The film received generally positive reviews and was nominated for several awards, including a Best Picture Oscar nomination and several Golden Globe Awards, but was a financial disappointment, grossing $52.2 million against a $31 million budget.
Plot
In 1958, the questions and answers to be used for the latest broadcast of NBC's popular quiz show Twenty-One are transported from a secure bank vault to the studio. The evening's main attraction is Queens resident Herb Stempel, the reigning champion, who correctly answers every single question he is asked. Eventually, both the network and the program's corporate sponsor, the supplementary tonic Geritol, begin to fear that Stempel's approval ratings are beginning to level out, and decide that the show would benefit from new talent.
Producers Dan Enright and Albert Freedman are surprised when Columbia University instructor Charles Van Doren, son of a prominent literary family, visits their office to audition for a different, less difficult show by the same producers, Tic-Tac-Dough. Realizing that they have found an ideal challenger for Stempel, they offer to ask the same questions during the show which Van Doren correctly answered during his audition. He refuses, but when he nears a game-winning 21 points on the show, he is asked one of the questions from his audition. After a moment of moral indecision, he gives the correct answer. Stempel deliberately misses an easy question and loses, having been promised a future in television if he does so.
In the subsequent weeks, Van Doren's winning streak makes him a national celebrity, but he reluctantly buckles under the pressure and allows Enright and Freedman to start giving him the answers. Meanwhile, Stempel, having lost his prize money to an unscrupulous bookie, begins threatening legal action against NBC after weeks pass without his return to television. He visits New York County District Attorney Frank Hogan, who convenes a grand jury to look into his allegations.
Richard Goodwin, a young Congressional lawyer, learns that the grand jury findings have been sealed and travels to New York City to investigate rumors of rigged quiz shows. Visiting a number of contestants, including Stempel and Van Doren, he begins to suspect that Twenty-One is a fixed operation. Stempel's volatile personality damages his credibility, and nobody else seems willing to confirm that the show is fixed. Fearing Goodwin will give up the investigation, Stempel confesses that he was fed the correct answers during his run on the show, and insists that Van Doren must have been involved as well. Another former contestant gives Goodwin a set of answers that he mailed to himself two days before his quiz show appearance, which Goodwin takes to be corroborating evidence.
A guilt-ridden Van Doren deliberately loses, but NBC offers him a lucrative contract to appear as a special correspondent on the morning Today show. The House Committee for Legislative Oversight convenes a hearing, at which Goodwin presents his evidence of the quiz show's corruption. Stempel testifies at the hearing but fails to convince the committee, and both NBC network head Robert Kintner and Geritol executive Martin Rittenhome deny any knowledge of Twenty-One being rigged. Subpoenaed by Goodwin, Van Doren testifies before the committee and admits his role in the deception. After the hearing adjourns, he learns from reporters that he has been fired from Today and that Columbia's board of trustees will be asking for his resignation.
Goodwin believes that he is close to a victory against Geritol and NBC, but realizes that Enright and Freedman will not jeopardize their own futures in television by turning against their bosses. He silently watches the producers' testimony, vindicating the sponsors and the network from any wrongdoing, and taking full responsibility for rigging the show. Disgusted, he steps outside and sees Van Doren, who waves at him before boarding a taxi.
Although much of Quiz Show is generally accurate based on the actual events,[9][10] its use of artistic license generated controversy and criticism (especially in regard to character changes) by critics and real-life figures involved with the scandal.[11]
The artistic licenses included compressing three years of scandal into one,[12] changing the location of Van Doren's first meeting with Goodwin, altering the start time of Goodwin's investigation, and making Van Doren's choice to incorrectly answer a question his own instead of that of NBC.[9]
The fateful episode in which Van Doren defeated Stempel is inaccurately portrayed. In the film, Stempel's intentionally incorrect response about Marty is in response to a three-point question with the score 18-10 in his favor. In reality, the question was worth five points and the score was 16-10. The film also presents this as the deciding moment of the game, with Van Doren correctly answering the next question about the Civil War to win. Van Doren's next question was actually about Pizarro's conquest of the Incas, and Stempel correctly replied to his next question about the voyages of Christopher Columbus. This forced a 21-21 tie and a new game to determine the winner. The incorrect answer that doomed Stempel occurred in the second game in response to a question about newspaperman William Allen White. Both Van Doren and Stempel then correctly answered a question about the wives of King Henry VIII, and the game ended when Van Doren elected to stop, winning by a score of 18-10.[13]
The film's magnification of the role that Twenty-One and its producer Albert Freedman played in the scandal was criticized by Jeff Kisslehoff, who wrote The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961, as well as Freedman himself. Kisslehoff argued that the dishonest practice originated in the radio era when players were overtly coached.[3] Goodwin's role in the investigation was less important than as portrayed in the film; he only became involved two years after Twenty-One ended syndication, and collection of information was handled by publications and assistant district attorneys in New York City.[3] Joe Stone, a congressional committee consultant who investigated the scandal for four years, was angered about the screenplay's spotlight on Goodwin and the fact that Goodwin accepted most of the credit for uncovering the scandal when the film was released. Goodwin's wife Doris Kearns Goodwin apologized to Stone about the film.[3]
Other dramatic liberties involved simplifications, such as the character of Van Doren, who is a "shallow icon" devoid of the ambiguities of the actual Van Doren, the Chicago Reader analyzed.[14] In a July 2008 edition of The New Yorker, Van Doren wrote about the events depicted in the film. He agreed with many of the details but wrote that his girlfriend at the time of his Twenty-One appearances was not depicted in the film. He also noted that he continued teaching after the scandal, contradicting the film's epilogue that states that he never returned to academia.[15]
For legal reasons, the name of Matthew Rosenhaus, CEO of the company that owned Geritol, was changed to Martin Rittenhome, and his personality reflected that of Charles Revson, who was the president of cosmetics brand Revlon that had sponsored another quiz show involved in the scandal, The $64,000 Question (1955–1958).[16]
Production
Background
When Robert Redford first saw Twenty-One in the late 1950s, he was in his early 20s taking art and acting classes in New York.[17] He recalled when he first saw Van Doren on the show, "Watching him and the other contestants was irresistible. The actor in me looked at the show and felt I was watching other actors. It was too much to believe, but at the same time, I never doubted the show. I hadn't had evidence television could trick us. But the merchant mentality was already taking hold, and as we know now, there's little morality there."[18] Redford described the scandal as "really the first in a series of scandals . . . that have left us numbed, unsure of what or who to believe."[17]
Quiz Show is based on a chapter of the book Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (1988) by Richard N. Goodwin,[17] who also was one of the film's many producers.[19]Paul Attanasio began writing the screenplay in 1990, joining immediately for the subject matter's "complex ironies," such as with its main characters.[20] Completing many drafts over the course of three years, Attanasio wrote the script by watching clips of Twenty-One, reading old articles about the scandal, learning about the 1950s television landscape at the Museum of Broadcasting and meeting with Goodwin.[19][21] Redford researched the topic by reading Dan Wakefield's book New York in the Fifties and brought Wakefield to the film set as an advisor who also was given a cameo appearance.[22] Redford had known Goodwin since appearing in The Candidate (1972), and he helped Attanasio integrate Goodwin's personality into the script.[23]
Because the story lacked a protagonist, Attanasio employed "shifting points of view" while maintaining a through line, which complicated the writing of the screenplay.[24] In depicting the themes of ethnic conflict between White Anglo-Saxon Protestants and Jewish characters, Attanasio borrowed from his experiences as a member of an Italian-American family. His relatives were outraged by the stereotypical depiction of Italians as loudmouth gangsters in the media.[19] He also integrated the duplicitous personalities of those with whom he had worked in the film industry in order to incorporate themes of disillusion.[19]
Development
Redford first read a rough draft after completing production of A River Runs Through It (1992), "looking for something edgier, faster-paced, urban, where I could move the camera more."[17]Barry Levinson's Baltimore Pictures and TriStar Pictures began development of a film project based on the quiz-show scandal, which proved difficult to sell because of its uncommercial style and subject matter. TriStar placed it in turnaround in September 1992, and it was then moved to Walt Disney Studios, which invested $20 million into the budget and launched the project into production through its Hollywood Pictures label in Spring 1993 after Redford agreed to direct.[18] Although Disney offered Charles Van Doren $100,000 to act as a consultant, he declined.[25]
Casting
Casting took place in New York in May 1993.[26] Redford originally planned for an American actor to play Van Doren, but after auditioning several actors such as William Baldwin,[26] he failed to find the "combination of elements" required for the character and awarded the part to British actor Ralph Fiennes.[17] To prepare for the role, Fiennes viewed clips of Van Doren on Twenty-One and televised interviews with him, and he also visited Van Doren's Cornwall, Connecticut home.[18] Although the men did not meet, Fiennes gained a sense of atmosphere from Van Doren's home.[27]Paul Newman was initially considered for the role of Mark Van Doren, but he declined.[17] In May 1993, Chris O'Donnell was reported to be talking with Redford about appearing in the film, but he was not cast.[28]
Turturro found it easy to assume the Stempel's character, but he gained 25 pounds for the role and altered his voice to mimic that of Stempel's.[27] After his initial success in Northern Exposure (1990–1995), Rob Morrow was offered several film roles but rejected them until he accepted the offer for Quiz Show: "I knew this was the one. It had the cachet of Bob Redford and was incredibly well-written." In getting the idea of the character of Goodwin, Morrow read four of his books.[29]
Levinson was originally attached to the project as director, but because of his commitment to the film Bugsy (1991), the job went to Redford.[30] However, Levinson was then cast by Redford for the part of Dave Garroway, as Redford liked his "easygoing, casual manner" and interest in 1950s culture.[16] For the scene involving J. Fred Muggs, a chimpanzee "unnerved by the lights and cameras" was found, as no animals trained for film production were available.[16]Martin Scorsese was cast by Redford for his physical features as well as for "his own personal style and delivery, so I found it interesting to have him play a tough character gently. And given his delivery style, in which he talks real fast, I thought it would make the character extremely menacing."[16]
Themes
Quiz Show has been categorized as a Faustian tale[31] about the loss of innocence (both for its three main characters and the entire country),[19] temptation with money,[32]moral ambiguity,[10] positive guises hiding negative actions,[10] the cult of celebrity,[32] the negative side effects of fame,[32] the power and corruption of big business and mass media,[32][33] the consequences of overcompetitiveness in business,[34]racial, ethnic and class conflict[7][14][35] and the discord between education and entertainment.[32] Attanasio, Redford and many film critics considered Quiz Show's subject matter essential, as it marked the beginning of the country's loss of innocence and faith in its trusted institutions that was exacerbated by events such as the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.[19][27][31][36][37]
Reviews from TV Guide and Newsweek noted that in the era of the film's release, scandals and culturally unacceptable behaviors were more expected and less shocking to the American public than they had been in the 1950s.[7][38]Newsweek wrote: "Neck high in '90s cynicism, it's hard to believe the tremors these scandals provoked. [...] In the '50s, Ingrid Bergman was blacklisted from Hollywood for having a baby out of wedlock. Today, Oliver North makes hash of the Constitution and it jump-starts his political career. What used to ruin your life gets you invited on 'Oprah' and a fat book deal. Shame is for losers; public confession and a 12-step program can turn you into a role model."[7]
Release
Quiz Show was released in September 1994. although some reports from late 1993 indicated that the film was planned to be distributed in the first half of 1994.[39]
With Quiz Show, Disney launched a platform-release strategy geared to generate interest in and publicity for the film by releasing it in a limited number of theaters before opening wider. The Shawshank Redemption, released around the same time, was distributed in a similar manner, but as with Quiz Show, it was a box-office failure.[40]
Quiz Show opened in New York on September 14, 1994 and expanded to 27 screens for the weekend, grossing $757,714, the fifth-highest-grossing opening weekend for a film showing on fewer than 50 screens.[1][41] It grossed $792,366 in its first five days.[42] The film gradually expanded over the next four weeks to a maximum of 822 screens and grossed a total of $24,822,619 in the U.S. and Canada.[43] In the U.S., the film's box-office performance began to fall even after its four Academy Award nominations, dropping 63% in weekly grosses for the week of March 12, 1995.[44]
Following its theatrical run, Quiz Show ran at international festivals, such as the 1995Berlin International Film Festival[45] and the Chinese edition of the Sundance Film Festival, which ran from October 5 to 12, 1995.[46] Five weeks prior to the Berlin festival, Redford informed Disney that he would not attend because of his work in Up Close and Personal (1996) and commitment to the Sundance festival. However, according to festival director Moritz de Hadeln, the festival had agreed to promote Quiz Show only if Redford had attended. His failure to attend eroded his relationship with Disney and other film-festival organizers, and it negatively impacted promotion for the film's international release.[47]
In countries such as Germany and France, Quiz Show generally performed far better in big cities than in smaller towns and attracted more female viewers than male. In Italy, despite much press and interest in the film, it was not a commercial success. The film performed well in Spain, where it grossed $368,000 within six days during a 31-screen run.[48] The film grossed an international total of $1.4 million by February 12, 1995.[49] It finally grossed $27.4 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $52.2 million.[50][51]
Critical reception
Quiz Show currently holds a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 117 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The site's consensus states: "Directed with sly refinement by Robert Redford and given pizazz by a slew of superb performances, Quiz Show intelligently interrogates the erosion of public standards without settling on tidy answers."[52] Film critic Roger Ebert awarded the film 3½ stars out of 4, calling the screenplay "smart, subtle and ruthless."[53] Web critic James Berardinelli praised the "superb performances by Fiennes" and wrote that "John Turturro is exceptional as the uncharismatic Herbie Stempel."[54] Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman highlighted the supporting performance of Paul Scofield as Mark Van Doren, stating that "it's in the relationship between the two Van Dorens that Quiz Show finds its soul."[55]Kenneth Turan called Scofield's performance his best since A Man for All Seasons (1966) and suggested that the film "would have been a very different experience" without Fiennes' "ability to project the pain behind a well-mannered facade, to turn intellectual and emotional agony into a real and living thing",[10] but also criticized Turturro's and Morrow's exaggerated performances.[10]
Charles Van Doren said: "I understand that movies need to compress and conflate, but what bothered me most was the epilogue stating that I never taught again. I didn't stop teaching, although it was a long time before I taught again in a college. I did enjoy John Turturro's version of Stempel. And I couldn't help but laugh when Stempel referred to me in the film as 'Charles Van Fucking Moron.'"[56]
Charles Robert Redford Jr. is a retired American actor and filmmaker. He has received numerous accolades such as an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary César in 2019. He was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014.
The 1950s quiz show scandals were a series of scandals involving the producers and contestants of several popular American television quiz shows. These shows' producers secretly gave assistance to certain contestants in order to prearrange the shows' outcomes while still attempting to deceive the public into believing that these shows were objective and fair competitions. Producers fixed the shows sometimes with the free consent of contestants and out of various motives: improving ratings, greed, and the lack of regulations prohibiting such conspiracy in game show productions.
Charles Lincoln Van Doren was an American writer and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s. In 1959 he testified before the U.S. Congress that he had been given the correct answers by the producers of the NBC quiz show Twenty-One. Terminated by NBC, he joined Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. in 1959, becoming a vice-president and writing and editing many books before retiring in 1982.
The $64,000 Question was an American game show broadcast in primetime on CBS-TV from 1955 to 1958, which became embroiled in the 1950s quiz show scandals. Contestants answered general knowledge questions, earning money which doubled as the questions became more difficult. The final question had a top prize of $64,000, hence the "$64,000 Question" in the show's title.
Herbert Milton Stempel was an American television game show contestant and subsequent whistleblower on the fraudulent nature of the industry, in what became known as the 1950s quiz show scandals. His rigged six-week appearance as a winning contestant on the 1950s show Twenty-One ended in an equally rigged defeat by Columbia University teacher and literary scion Charles Van Doren.
Mark Van Doren was an American poet, writer and critic. He was a scholar and a professor of English at Columbia University for nearly 40 years, where he inspired a generation of influential writers and thinkers including Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, John Berryman, Whittaker Chambers, and Beat Generation writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. He was literary editor of The Nation, in New York City (1924–1928), and its film critic, 1935 to 1938.
Twenty-One is an American game show originally hosted by Jack Barry that initially aired on NBC from 1956 to 1958. Produced by Jack Barry-Dan Enright Productions, two contestants competed against each other in separate isolation booths, answering general-knowledge questions to earn 21 total points. The program became notorious when it was found to be rigged as part of the 1950s quiz show scandals, which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of United States Senate investigations. The 1994 film Quiz Show is based on these events. A new version of the show aired on NBC in 2000 with Maury Povich as host.
Daniel Enright was an American television producer, primarily of game shows. Enright worked with Jack Barry from the 1940s until Barry's death in 1984. They were partners in creating programs for radio and television. Their company was called Barry & Enright Productions.
Paul Albert Attanasio is an American screenwriter and film and television producer. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Quiz Show (1994) and Donnie Brasco (1997).
Steven Boghos Derounian was a Republican Congressman of Armenian-American descent. He represented Long Island, New York for six terms from 1953 to 1965.
Dotto was a 1958 American television game show that was a combination of a general knowledge quiz and the children's game connect the dots. Jack Narz served as the program's host, with Colgate-Palmolive as its presenting sponsor. Dotto rose to become the highest-rated daytime program in television history, as of 1958.
Dorothy Graffe Van Doren was an American writer and editor.
The 15th Boston Society of Film Critics Awards honored the best filmmaking of 1994. The awards were given on 18 December 1994.
A game show is a type of radio, television, or internet program in which contestants, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering trivia questions or solving puzzles, usually for prizes. Game shows are usually distinguishable from reality television competition shows, in which the competition consumes an entire season of episodes; in a game show, prizes can typically be won in a single match. Beginning with the first five-figure and six-figure game show jackpots in the mid-1950s, a succession of contestants on various quiz shows of the era each set records. Teddy Nadler of The $64,000 Challenge, the highest-scoring contestant of the 1950s era, was not surpassed until 1980, when Thom McKee won $312,700 on Tic-Tac-Dough. Between 1999 and 2001, during a brief boom in high-stakes game shows, the record was broken six times. Both the 1955–1958 and 1999–2001 eras of rapidly set and broken records were driven primarily by one-upmanship between the networks each trying to secure bragging rights and ratings by inflating their prize offerings, rather than the merits of the contestants themselves. American daytime television has historically had smaller prize budgets for game shows that air in that daypart.
Zuckerman Unbound is a 1981 novel by the American author Philip Roth.
The 60th New York Film Critics Circle Awards honored the best filmmaking of 1994. The winners were announced on 15 December 1994 and the awards were given on 22 January 1995.
The House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight was a special subcommittee of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, responsible for the oversight of federal regulatory agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission. During the 86th Congress in 1959, the subcommittee was chaired by Representative Oren Harris, a Democrat from Arkansas. The subcommittee is famous for its hearings regarding payola and the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. The investigations conducted led to regulation in the broadcast industry.
"Money" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist K. T. Oslin. It was released in July 1988 as the first single from the album This Woman. The song reached #13 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.
Julian Krainin is an American film producer, director, cinematographer, and scriptwriter. Notable films during his fifty-year career include Quiz Show, George Wallace, and Princeton: A Search for Answers, for which he has won an Academy Award, four Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe, and two Emmy Awards.
Albert Freedman was an American television producer who was involved with the 1950s quiz show scandals. He became a central figure in the cheating scandals and was the first person indicted. He was arrested for perjury after lying about giving contestants questions, and then recanted his grand jury testimony which led to the arrests of 14 former contestants. After the quiz show investigations concluded, Freedman moved to London to work in pornography publications.
References
Citations
1 2 "All-Time Opening Weekends: 50 Screens or Less". Daily Variety. September 20, 1994. p.24.
↑ Goodwin, Richard N. (2014). Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties (Paperbacked.). New York City: Open Road Integrated Media. ISBN978-1497676572.
↑ Vadeboncoeur, Joan (January 8, 1995). "Critically Acclaimed Best Movies of '94 Include Works from Tarantino, Burton, Demme, Redford, Disney and Speilberg". Syracuse Herald American (Finaled.). p.16.
↑ Hurley, John (December 30, 1994). "Movie Industry Hit Highs and Lows in '94". Staten Island Advance. p.D11.
↑ P. Means, Sean (January 1, 1995). "'Pulp and Circumstance' After the Rise of Quentin Tarantino, Hollywood Would Never Be the Same". The Salt Lake Tribune (Finaled.). p.E1.
↑ Kopp, Craig (December 29, 1994). "OUR CRITIC'S PICKS '94's winners: from 'Clerks' to 'Pulp Fiction'". The Cincinnati Post (Metroed.). p.3.
↑ Lawson, Terry (December 25, 1994). "UNKNOWN QUALITIES Best Yet to Come Among Years Top 10 Movies". Dayton Daily News (Cityed.). p.3C.
↑ Denerstein, Robert (January 1, 1995). "Perhaps It Was Best to Simply Fade to Black". Rocky Mountain News (Finaled.). p.61A.
↑ MacCambridge, Michael (December 22, 1994). "it's a LOVE-HATE thing". Austin American-Statesman (Finaled.). p.38.
↑ Strauss, Bob (December 30, 1994). "At the Movies: Quantity Over Quality". Los Angeles Daily News (Valleyed.). p.L6.
↑ Armstrong, Douglas (January 1, 1995). "End-of-year slump is not a happy ending". The Milwaukee Journal. p.2.
↑ Roberts, Jerry (December 30, 1994). "What kind of a movie year was it? It was mainly the pits Tom Hanks played "Forrest Gump" in one of the year's best". Daily Breeze. p.K12.
↑ Rahr, David (December 30, 1994). "Tarantino Top's Rahr's List". The Santa Fe New Mexican. p.37.
↑ Bates, Mack (January 19, 1995). "Originality of 'Hoop Dreams' makes it the movie of the year". The Milwaukee Journal. p.3.
↑ Mayo, Mike (December 30, 1994). "The Hits and Misses at the Movies in '94". The Roanoke Times (Metroed.). p.1.
↑ Pickle, Betsy (December 30, 1994). "Searching for the Top 10... Whenever They May Be". Knoxville News-Sentinel. p.3.
↑ Carlton, Bob (December 29, 1994). "It Was a Good Year at Movies". The Birmingham News. p.12-01.
↑ Delmont, Jim; Minge, Jim (December 30, 1994). "A Critical Look Back 'Gump,' 'Little Women' Among Top Films of '94 Can You Still See Them?". Omaha World-Herald (Sunriseed.). p.31sf.
↑ Movshovitz, Howie (December 25, 1994). "Memorable Movies of '94 Independents, fringes filled out a lean year". The Denver Post (Rockiesed.). p.E-1.
↑ Meyer, George (December 30, 1994). "The Year of the Middling Movie". The Ledger. p.6TO.
↑ Arnold, Gary (January 1, 1995). "Film". The Washington Times (2ed.). p.D3.
↑ Craft, Dan (December 30, 1994). "Success, Failure and a Lot of In-between; Movies '94". The Pantagraph. p.B1.
↑ Lovell, Glenn (December 25, 1994). "The Past Picture Show the Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- a Year Worth's of Movie Memories". San Jose Mercury News (Morning Finaled.). p.3.
↑ King, Dennis (December 25, 1994). "SCREEN SAVERS In a Year of Faulty Epics, The Oddest Little Movies Made The Biggest Impact". Tulsa World (Final Homeed.). p.E1.
↑ Elliott, David (December 25, 1994). "On the big screen, color it a satisfying time". The San Diego Union-Tribune (1, 2ed.). p.E=8.
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