Quiz Show
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Robert Redford
John Turturro
Ralph Fiennes
Rob Morrow
Calista Flockhart
Paul Scofield
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
In 1958 when television quiz shows ruled the airwaves, Charles Van Doren was the wildly popular champion of a successful TV show called "Twenty-One." A national celebrity who appeared on the covers of both "Time" and "Life" magazines, Van Doren was an American folk hero--the intellectual's answer to Elvis Presley. Week after week audiences tuned in to watch as Van Doren, a popular English instructor at Columbia University and the product of one of America's most renowned literary families, seemed to draw from his vast knowledge the correct answers to obscure questions. His charming presence seduced 50 million people into believing him. But the truth is, viewers were fooled and saw only what the network and program's producers wanted them to see. Then someone pulled the plug. When disgruntled contestant Herbie Stempel charged that the quiz game was a fraud, Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin uncovered the facts that exposed the deception, and sent shock waves reverberating across America.
Director
Robert Redford
Cast
John Turturro
Ralph Fiennes
Rob Morrow
Calista Flockhart
Paul Scofield
Mira Sorvino
Hank Azaria
Gina Rice
Bernie Sheredy
Vincent J Burns
Barry Levinson
George Martin
David Paymer
Harriet Sansom Harris
Scott Lucy
Greg Martin
Christopher Mcdonald
Allan Rich
Grace Phillips
Pat Russel
Kelly Coffield Park
Elizabeth Wilson
Martin Scorsese
Mary Shultz
Alysa Shwedel
Michael Mantell
Ron Scott Bertozzi
Steve Roland
Vince O'brien
Dede Pochos
Illeana Douglas
Caryn Krooth
Timothy Busfield
Katherine Borowitz
Anthony Fusco
Jerry Grayson
Eddie Korbich
Joda Hershman
Joseph Attanasio
Matt Keeslar
Bruce Altman
Byron Jennings
Bill Moor
Jeffrey Nordling
Cornelia Ryan
David Stepkin
Mark Isham
Reno
Jack Gilpin
Barry Snider
Dave Wilson
Mario Cantone
William Fichtner
Johann Carlo
Gretchen Egolf
Bob Caminiti
Paul Guilfoyle
Maria Radman
Doug Mcgrath
Mario Contacessi
Richard Seff
Griffin Dunne
Chuck Adamson
Kevin Mccarthy
Le Clanche Durand
Merwin Goldsmith
Neil Leifer
Hamilton Fish
Ben Shenkman
Shawna Batten
Timothy Britten Parker
Debra Monk
Ernie Sabella
Nicholas Kepros
Joe Lisi
Carole Shelley
Bill Cwikowski
Daniel Wakefield
Adam Kilgour
Stephen Pearlman
Crew
Troy R Adee
Michael Adkins
Tom Allen
Dimitri Apletcheff
Alison Armstrong
Paul Attanasio
Bruce Atwater
Sandina Bailo-lape
Florian Ballhaus
Michael Ballhaus
Jeff Balsmeyer
Jeffrey T Barabe
Laura Berning
Ron Scott Bertozzi
Maria T. Bierniak
Joseph Bird
Sara Bolder
Jessica Bradford
Susan Bradley
Conrad V Brink
Jeffrey S Brink
Dan Bronson
Donnaldson Brown
Paul Buboltz
Joseph R Burns
Kymbra Callaghan
Ed Check
Danajean Cicerchi
Elizabeth Collins
John A Crowder
Diane D'addio
Blair Daily
Mark Daily
Shirley Davis
Sandy De Crescent
Angel Deangelis Haiko
Jerry Deblau
David Declerque
Michael Demers
Debbie Devgan
Patricia Kerrigan Dicerto
Louis Digiaimo
Amy Diprima
Anne Disano
Richard Dreyfuss
Patricia Eiben
Karen E. Etcoff
Lynn Ezelle
Tony Fanning
Stuart Feldman
Andre Fenley
Kerin Ferallo
Rebecca L. Feuer
Michael Finnerty
Susan Fiore
Ken Fischer
Brian Fitzsimons
Daniel Freeman
Rob Fruchtman
Ken Fundus
Timothy Galvin
Dennis Gamiello
Gilbert Gertsen
Gordon H Gertsen
Mary C Gierczak
Danny Glicker
Scott Gottesman
Dale Grahn
J R Grubbs
Dell Hake
Donna Hamilton
Sandy Hamilton
Barbara Harris
Ethan Hawke
Brent Haywood
Amy Herman
Ellen M Hillers
Joel Holland
Barrett Hong
Mark Horstmann
Shelley Houis
Jon Hutman
Richard Hymns
Sharon Ilson
Andi Isaacs
Mark Isham
Kalina Ivanov
Michael Jacobs
Donna Jaffe
Judith James
Tom Johnson
Beulah Jones-black
Donna Kail
Mark Kamine
Steve Kandell
Lara Kelly
R Michael King
Julian Krainin
Stephen Krause
Caryn Krooth
Ken Kugler
Ilene S Landress
Sandra Leoncavallo
Gary Levitsky
Stu Linder
Ann-louise Lipman
John B Lowry
Tod A Maitland
Bobby Mancuso
Bernadette Mazur
Alison Mcbryde
Matthew Mccarthy
Mary Kate Mccormick
Jeff Mccracken
Ron Mitchell
Tim Monich
Carlos Moore
Susan Moore
Ric Morelli
Arthur Moshlak
Fred Muller
Gail Mutrux
Kenneth D Nelson
Heather Norton
Michael Nozik
Kathy O'rear
John Oates
John Oates
Lisa Padovani
Sheila Paige
Charlotte Palmer-lane
Francesca Paris
Bunny Parker-adamson
Wayne Paul
Peter John Petraglia
Craig Pettigrew
Lydia Pilcher
Ronald Plant
David Platt
Joseph Proscia
Katherine Quittner
Robert Redford
Joseph Reidy
Dawn Murphy Riley
Kevin Rose-williams
Meika Rouda
Shea Rowan
Bob Rubin
Alex Ruttenberg
Cornelia Ryan
Gary Rydstrom
Gary Rydstrom
Gary Rydstrom
Susan Sanford
Samara Schaffer
Miriam Schapiro
Kim Scharnberg
Tim Shannon
Bob Shaw
Lance Shepherd
Alysa Shwedel
Jane Silberstein
Michael Silvers
Susan Sloan
Lois Smith
Susan Starr
Karen Tenkhoff
Bryan Thomas
Judy Thomason
Bonnie Timmermann
Robert Topol
Tony Trotta
Jennifer Truelove
Thomas M Tucker
Tom Tumminello
Melissa Unger
Bobby Vercruse
Paul Wardwell
Amanda Weisenthal
Barry Wetcher
James Whalen
Rick Whitfield
Alyssa Winter
Fred Zollo
Film Details
Technical Specs
Award Nominations
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Director
Best Picture
Best Supporting Actor
Articles
Quiz Show
Quiz Show (1994), Redford's Oscar®-nominated depiction of a theoretically bygone era when Americans believed almost everything they were told - see modern politics for ample evidence of our continuing gullibility - is a meticulously designed period piece that features several fine performances. But not everyone was buying it. Although the film was well-received by critics and audiences alike, Redford was accused in some quarters of turning 21's producers into outright villains, rather than decent men who pushed a piece of disposable entertainment way too far.
The movie opens in New York in 1957, where a rather dumpy intellectual named Herbie Stempel (John Turturro) is the current champion of 21. The network, however, wants a more photogenic title holder that viewers will want to root for. So producer Dan Enright (David Paymer) convinces a well-bred Columbia University professor named Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) to take part in a little ruse that will eventually snowball into a national scandal: Van Doren will be coached in subtle ways to increase the dramatic tension on the show...and, of course, he'll be fed the proper answers.
Van Doren, whose father (Paul Scofield) is a respected Pulitzer Prize winning author, becomes America's first instant TV star, and Stempel angrily re-adjusts to his previous standing as an unattractive schmuck. But a Congressional lawyer named Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow, attempting a Boston accent) catches wind that something fishy may be going on, and proceeds to "befriend" Van Doren while investigating whether or not Charlie and the show's producers have been pulling the wool over the American public's eyes.
Redford gets most of the details right, although he and screenwriter Paul Attanasio had to compress characters so they wouldn't greatly exceed a two-hour running time. In real-life, CBS went through a lot of trouble to "cast" their contestants. Five employees sorted through 15,000-20,000 letters a week, looking for people who seemed to be smart enough to answer the arcane questions that would be lobbed at them, but could also be manipulated into appearing as certain archetypes.
"You want the viewer to react emotionally to a contestant," Enright said. "Whether he reacts favorably or negatively is really not that important. The important thing is that he react." Enright felt there was something intrinsically smug and unlikable about Stempel, and that viewers would sit with baited breath waiting for him to lose. And he was right.
Stempel knew what was going on: "The reason I had been asked to put on this old, ill-fitting suit and get this Marine-type haircut," he later said, "was to appear as what you would call today, a nerd, a square." All Van Doren had to do was show up with his smooth self-effacement and a casual suit and tie to seem like an urbane intellectual. His real tragedy probably wasn't that he participated in such a massive ruse, but that he grew to love it so much he didn't know when to stop. He now stands as a uniquely tragic American figure.
Redford claims that he was never fooled by Van Doren's performance when the show originally aired. "There was an arrogance about (Van Doren)," Redford says, "yet he feigned a kind of innocence. And as I watched him coming up with these incredible answers, the actor in me said: I don't buy it. I remember that vividly. But what's weird is I never doubted the show. I didn't take it to the next step and say, 'The show is rigged, it's all bullshit.' I just didn't, I couldn't."
Strangely enough, Redford himself participated in this sort of thing in 1959, a year after the scandal occurred, when he appeared on a Merv Griffin-hosted show called Play Your Hunch. The producer wouldn't accept the fact that Redford was merely a struggling actor from Los Angeles, so they goosed him into saying - truthfully, it should be noted - that he was also an artist.
When Griffin interviewed Redford on the air, he was ready with a string of witty one-liners about the good-looking contestant who was an artist. "Oh, it was so awful," Redford later said, "just so horrible. But what impressed me was that I could feel the hype. I mean, people would talk to me normally backstage, and suddenly the show went on and EVERYBODY WAS TALKING LIKE THIS. Everybody was hyperventilating. At first I said, 'Jesus, this is cornball.' It was so calculated, but then it got to me."
Redford put up with the embarrassment because he had a pregnant wife and badly needed the $75 he was promised for appearing. But it didn't quite work out that way: "When (the game) was over, the announcer cried, 'And now the prize for our subjects. From Abercrombie & Fitch- a fishing rod!' Afterwards I went up to the guy and said, 'Where's my dough?' And he said, 'Well, the rod's worth $75.'"
Director: Robert Redford
Producers: Robert Redford, Michael Jacobs, Julian Krainin, Michael Nozik
Screenplay: Paul Attanasio (adapted from the book, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties, by Richard N. Goodwin)
Cinematographer: Michael Ballhaus
Editor: Stu Linder
Music: Mark Isham
Production Design: Jon Hutman
Art Design: Tim Galvin
Set Design: Samara Schaffer
Costume Design: Kathy O'Rear
Principal Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Charles Van Doren), Rob Morrow (Richard Goodwin), John Turturro (Herb Stempel), Paul Scofield (Mark Van Doren), David Paymer (Dan Enright), Hank Azaria (Albert Freedman), Christopher McDonald (Jack Barry), Johann Carlo (Toby Stempel), Elizabeth Wilson (Dorothy Van Doren), Allan Rich (Robert Kintner), Timothy Busfield (Fred).
C-133m. Letterboxed. Closed Captioning.
by Paul Tatara
Quiz Show
Quotes
Trivia
Miscellaneous Notes
Nominated for three 1994 British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Paul Scofield).
Robert Redford was nominated for outstanding directorial achievement by the Directors Guild of America (1994).
Robert Redford, Michael Jacobs, Julian Krainin, and Michael Nozik were nominated for the 1994 Golden Laurel Award by the Producers Guild of America.
Voted Best Picture of the Year (1994) by the New York Film Critics Circle.
Expanded Release in United States October 7, 1994
Expanded Release in United States September 16, 1994
Expanded Release in United States September 30, 1994
Released in United States Fall September 14, 1994
Released in United States February 1995
Released in United States on Video April 18, 1995
Re-released in United States February 15, 1995
Wide Release in United States September 23, 1994
Shown at Berlin International Film Festival (in competition) February 9-20, 1995.
Paul Attanasio was nominated for the 1994 award for Best Adapted Screenplay by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Richard Goodwin's book "Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties" was purchased by Hollywood Pictures to develop into a screenplay. However, Attanasio's resulting "adaptation" is based on a single chapter of Goodwin's book.
Actor Robert Redford marked his feature directorial debut with the Academy Award-winning "Ordinary People" (USA/1980), followed by "The Milagro Beanfield War" (USA/1988) and "A River Runs Through It" (USA/1992).
Began shooting May 26, 1993.
Completed shooting August 31, 1993.
Released in United States February 1995 (Shown at Berlin International Film Festival (in competition) February 9-20, 1995.)
Re-released in United States February 15, 1995
Released in United States on Video April 18, 1995
Released in United States Fall September 14, 1994
Expanded Release in United States September 16, 1994
Wide Release in United States September 23, 1994
Expanded Release in United States September 30, 1994
Expanded Release in United States October 7, 1994