling business outside Athens. "They sent him a train ticket nine months later, but then he had to drive on a train all by himself at 10. &mldr; I can't imagine."

Will Tevis said he's not exactly sure when his father told him that story, but he knows it's one of the reasons his father struggled with alcoholism.

Walter Tevis met his first wife and the children's mother, Jamie Griggs, when they both taught at a Kentucky high school. During his time as a teacher there and other places, he penned short stories that appeared in magazines such as Playboy and Cosmopolitan.

The young author experienced early success with his first novel "The Hustler" (1959), which was turned into a major motion picture starring Paul Newman. "The Man Who Fell to Earth" followed in 1963 and that, too, was turned into a film starring David Bowie.

The family moved around a lot in the children's early years, Will Tevis said, as his father took a number of teaching jobs in places like Iowa and Connecticut. They even moved to Mexico for nine months. Finally, the elder Tevis took a professor job in Ohio University's creative writing department in 1965.

"They were recruiting a lot of young talent," Will Tevis said. "They hired a bunch of very well-known writers."

Both of the author's children graduated from Athens High School, and he stayed at the university teaching until 1978, when he got sober and moved to Manhattan to try to fulfill his dream of working as a full-time writer.

That's when he wrote "The Queen's Gambit," followed by "The Color of Money," a sequel to "The Hustler" that was turned into a movie featuring Newman and Tom Cruise and directed by Martin Scorsese.

Epic chess matches

Though Walter Tevis only published six novels, they were critically acclaimed and well-received. His children said their father's books were popular because he always told stories about what he knew (like billiards in "The Hustler") and showed pieces of his own life and personality in each book.

"In all my dad's stories, he's the main character," Will Tevis said.

His characters often struggle with addiction, but they're also underdogs who never stop fighting.

That all rings true for the main character, Beth, in "The Queen's Gambit," but she also played one of Walter Tevis' favorite pastimes: chess.

Will Tevis said he and his father played nearly every day during his adolescence, generally at a board in his father's office — a small garage fixed up as a place for the author to write (but generally reserved for drinking and playing games).

"I still have that same chess board we played on," Will Tevis said. "Chess is a grueling mental exercise. When you move, there's nothing the other guy can do. You can't 'hope' him to make a certain move."

Chess was a game their father studied intensely for years, filling his library with chess strategy books and working with masters of the game. But while match play shines in the book, it takes a back seat to character development.

"Beth was a tremendous underdog, and to make her even more of an underdog, he made her a woman in this male-dominated profession of chess," Will Tevis said.

The Tevis children said their father was ahead of his time by writing about female empowerment in the early '80s. That's one of several reasons they said the show — some screen version has been in the works since the book's publication, and film rights were once tied to Heath Ledger before his death in 2008 — has resonated with so many people.

They also said everyone loves a good sports story, even one about a game as complicated as chess.

"The book makes chess real," said McGory, a program specialist in the Department of Linguistics at Ohio State University. "Even if you don't know chess, you feel what she feels. The neatest part about the show — and the book — is when (Beth) sees the right play and she's got it, or she sees that she's going to lose."

Finally famous

Walter Tevis experienced a bit of fame during his life, especially for his early successes. McGory said they met the actor Newman once and she had a call with Bowie set up — poor phone reception spoiled that.

But none of that compares to what they've experienced the past few months.

They're sending old photographs to PBS for a documentary, and Will Tevis said that Jim Burrow, the father of Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, recently told him that the athlete, who attended Athens High School, has taken up chess and loved "The Queen's Gambit."

The brother and sister said they're both filled with pride about what their father accomplished during his life — he eventually gave up drinking, moved to Manhattan and became successful again before his death — as well as the enduring legacy his art has created.

"I'm really proud of him," Will Tevis said. "He did neat stuff, and I'm glad people are seeing it. It's valuable stuff, but it's like if (Vincent) van Gogh had children, they'd hope people liked his stuff, too."

award@dispatch.com

@AllisonAWard

50 best movies from the 1970s | Entertainment | lexch.com - Lexington Clipper Herald

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 04:50 AM PST

The 1970s were a magical time for movies, with a whole new crop of stars and directors becoming household names, from Robert Redford and Al Pacino to Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen. After the tumultuous Sixties that included the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and the Vietnam War, America was a different place, and Hollywood reflected the changing culture like a cinematic mirror. Films started exploring new ground with changing gender roles, political mistrust, and more subversive forms of comedy. The result was a new era, both in American cinema and around the world.

To celebrate the cinematic heyday of the 1970s, this list was compiled to rank the best movies of the decade. Stacker compiled data on all 1970s movies to come up with a Stacker score—a weighted index split evenly between IMDb and Metacritic scores. To qualify, the film had to have a premiere date between 1970 and 1979, have a Metascore, and have at least 1,000 votes. Ties were broken by Metascore and further ties were broken by IMDb user rating and votes. All data updated as of Jan. 12, 2020.

This decade, part of the "New Hollywood" era of movies, was led by the film school generation. These filmmakers challenged the traditional, stagnant perspective of Hollywood while also encouraging the academic study of film and distribution of international films. These latter initiatives really gave birth to the field of film criticism as we know it today. Which, in turn, has changed how films are crafted and made and led to the demise of the New Hollywood age at the end of the '70s.

Keep reading to discover the Italian-American series that cleaned up at the Oscars and find out which controversial director appeared on the list three separate times.

You may also like: 50 of the best SNL skits

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What Dungeons and Dragons can teach writers about collaboration and crafting narrative, characters and worlds - ABC News

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 11:18 AM PST

Like an entire generation of nerdy 80s kids, American writer Alexander Chee spent whole weekends of his childhood playing Dungeons & Dragons.

"My friends would come over and we'd play late into the night, in the basement of my parents' home," Chee told Claire Nichols on The Book Show.

"This continued well into high school, it was pretty all-consuming ... [and] I do think that it had a profound impact on me becoming a writer."

Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and The Queen of the Night, is far from the only writer who has been obsessed with, and shaped by, the fantasy role-playing tabletop game.

Bestselling Irish crime writer Dervla McTiernan (The Ruin, The Scholar and The Good Turn) says: "I feel like there's a secret tribe of writers who were all D&D [Dungeons & Dragons] nerds when we were kids."

"It can't be a coincidence that if you scrape the surface of so many writers, you find a Dungeon & Dragons player underneath."

Novelists as diverse as Ta-Nehesi Coates, George R. R. Martin and China Mieville, and screenwriters Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and John August (Big Fish), are amongst the game's legion of fans.

A bunch of Dungeons and Dragons dice — D&D, like other games, has experienced somewhat of a renaissance during COVID-19(Supplied: Flickr/Capes Treasures (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0))

Anna Spargo-Ryan, Australian author of The Gulf and The Paper House, says she knows players who have been playing the same D&D game for over a decade, returning to the same world, characters and story.

"Of course, writers love doing that. It's just like an endless book that nobody has a deadline for ... that is always evolving, which is exactly the best kind of story," she says.

'Choose your own adventure'

D&D first came out in 1974 and is now in its 5th edition, having firmly lodged itself into the pop culture vernacular, spawning its own novels and feature films (with a new one in development) while regularly popping up on screen — from E.T. and Freaks and Geeks, to Community and Stranger Things.

"It's a very complex game ... a very multifaceted, layered, deeply storytelling-based game," says Spargo-Ryan.

Briefly put: in a game of D&D, a dungeon master (or DM) directs and describes the action, drawing the story from either a D&D book or their own design, to set the players on a quest.

The rest of the players form an adventuring party who must decide how to overcome challenges thrown at them through the story.

A roll of the dice (including the famous 20-sided one) determines the outcome of the players' choices, which impacts on the direction of the game.

A scene from the TV series Stranger Things with a bunch of fantastical Dungeons & Dragons figurines on a map — Miniature figurines can be used in the game as stand-ins for players, but aren't necessary.(Supplied: Netflix)

Chee says: "It's almost a choose your own adventure, except that the dice are doing a lot of the work."

McTiernan warns that "the rules can be relatively complex ... it will seem quite intimidating. But in gameplay, when you're actually playing, there's very little of that."

'Something between storytelling and gambling'

"The point of the game is to continue ... So there's no there's no losing, there's no winning. It's all about the creation," says McTiernan.

Chee started playing the game when was 12 years old and became a DM soon after, eventually coming up with his own campaigns.

Portrait of the American writer Alexander Chee — Chee describes the relationship between DM and players as an "anticipatory, almost sort of co-dependent relationship ... you're entering into a clairvoyant state".(Supplied: Bloomsbury Publishing)

"It's something between storytelling and gambling ... there's a certain place in the gameplay where you give up control — that's the roll of the dice."

He says being a dungeon master had a direct impact on his development as a writer.

"At a very basic level, it was watching people hang on my words, watching them waiting for the next thing I would say, noticing how the way I would tell the story of the game would affect their experience of the game," says Chee.

The other element that was foundational for Chee's writing was the need, as DM, to think through the many possible situations that your players might encounter or activate.

"That's a lot like being a writer; thinking of the reader's experience of the story."

Building characters and worlds

As a kid, McTiernan often struggled to find others to play the game with her — but that didn't stop her from poring over D&D manuals.

"I was addicted to reading as a child. I just could not get enough story, and Dungeons & Dragons just offers more story, but in a creative way," says the writer.

Portrait of Irish crime writer Dervla McTiernan, standing in front of a bridge and river — "The joy of it really is that you are unconstrained by any plan. You just play according to your imagination," says McTiernan.(Supplied: HarperCollins/Julia Dunin)

McTiernan recalls reading a D&D Wilderness Survival Guide cover to cover as a kid, which showed her how to draw maps and deal with climate in the game.

"If you were a fantasy writer, you couldn't think of anything better from a world-building perspective," she says.

Unlike Chee and McTiernan, Spargo-Ryan was introduced to D&D as an adult, by her boyfriend.

"D&D is so much like writing. That was something that I had no idea about when I started playing it," she says.

"Everything that you do to create, understand and continue to develop your character definitely helps with writing."

Portrait of the Australian writer Anna Spargo-Ryan — "A thing that I learned, as well, is that it's always late afternoon in D&D," says Spargo-Ryan.(Supplied: Pan Macmillan)

Rather than taking on the role of DM, Spargo-Ryan enjoys being part of the adventuring party and taking on a character, like a half-elf bard who has a familiar (animal sidekick) cat called Craig.

"Staying in character is a really important part of Dungeons & Dragons," she says.

When players are establishing their characters at the start of the game, they have to fill out "character sheets", which include a section for physical characteristics and personality traits.

Chee, who teaches writing at New Hampshire's Dartmouth College, says these character sheets can be a useful tool in creating fictional characters.

"This focus on breaking down the aspects of the character into traits — that the character themselves may not think about — is an important part of being a writer," says the author.

Collaboration

Despite the best plans, the dungeon master cannot control the way the players behave, and must adapt their story on the fly — which is why, Spargo-Ryan says, "it's more like improv than writing, in a way".

Popular Australian podcast Dragon Friends is based on a live show where DM Dave Harmon, with the help of Ben Jenkins, guides a cast of comedians — including Michael Hing and Alex Lee — through a game of D&D.

Harmon was the only one who had played D&D before the podcast, but the entire cast has plenty of improv experience.

Which comes in handy when Harmon and Jenkins (a writer and producer for The Checkout, Tonightly and The Feed) are forced to ditch whatever they've planned in response to their players' unpredictable moves (one entire season was derailed by a guest performer — comedian Tom Walker).

A portrait of writer and producer Ben Jenkins — "Part of me is sometimes genuinely frustrated when they [our plans] don't come off. And then part of me is also like, well, that's the joy of it," Jenkins says.(Supplied: Dragon Friends/Monica Pronk)

"The fact that you write so much more than you use is an excellent exercise in writing, and an excellent exercise in not killing your darlings, but having your darlings killed for you," says Jenkins.

"I'm much less precious about ideas now, and I'm much more willing now as a writer to just throw an idea out there or to just write it and put it out there."

Importantly, this isn't your usual D&D game: the Dragon Friends are performing rather than purely playing; listeners are privy to a group of writer comedians co-authoring a wild, funny, rambling story, using the mechanics of D&D.

A group of comedians recording the Dragon Friends podcast on a stage with red curtains in the background — The Dragon Friends podcast now has six seasons (plus specials) and a Twitch stream.(Supplied: Dragon Friends)

Screen Australia recently funded the group to develop a fictional web series, and after all the freewheeling, unscripted chaos of their podcast, the seven writers are back to stricter scripting.

"After doing basically collaboration on stage as entertainment, suddenly just doing it by ourselves in a writer's room feels like a breeze ... it's made us more collaborative," says Jenkins.

His experience working on Dragon Friends has also inspired Jenkins to try his hand at writing short stories, for the first time.

"You get your flying hours up in creativity, writing, ideas and structure ... So it's actually given me the confidence to write some short fiction."

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