All the Right Moves: William Horberg and Allan Scott win it all making The Queen's Gambit

ALL THE RIGHT

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atching the biggest runaway Netflix hit of all time, The Queen’s Gambit, about a female child chess prodigy who’s wrestling with her genius and her demons simultaneously, is in itself like watching a perfectly played chess match. All the pieces of a masterful production have fallen into place, from the writing and directing to the casting and costuming … from the set and sound design to the editing and musical composition. But did anyone behind the creation of this masterpiece predict the success it would have? No, they did not. In fact, much of the production was created on instinct, the way Beth Harmon plays her best chess.

Executive Producer William Horberg, who, along with co-creator Allan Scott, expertly assembled the pieces on this well-played

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William Horberg and Allan Scott win it all making The Queen’s Gambit written by By Katie Grant

The Queen’s Gambit star Anya Taylor with director Scott Frank (left) and executive producer William Horberg

limited-series board that was 30 years in the making, says, “Well, I think anybody who had anything to do with this is stunned and tickled pink because it really was a 30-plus-year journey. The book was published in the ’80s. And, as it happened, in 1992, Allan Scott wrote a script for Sydney Pollack and me at Mirage. Meanwhile, he was adapting the Walter Tevis novel The Queen’s Gambit at the same time.

“Then Allan and QG director Scott Frank actually both wrote episodes of a show called Fallen Angels for me, but they didn’t know each other at the time. So it’s funny, all of these relationships really go way back, but I didn’t know anything about The Queen’s

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Gambit, and I didn’t know that Allan had the rights.

“It wasn’t until I made The Talented Mr. Ripley with Anthony Minghella that I met writer Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient). Michael is a huge fan of the novel The Queen’s Gambit. He said, ‘I read it every couple of years to remind me how to write.’ I thought, ‘This guy’s no slouch; if this is like his writing bible, I’ve got to read it.’ So I ran out and read it and I loved it, and I thought, ‘Why hasn’t anybody made this? This is really compelling.’”

After researching who had the rights, Horberg was surprised to find they belonged to his old friend Allan Scott. Allan had adapted it and written a screenplay for a feature film, and that format seemed to be the sticking point to getting it made.

Horberg goes on: “There were always directors and actors interested. Like when the late Heath Ledger was set to direct; he was once a child chess master himself in Australia. But the marketplace was not interested.

It was too expensive for how commercial people perceived the story. It didn’t add up.”

ECONOMIC CHOICES What did add up was the formula of players Horberg tapped to make the expanded version of this story into a seven-part limited series—an idea that came to director Scott Frank when he made Godless for Netflix. Then Horberg and Frank realized they were both fans of Babylon Berlin, so they connected first with their production designer, Uli Hanisch, and his crew. They didn’t think they could make the whole series, which spans the globe, in just one location, but Hanisch proved them wrong.

He found or built sets for everything from Beth’s Kentucky home to Las Vegas, Paris, Moscow and even Mexico City right there in Berlin. Having a story of mainly interiors made it a bit easier.

This location choice was the first of many “economic” moves made for this production about a game that similarly demands an extreme economy of movement.

Not having to move countries saved the team time as well as money. And the economy of moves is most noticeable in the

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acting prowess of star Anya Taylor-Joy. Every reserved choice of what to show and not show on her mini movie screen of a face—or how she deftly picks up a chess piece or decides to finally speak—sets the stage with restraint and draws us in.

Connecting with Scott Frank and finding Hanisch was another smart move that helped Horberg produce with such finesse. “We were terrified of how much chess there was in the book. As much as we love it, it’s also like, ‘Man, how are people who know nothing about chess and couldn’t care less about it going to get this?’ We understood that this had to

“We didn’t have every location picked yet, but we knew that there had to be a progression from local Kentucky matches to Moscow, the Cadillac tournament of chess. And we had to learn a lot about the tournament levels. We talked about every board, what color it is, what kind of pieces there were, what the clocks were going to look like. So again, if you look carefully, it’s always changing. The pieces are changing; the clocks are changing. The whole thing of having a radio guy in Mexico City was a genius move because suddenly you could marry the drama of the chess game through the voice of an expert.”

“ECONOMY APPLIES TO EVERYTHING THAT YOU DO. IT APPLIES TO WRITING, ECONOMY APPLIES TO EDITING, AND TO THE STAGING OF THINGS.” work for an audience beyond chess. So we said, ‘Well, we can’t put all these matches in. We have to pick the ones that are significant to Beth’s journey, and we have to have variety.’”

They accomplished that variety at their own private chess summit held in Berlin. First, Scott Frank pored through the script, finding just the right way to share each match. “Very early in preproduction, we brought some of the team on, and we even flew the editor to Berlin. We planned a three-day production meeting all exclusively around the chess matches.

We talked through every tournament. Uli and his art department prepped for this, so they had a layout board of rough ideas.

LESS IS MÁS This kind of preproduction planning is old hat to Horberg. “I’m a big believer that the more prep time you can have, the better.

Even before prep—we call it ‘long, thin prep,’ just core people who can help to previsualize and problem-solve.” Another brilliant move for a production with many moving parts.

Allan Scott, a prolific and award-winning writer and producer in his own right, stresses how important narration— something he sees missing from many scripts—was to this story. Using narration with economy, that is. He explains: “Economy applies to everything you do.

It applies to writing, to editing and to the

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staging of things. Yes, it does, but it’s how you use the economy. I keep getting sent things that have nothing to do with The Queen’s Gambit—scripts or treatments to make comments on—to see if I can help.

The thing that startles me is how little narrative they have. The Queen’s Gambit is full of narrative.”

Horberg adds, “You learn in a series like The Queen’s Gambit to come up with a punchline for every episode. Something that leaves the audience saying, ‘Oh, I want to be there for the next one.’ I have to say this was entirely Scott’s idea. He came up with my favorite one. It’s at the end of episode 4 when Beth looks blankly at the pharmacist in Mexico and just says, ‘Más.’ Talk about economy. She doesn’t say, ‘Well, I really need a hit. Can you get me something that really works?’ She just says, ‘Más.’”

More is exactly what we want as we devour each episode of The Queen’s Gambit. When asked why he thinks the show is such a hit, Horberg replies, “I think it’s a story of survival. It’s a story of regaining human connection. I think in a world that was knocked on its ass by this pandemic where everybody was so isolated and atomized and relationships got reduced to screen relationships—all that was a big contributing factor.

“And then I think that Beth Harmon is such a unique character and, as portrayed

by Anya Taylor-Joy, so incredibly fascinating and contradictory. She’s a killer, but she’s kind of a sweetheart. She’s a chess nerd, but she’s a sexy fashion plate too.

She’s brilliant in some areas of her life and she’s totally naive and unprepared for other areas of life. That’s the trick of the novel.

From the first page, you’re glued to this person and thinking, ‘Who is this girl?’

“This was a word-of-mouth, sleeper hit. There was no algorithm that was going to tell anybody that they should make it. Netflix made it because they were in business with Scott Frank and they were super happy with Godless and they wanted to extend that relationship, and this was what he wanted to do next.”

Allan Scott adds that the appeal of QG is its theme about the cost of genius and

The Queen’s Gambit line producer Marcus Loges (left) with writer Allan Scott

how people are fascinated with that. “I think genius is the ability to shut out all other distractions and focus on something to a depth.”

LIFE BEFORE FILM Both Bill Horberg and Allan Scott come from nonfilm backgrounds that have oddly contributed to their talents as movie men. For Horberg, it was music. He attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston and plays the flute and piano. He says, “With music, I like to think about story in compositional terms and about resolution. Resolution is a very musical concept. I look for the core of the story and the reverberations that you carry with you from it. I always love filmmakers who have strong musical concepts. I love composers and just being around the scoring of a film is really fun for me. I mean, Carlos Rafael Rivera just knocked it out of the park on this one. He’s a real artist.”

Horberg actually got to apply his musical talents on the screen for QG as the piano player in a restaurant and as a songwriter. He collaborated with singer/ songwriter Anna Hauss—actress Marielle Heller’s hand double for piano playing—to write an original song that Hauss sang

in an episode. He credits Scott Frank, saying, “He was open-minded enough to say, ‘Go do something and I’ll listen to it.

And if I like it, we’ll do it.’” They did do it and the results are a poignant moment in the story that speaks volumes for Beth’s emotions in the scene.

As for Allan Scott, he studied English in university but then went on to be a player in the Scotch whisky industry as the chairman of the distillery The Macallan before becoming a writer for film and TV. I asked him about any connections he saw between making whiskey and making movies and he had this to say: “The elements that running a company like the whiskey company and making a movie share are that it’s just as much about the market. It’s actually more about marketing it for me than it is about making whiskey.

“You know how the whiskey is made and you make sure that those standards are kept up. It’s about man-management, by which I mean labor management.

It’s about time management, it’s about managing advertising agencies, public relations companies. It’s not sitting next to the pot and checking that the fire is hot. Filmmaking and producing have

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similarities in that you need to organize, hold things together, but most of all, you need to persuade and collaborate.

“But I think the same is true as a producer. That’s your function. Your function is to raise the money, to make sure that everything works well, and in this case, Bill will tell you this too: We never had a better crew as producers in our lives as we had in Berlin.” Bill adds that their line producer, Marcus Loges, is “probably the best I’ve ever worked with. He was a great partner to Scott and me.”

LESSONS LEARNED Being able to summon such a good crew and becoming a good producer comes from knowing yourself, says Horberg. “I think that you have to have a very thick skin. You have to try to find the sweet spot of the things that you love and are passionate about in the marketplace and what is getting made. You don’t have to love everything; you have to know yourself and be an audience for the

Between takes on The Queen’s Gambit set in Berlin

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things that you’re trying to achieve and create so that your gut instinct of what’s working, where to point your compass, has a true north to it.

“And then, I think now more than ever—and I didn’t do this—you need to get as many different skill sets as you can. Learn how to use Final Cut or how to write. Learn sound, learn the set, learn the budgets, because it’s just a radically different world. There’s more stuff being made than ever, but it’s harder than ever to have a career and to have any kind of security. So I just think that if you’ve got these different skills, then you’re always going to be able to work, even as you’re trying to tell your own stories and make your own things happen.”

Allan Scott has this to offer up-andcoming producers: “You know, it’s kind of boring advice, but it works. I’ve run classes and taught courses, and I’ve written and talked a lot: If you want to be a producer or a director, read the 12 best screenplays that are around. Just read them. And read them

again. You can learn from that.

“Before I wrote my first screenplay, I think I read five screenplays. One was Lawrence of Arabia. One was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. William Goldman is wonderfully easy to read because he writes like a novelist. Sit there and read and honestly, you will learn more things than you knew possible to learn.”

Applying lessons learned to The Queen’s Gambit, Allan Scott adds, “All good moviemaking, all screenplays, should have at least five moments where the heartstrings are tugged one way or the other. Whether it reduces you to tears, whether it makes you apprehensive or fearful, that’s what drama is about. It’s pulling at those strings.

That is, I hope, part of the success of The Queen’s Gambit. It tackles all those elements.” One might think that finally bringing The Queen’s Gambit to life would feel like he made his ultimate opus, but Allan says no. He says it’s like whenever he’s asked what is the favorite thing he’s ever written or produced: “The truth is, it has to

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be the next project. Because if it isn’t the next project, you can’t do it. You have to believe in it that strongly.”

Horberg believes strongly that TV and film are now becoming the same thing when it comes to creating content. “It’s all one thing now, in my mind. It’s just content that is getting onto platforms, and whether it’s a screen or a flat screen or a streaming screen or a broadcast screen or an iPad. But I grew up a film guy and I love film, and that was my idea of what I thought I wanted to do with my career—make movies. I’m still trying to make movies, which makes me almost a bit of a dinosaur. I loved this limited-series format, though. I really enjoyed the kind of novelist quality and being able to tell a story and a story that ended, too. I don’t know that I’m super attracted to the seven-year narrative arc, even though it’s kind of the financial holy grail. I haven’t found a story or characters yet that lend themselves to that. I don’t know that I could stay interested that long.”

Horberg is interested in humanistic stories and especially book-to-film adaptations like QG. “I’m attracted to literature, both fiction and nonfiction. I was lucky to work early on with director Mike Nichols, and he said a great thing that I carry with me. Somebody asked him, ‘What do you like?’ And he said, ‘Well, I like things that are ‘very.’ If it’s funny, it’s got to be very funny. If it’s scary, it’s got to be very scary.

If it’s going to break your heart, it needs to be very heartbreaking.’ If it’s drama, I’m always pushing people to find the humor in it. If it’s a comedy, I’m always making sure that we care, and there’s a kind of emotional truth underneath the laughs.”

APPRECIATING PRODUCERS When it comes to producing in general, Horberg says, “I wish that as an industry we appreciated, honored, protected, and supported producers more. I think it’s one of the most important jobs in the film process, both from the financier being somebody they can trust as responsible

both creatively and financially. And from the filmmaker’s point of view, being somebody they can trust to have their back and the intentions of the storytelling in mind. Also someone who can manage a creative process within a box of limited time, money and resources.

“We don’t have a union, we don’t get residuals, we don’t have health care that comes to us. I think a lot of my peers who have been in the game for a long time feel like we’re incredibly necessary, but not treated as essential talent.

“It was kind of a joke,” Horberg continues, “but producing became a hobby for billionaires or an entree place for students. But to be a middle-class, year-in, year-out working producer, it’s a very frustrating model. Eighty percent of your time can be spent speculatively because it takes years to get projects developed and you don’t get paid until they get made.

And then more than half the time—certainly for an independent producer— you’re being asked to defer your fees and you’re recouping your fees behind other people who are making money off of your Herculean labors.

“So I’ve been very involved in the Producer’s Guild and we’ve done a lot to try to create a community around our common interests and needs and foster a lot of best practices in terms of sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and mentorship.

But I feel like there are big winners in the game and they get big overall deals.

They’ve reached a level of security, but I think the culture of producing still needs to be understood better.”

What we can understand about Horberg and Scott’s producing The Queen’s Gambit is that hard work pays off in the long run. And that knowing that every move you make along the way—whether, like Horberg, it’s trading book interests with the writer down the hall at your first studio job who will become your director one day ... or, as Allan Scott did, being the first to option the rights to a book and renewing them over and over until you can buy them outright—could be the long shot that leads to success in producing.

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