QUIZ SHOW (1994)

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” If the Buddha had been on an American quiz show in the 1950s, he’d have realised this was far from the case. In a closed-off set, neither the sun nor the moon would be in sight… and the idea of truth being anywhere nearby was utterly laughable.

It’s 1958 and Herb Stempel (John Turturro) is dominating on Twenty-One, a television quiz show where contestants must answer trivia for obscene amounts of money. Herb has been unbeatable for weeks, the savant from a poor neighbourhood in the Bronx being gifted with a retentive memory. But then his ratings start to drop. It doesn’t matter how smart you are in the television industry—if you draw poor numbers, you’re no good for business.

Dan Enright (David Paymer) begins looking for his replacement. He discovers that Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), a Columbia University professor and member of a prestigious literary American family, is interested in being on the quiz show. Suggesting to Charles that he receive answers and become their newly anointed champion, Charles discovers that a Faustian deal is being offered to him. Meanwhile, Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow), a capable Congressional lawyer, gets suspicious that all is not what it seems with these popular quiz shows…

When did we accept the notion that to be told lies almost constantly was a normal phenomenon? Quiz Show explores this question, suggesting that the unprecedented omnipresence of television had something to do with it. Robert Redford’s outstanding film features an incredible screenplay, brilliant performances, and a meditative tone to complement the weighty themes on display. As Redford’s incisive film explores the reality of television and the questionable ethics of show business, he excavates the falsehoods of America.

Marketing as the right arm of a dominating, all-encompassing capitalist society is present from the very beginning of the story. “Geritol” is printed in large, capital letters all over the quiz show screen, with the host Jack Barry (Christopher MacDonald) drawing attention to it at any opportunity. Herb even attempts to sell the product, but lacks the upbeat demeanour and flashy jargon to be a believable salesman: “My wife no longer suffers from ‘tired blood’ now that I’ve got her on Geritol.”

It’s strange revisiting this aspect of the film. Redford’s classic critiques the ubiquitous presence of advertising in the media, as well as the media system itself. But this is a phenomenon that has only become worse in the thirty years that have passed since Quiz Show hit the screens. For this reason, it feels like watching a dystopian reality, one that is uncannily similar to our own: we are witness to tiers of deceit, a pyramid scheme of fabrications, with everyone trying to sell the lie and earn a profit.

Such is the scurrilous behaviour required in obtaining the American Dream, an ideology which Twenty-One implicitly feeds the public by portraying Stempel as an ordinary man: “Stempel has an Everyman quality… you know, that whole American Dream thing. You too can be rich if…” Robert E. Kintner (Allan Rich) describes national myth as though it were ridiculous hogwash, a fairy tale that must be evangelically touted with reverence in public but can be dismissed as nonsense when behind closed doors. The American Dream is thus excoriated as being an illusory chimaera.

This can be seen when Herb is criticised by his wife for lying about knowing the answers on the show, labelling him as dishonest. He’s incensed by the accusation: “Let me tell you about honest! You know what my father used to tell me? ‘Work hard and you’ll get ahead.’ Was that honest? Look at Geritol—‘Geritol cures tired blood’—and I’m the one who’s supposed to be ashamed?!” Lying is not such an egregious crime; after all, everyone does it!

Indeed, the real-life Herb Stempel found himself faced with such temptation when he was visited one day by Dan Enright. In an interview given years after the scandal, Stempel revealed: “He asked me, ‘How would you like to make $25,000?’ Once I said, ‘Who wouldn’t?’ I became part of the game show hoax.” For reference, this would equate to earning roughly $300,000 today, all for the sake of answering some questions in front of a camera. But it’s like a lobster trap: easily entered, yet few find themselves capable of getting out of the ethical quandary which has ensnared them.

In this respect, Redford’s film takes on a Faustian aspect; every main character in Quiz Show is faced with great temptation, either with money, status, or fame. It’s a mark of competence that Redford gets his audience to empathise with the characters who willingly lie to them. As Stempel suggests, who wouldn’t take the offer? Very few people would be faced with a moral dilemma, with even fewer finding the nerve actually to refuse the money.

As such, the American Dream is revealed to be anathema to justice. The degradation of morals is a central theme in Redford’s film. For some, virtue is easily eschewed. Herb is nonplussed about his involvement—he just wants the money or fame promised him. However, Charles is plagued by the ethical implications of his choice. When he’s first offered the role on the show, he whimsically states: “I’m just trying to imagine—what would Kant think of this?”

Of course, anyone who knows Kant would tell you that he absolutely would have a problem with it: his central tenet is never to lie, regardless of the consequences. His deontological approach to morality has been criticised for being unyielding, but as he rightly argued in his seminal 1785 text Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals, you must treat your every action as though it were to become a universal law. To put it into the language that your Mum probably once scolded you with: “What would happen if everyone did that?”

Paul Attanasio’s screenplay directly confronts the audience with the worldly consequences of Charles’ decision: what does it mean when words have no meaning? What is the result of being entertained without our knowledge? How can we track the impact on society of such an insidious threat? As the phenomenal HBO miniseries Chernobyl (2019) suggested: “Every lie incurs a debt to the truth.”

Unsurprisingly, the TV executives aren’t quite as concerned about Kantian ethics: “I don’t think he’d have a problem with it…” Albert Freedman (Hank Azaria) assures his new golden goose. Charles lives with his guilt for the duration of his stint on Twenty-One. He goes to great lengths to justify his duplicity, which is aided by both Freedman and Enright: “Think about what this could mean for the cause of education!”

His lie becomes Charles’ lie, with him referencing more than once how he has become a symbol of education, receiving tonnes of letters from aspiring academics from all over the country. “What was I supposed to do at that point? Disillusion the whole goddamn country?” He uses rhetoric that suggests he has unwillingly shouldered this burden, that his decision to continue the lie was based solely on altruism and not on his fear of public disgrace.

Hints of Charles’ fate are scattered throughout the film. When he and his father bandy about Shakespearean quotes as part of an intellectual game, his father intones ominously: “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” And Charles, as though surreptitiously justifying his deceit, replies: “To do a great right, do a little wrong.” Ironically, Charles quotes Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, as there’s a line from that play he should have studied a little more carefully: “The truth will out.”

That his father’s approval is of key importance to Charles is no accident—part of the film’s thematic interest is the place of family in America. Charles is initially selected specifically because he is the scion of a prominent, respectable family of intellectuals. Both his uncle and his father are recipients of the Pulitzer.

That Charles is then positioned to be the face of the education system in America is a no-brainer; he has the correct heritage and hails from the right class. Such elitism is hinted at in the film’s fantastic script. Production workers at Twenty-One are ecstatic that they finally “have a clean-cut intellectual instead of a freak with a sponge memory.” Much to Herb’s horror, he will never fit in.

The importance of name value and cultural capital is implied once again when Charles confesses his duplicity to his father but assures the deceit is a shame only he must bear: “An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own.” His father angrily reminds him: “Your name is mine!” Charles cannot even suffer in his ignominy solely: he has tarnished his family’s reputation, muddied their legacy, and rocked the foundations of their household.

That the network wants a marketable face for their programme (one that will appeal best to the average American) is openly discussed between executives Freedman and Enright. Charles is referred to as ‘the great white hope’, a term used in boxing in the early-1900s that reflected the rampant racism of the era. When African American Jack Johnson reigned as the undisputed heavyweight champion for years, he was considered to be unbeatable. Many segregationists hoped that a white champion would come along and dethrone him, with the term being coined shortly thereafter.

That racism was still a prominent part of affluent American society is suggested by several characters. When Richard Goodwin begins investigating the quiz show, he is informed by Herb that the studio favours Gentiles over Jews. The executives laugh it off, but Goodwin is implacable: ‘The thing of it is, I looked it off. It’s true.’ Mostly, it’s Herb himself who espouses anti-establishment dogma, lamenting how the rich white capitalists who have cheated him are no different from the colonialists who dispossessed the Native Americans.

In this, an argument is made that present-day society is built on a long, ugly history of imperialism, with the rich being shameful cheats even back then: “Twenty-four bucks for Manhattan. First the Indians. Then us.” History is repeating itself, with Herb being determined to make his son learn how the world works: ‘The child has to learn… the child has to learn the depths that humanity can sink to…’

And humanity is shown to be truly sinking—but who do we blame for this deterioration of ethics? Why, television, of course. While the TV set is mostly symbolic of the nefarious spread of capitalist exploits, encroaching upon the American home and changing history with its transfixing allure, the box is unique. As Marshall McLuhan would argue, it’s not so much what’s on the television, but the television itself that becomes important: “The medium is the message.”

The onset of this powerful new technology frightens some of the characters in Quiz Show. It is soon considered to be an utterly untouchable entity, too big to be contained. It’s not just that people love their little box in the corner, but it is about the unprecedented potential such a device can have. It can sell products, feelings, ideas—even people. Herb refers to television as “the biggest thing since Gutenberg invented the printing press, and I’m the biggest thing on it!”

Indeed, when Stempel is spotted on TV by a disapproving viewer, she remarks: “Now there’s a face for radio.” Not only is this a crude insult to Stempel’s appearance, but the comment also serves to highlight the emergence of superior technology, with the dead, antiquated medium that lies in its wake. After all, who would still use a radio when you can have a TV set right in your home?

We see how television is deified as an entity. 20 years after Wim Wenders lambasted both the effects and insidious intentions of television in his sublime Alice in the Cities (1974), Redford depicts the foreboding inception of the medium—while also suggesting that little has changed. The film offers a rather bleak perspective of our future with television and the entities who run it: “I thought I was going to get television. The truth is, television’s going to get us.”

It’s depicted as an unstoppable machine—once it was switched on, there was no going back. The battle for control over television is emblematic of the battle for American morals, as a fight over the biggest tool since Gutenberg’s printing press. What was then the greatest information machine the planet had ever seen, one which completely revolutionised mankind, is now a relic, making way for a force which we may not be capable of controlling, spreading specious lies and rampant misinformation.

As a result, Redford and Attanasio’s story suggests that the war for the hearts and minds of the American people was lost long ago. Will we allow ourselves to be subjected to the greed and dishonesty of major corporations? “Woah, now! Relax! It’s just entertainment!” Yet, the fact that the wrong people have their lives ruined suggests such meretricious platitudes are completely vacuous. Actions do have meaning, and they do incur consequences. Our clumsy interactions with technology are explored similarly in Charlie Brooker’s incredible Black Mirror anthology series, highlighting the unforeseen ways in which sleek new technologies can impact us.

There is also terrific symbolism in Attanasio’s script. Poker represents the uncertain legal battles that Goodwin is charging into, stating: “I don’t know if I’m a gambler—but I know which end of an ace is up.” He’s telling Charles that he’s onto him, with the poker game itself serving as a microcosm of the lies, cunning, and intelligence that are required to make good one’s escape.

The poker game also mirrors a line that Martin Rittenhome (Martin Scorsese) utters near the end of the film: “The audience wasn’t tuning in to watch some display of intellectual ability. They just wanted to watch the money move.” Rittenhome is right, but he also misses the point: it’s only fun to watch when it’s real. Poker is a game that only truly remains fun when there’s a little money at stake, but nobody wants to sit at a table knowing it’s rigged. It is a subtle, yet exquisite reflection of the film’s themes.

Another piece of poetic symbolism on display in Redford’s crowning directorial achievement is the reference to On the Waterfront (1954). That film also deals with a fighter taking a dive, who goes on to regret it for the rest of his days. In a rather sorrowful display of regret, Stempel would reveal the emotions he went through on that day years later: “On the day I was due to lose to Van Doren, I sat home, watching television in the morning. Every few minutes, an announcement would break in on WNBC, saying, ‘Is Herb Stempel going to win over $100,000 tonight?’ And I would say, ‘No, he’s not going to win $100,000. He’s going to take a dive.'”

It’s a tragic story, and Redford brings a suitably tragic touch to Attanasio’s incredible script. The film deals with the pursuit of dreams and the loss of innocence that so often occurs in the chase. Despite being able to buy anything he wants, with endless proposals from beautiful women and fancy cars, Charles looks back on the time he was the child who burst through the front door, eager to have a glass of milk and a slice of chocolate cake after school. “I can’t think of anything that will make me that happy again…”

It helps that the performances are all superb. Rob Morrow shines as Goodwin in a showing that represents the apex of his career, which is a crying shame; he’s excellent in this role. John Turturro also mesmerises, though it often feels hard to separate this performance from his portrayal of the title character in Barton Fink (1991). Finally, Ralph Fiennes impresses us with his range. From being deeply contemptible in his initially smug demeanour, the realisation that his deceit will soon be unveiled renders him piteous.

In perhaps the most telling scene of the film, two women laugh as they eat lunch together. One can’t believe the incredible taste of the home-grown produce, asking: “What’s your secret?” The proud cook grins: “Manure.” It reflects the current state of mass media and reality television. It’s all one large crock of shit—but it tastes good, so you’ll smile as you eat it.

USA | 1994 | 133 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

director: Robert Redford.
writer: Paul Attanasio.
starring: John Turturro, Rob Morrow, Ralph Fiennes, David Paymer, Paul Scofield, Hank Azaria, Christopher McDonald, Martin Scorsese, Johann Carlo, Mira Sorvino & Paul Guilfoyle.