It’s not an overstatement to say 1994 was one of the greatest-ever years for American cinema. Timeless animated gems like The Lion King and blockbusters like Speed, The Mask, and True Lies dominated the box office. The Best Picture category included four of the most talked-about movies of the ’90s: The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and Four Weddings and a Funeral, the first three of which are widely considered among the all-time greatest movies in cinematic history. But what about the fifth movie in the category, the one that often gets lost in the conversation, drowned by the chants of “stupid is as stupid does” and “English, do you speak it?”
Well, that movie is Robert Redford’s Quiz Show starring John Turturro, Rob Morrow, and Ralph Fiennes, which depicted the Twenty-One game show scandals of the 1950s. Quiz Show is one of the most interesting movies of the ’90s; in any other year, it would’ve probably dominated not only the conversation, but also awards season. It’s a technically and narratively brilliant movie that packs layers of meaning beneath its seemingly straightforward premise.
However, it had the misfortune of coming out along with three of the most discussed and revered movies in modern cinema, paling amid the noise they provoked. Indeed, Quiz Show is more clinical than Pulp Fiction, more cynical than Forrest Gump, and decidedly less crowd-pleasing than Shawshank. And yet, it might just be the better movie, a powerful indictment of the entertainment industry that also happens to be the most introspective and haunting historical drama of the 1990s.
Would you do it?
That’s the question everyone asks themselves and each other throughout Quiz Show. Based on the real-life scandals surrounding the game show Twenty-One, the film follows three men connected by the aforementioned show. The first is Herb Stempel (a career-best John Turturro), an awkward and erratic man from Queens and the show’s reigning champion, who’s deemed unappealing by the network and the show’s sponsor, Geritol. The second is Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), an instructor at Columbia University and the son of a Nobel Prize-winning professor, who takes Stempel’s place in Twenty-One after the network tells Stempel to throw the game, and he reluctantly complies. Soon, Van Doren begins receiving the questions in advance, allowing him to win every time and remain undefeated for a record 14 weeks. This brings the third man into the picture, Richard “Dick” Goodwin (Rob Morrow), a congressional lawyer who seeks to uncover the truth behind the show’s practices.
What follows is an intricate drama where the three men converge and struggle to do the right thing. The chaotic and insecure Stempel, having gambled the money he won, becomes fixated on bringing the show down, developing something of an envious obsession with the more handsome and successful Van Doren. Goodwin, too, falls under Charlie’s spell, even spending time with his family in Cornwall, while attempting to reconcile his desire to bring the show down with his newfound sympathy for the charming instructor. Lastly, Van Doren struggles with his part in the show’s cheating methods, especially considering his family’s prominent standing as leading literary figures.
The price of ambition and the blurred line between fame and infamy are recurring themes in Quiz Show. Stempel becomes more desperate as he helplessly sees everyone fall under Van Doren’s spell. He tells his story to anyone who’ll hear it, but his increasingly unhinged behavior only works against him. Turturro, who was egregiously snubbed at the Oscars that year, portrays Stempel’s decaying state of mind with beautiful chaos, never overdoing it and turning the character into both victim and perpetrator, a contradicting figure you can’t help but be enthralled by, though you wouldn’t necessarily root for him.
For his part, the equally impressive Fiennes is stellar as Van Doren, a man for whom everything comes absurdly easy. Like Turturro, Fiennes plays his character as a vulnerable antihero, someone with enough ambition to lie to the world, yet not ruthless enough to fully accept his choice. This clash of personalities and wills keeps Quiz Show riveting and fascinating as Redford transforms a story of morally corrupt people doing terrible things into a true dance of egos, interests, fears, and desires that’s unlike anything in American cinema.
We’ll take ‘truth’ for 21 points
The true brilliance of Redford’s directorial approach is his remarkable ability to find the basic humanity in any story, no matter the genre. Whether it’s a searing family drama or a portrait of brotherly bonds and fly-fishing, Redford is among those truly gifted filmmakers who can make his audience connect on an intimate, visceral level to whatever’s happening on the screen. The same is true for Quiz Show, where Redford turns a scathing indictment of the entertainment industry into a painfully relatable rumination about what it means to be accepted and how far we’d go to be seen.
Stempel is one of the most heartbreaking characters in Turturro’s filmography. Insecure to a fault and starving for any ounce of attention he can get, Stempel walks through life waving his hands in the air, desperate to get the attention that comes so easily to others. Turturro gives a towering portrayal of crippling self-doubt and the all-too-familiar desire to be appreciated that is so strong that one will do pretty much everything in one’s power to get it, even if it means turning oneself into the joke.
Turturro’s strongest scene comes near the end, when Stempel gives his testimony at the hearing and reveals all the coaching he, too, received from the show’s producers. Stempel plays up his shortcomings, limitations, and inadequacies for the crowd of reporters, who laugh at his every confession while the committee looks at him with a mix of curiosity, pity, and disgust. The realization on Stempel’s face that mocking laughter is not the same as a sincere smile is among the most heart-wrenching and truthful moments in Turturro’s career.
Through Stempel, Redford explores a common theme in stories about the human condition: self-awareness. How many of us go through life blissfully unaware of the impression we give? How many of us are perceptive and emotionally intelligent enough to know when we are no longer wanted and have overstayed our welcome, even in the presence of those we thought would always be there? How many of us can hear the words “annoying” or “loud” or “intense” and walk away without our hearts breaking? Stempel doesn’t go out quietly and only succeeds in pushing everyone away, even those who want to be there for him. The tragedy of his character is the realization that, maybe, it’s not in his nature to be what Van Doren so easily represents. It’s not just that he’s “not television-worthy”; it’s that he might be inherently unappealing.
Redford intelligently chooses to imply all this rather than outright state it. Turturro only needs to stare at Fiennes flashing that winning smile for us to understand that the wheels in his head are spinning out of control. Fiennes doesn’t need to do anything to embody Van Doren’s confidence and natural charm other than being himself. Through Redford’s lens, Quiz Show depicts the lingering tragedy of life: some people just have it, and some don’t. Van Doren is not flashy; he doesn’t demand attention, but rather compels people to give it freely. His words are confident and learned, the result of a lifetime surrounded by literary laureates who always expected greatness from him. When he speaks, it’s not difficult to understand why everyone wants to listen to him and why America so easily falls for his spell.
The fact that Redford could turn a 1950s television scandal into an exercise in self-discovery between the haves and have-nots is already impressive enough. But he does it so masterfully, so subtly, without a single overt display of emotion beyond what the plot demands, that it’s even more astonishing. Quiz Show packs layers upon layers of meaning without ever uttering a single word that doesn’t have to do with Twenty-One. In an age when media literacy is at an all-time low, films like Quiz Show demand everything from an audience, but give so much in return that it feels like the fairest of trades.
‘They just wanted to watch the money’
This powerful quote is delivered near the end of Quiz Show by the director, and occasional actor, Martin Scorsese as Marty Rittenhome, a businessman for Twenty-One‘s sponsor, Geritol, and the main driving force behind Van Doren’s hiring. That’s indeed all television is, what the entire entertainment industry is: a giant set of keys perpetually jangling. The keys themselves can change, as so can the keychain, but the hand doing the shaking and the sound is still the same.
In the end, no one involved in the scandal really experienced any form of repercussion. NBC and Geritol never faced any consequences, the show’s producers came back with a vengeance after a few years in television jail, and Van Doren joined Encyclopedia Britannica and became a published writer. Indeed, there were no real losers — well, maybe one.
Quiz Show‘s closing credits reveal that Herb Stempel went on to “work for the New York City Transit Department” while still living in Queens. There was no major career jump for him, no book deal or promising future in politics. The next time he’d be in the spotlight would be 40 years after the scandal, in 1994, when Quiz Show premiered and sparked newfound interest in him. Can you guess what Stempel did? A few of the interviews he gave will give you an idea.
On the surface, Quiz Show is about a scandal that sparked regulation about how televised quiz shows were handled. In reality, the movie is all about desire, the need to be seen and prove oneself. In a way, we’re all contestants trying to stay in the game. Some struggle to play by the rules, and others can’t even fully understand them. Then there are those who excel at the game, attracting cheers from the audience and climbing the ranks until they finally get to 21.
Quiz Show makes you question which one you are: are you a Herb or a Charles? More importantly, do you want to be either, and if you are, can you accept it? Is it really so bad to be Herb, and is it actually so cool to be Charles? The truth, as it turns out, is the hardest answer to get right.
Quiz Show is available to rent or purchase on Amazon and other digital vendors.