Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!
We're swingin' back to 1994 to close out that year, with Robert Redford's historical drama Quiz Show, chronicling the scandal that rocked television....well, quiz shows in the 1950s, when it was discovered through a Congressional investigation that one popular show in particular, Twenty-One, was not on the level.
John Turturro and Ralph Fiennes star as two wildly successful contestants. Awkward, uncharismatic Herb Stempel (Turturro) has been on an unprecedented winning streak that for a while kept America glued to the television, but ratings are beginning to stagnate and the show's producers (David Paymer and Hank Azaria), along with the head of the show's sponsor Geritol (welcome surprise Martin Scorsese) and the NBC President (reptilian character actor Allan Rich), have decided it's time his streak came to an end. Enter the debonair scion of a well-respected family of intellectuals Charles Van Doren (Fiennes), who auditions for the NBC shows to supplement his lowly income as a college instructor and demonstrates prodigious knowledge of various subjects, and the powers that be decide he's the perfect successor to Stempel. An arrangement is made with both contestants that Stempel will stumble on an easy question (What film won the Best Picture Oscar for 1955?) and Van Doren will become the new champion by answering questions the he's already heard. Van Doren becomes a sensation and his family hopes it will spark a wave of intellectualism across America. But Stempel contacts the New York District Attorney's office to blow the whistle on the whole scam, and a young lawyer named Dick Goodwin (a surprisingly effective Rob Morrow doing a pretty good Boston accent) works to take down the network.
In the months that follow Goodwin builds a strong case against the show's producers and NBC, but as he becomes close with Charles he's reluctant to implicate his new friend. The case is tried before a Congressional Oversight Committee, and of course the contestants and producers take the fall for the deception, while the higher-ups at NBC and Geritol disavow any knowledge of the fraud. Plausible deniability - it is a bitch.
Quiz Show covers a tragic turning point in American culture. Not only did television game shows gradually cease to reward intellect and knowledge and replace it with dumb luck to appeal to as many audience rubes as possible (Think going from Jeopardy to Wheel of Fortune), but society itself began accepting artificiality over truth, simply because the former was more entertaining (Interestingly there's a scene in which Stempel is watching pro wrestling on TV - another staged entertainment form once purported to be real. I'm a fan but the symbolism wasn't lost on me.). Consider how far "unscripted" TV shows have fallen in substance in the seven decades since. Cheap, taudry reality TV would become America's primetime obsession, despite most viewers knowing it was simulated - comfortable, easily digestible fast food for the brain.
And from there it was only a small nudge to get people to accept a 24-hour "news" cycle in which corporate media aired only what it wanted the public to believe, complete with an editorial spin to garner the desired reaction. In many ways the thread leading to the advent of hyper-partisan news networks can be traced back to the 1950s, when boardroom fat cats convinced Americans to accept lies as long as those lies were entertaining. Couple that with intellectualism and knowledge being reframed as too high-brow and unappealing, and it's easy to grasp that, as George Carlin once said "The real owners of this country don't want a population capable of critical thinking." Redford's film takes various historical liberties, but its message is an ever poignant one, even more salient now than the year it was released.
The performances are all quite strong; Turturro is grating but sympathetic because we know he's right, Fiennes is smooth and charming and we pity him even as he keeps cheating, Morrow embodies many of the same relatable everyman qualities Edward Norton would later perfect, and this film's only Oscar nominee for acting Paul Schofield as Charles' father Mark is so proud of his son's accomplishments he doesn't see through the charade until it's too late.
Quiz Show is a fascinating look at a sad moment in US history when the dumbing down of America could be said to have begun. In so many ways we continue to pay for that generation's choosing of easy, safe entertainment over the quest for knowledge - how many Charles Van Dorens enjoy fame and fortune today, compared to the myriad of vapid contestants on The Bachelor?
I give Quiz Show ***1/2 out of ****.
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