Quiz Show (film): Difference between revisions

'''Goodwin:''' Well, you have to put it in context. See the thing of it is, the affair was over something like eight years. So I remember asking him, you know, "Why'd you tell her? You got away with it." And I'll never forget what he said: it was the getting away with it part he couldn't live with. }}

 

 

Herbert Stempel (John Turturro) is the nerdy, trivia-spouting Jew from Queens who has had a long run as ''Twenty One'''s most successful contestant — helped along for an unspecified but significant amount of time by being told the questions and answers in advance. The show's producers, Dan Enright (David Paymer) and Albert Freedman (Hank Azaria), are told by the network, who have been told by the sponsor, that Stempel is no longer a favorite with the viewing public and will have to take a dive... just as Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), the handsome, impressive, telegenic son of one of the country's most prominent intellectual families, decides he'd like to take a crack at appearing on a quiz show. As Van Doren finds himself getting deeper and deeper into the deception — and rising to new heights of fame as a result — Stempel looks to vindicate his bruised ego by exposing the show, and Dick Goodwin (Rob Morrow), a young, idealistic congressional lawyer looking for his big break, picks up on the rumors of fixing and decides to investigate.

* [[Description Porn]]: That car in the opening scene.

* [[Did Not Do the Research]]: Oh, so much. Redford admitted this was '''intentional'''.

** While ''Twenty-One'' was the most high-profile of the rigged quizzes, it wasn't the one that sparked the scandals — that was ''Dotto'' (1958), which became the most-watched show on TV within weeks of its January debut and was shot down by August. (''Dotto'' is also not discussed in ''Quiz Show''.)

* [[Don't Make Me Destroy You]]: Goodwin effectively promises not to subpoena Van Doren if he just keeps his head down during the investigation, because "the contestants are not the villains here." (Sandra thinks this is just because he's so enamored of the Van Doren family.)

* [[Keeping Secrets Sucks]]: [[Drinking Game|Take a drink]] every time Ralph Fiennes [[Eye Take|stresses out]].

* [[Manipulative Editing]]: What Enright and Freedman do with the tape of Stempel after he storms into the office.

{{quote|'''Van Doren''': A toast, to "escape -- it is the basket in which the heart is caught when down some awful battlement the rest of life is dropt."

'''Goodwin''': King Baudouin.

** Two intresting notes about that; first, the three other Congressmen in charge of the committee actually ''congragulated'' Van Doren for his confession and subsequent apology, it was ''that'' impassioned. And second, it is only after Derounian speaks that the people in attendance applaud. This deliberately confuses the audience as to whether they were cheering for or against Van Doren.

* [[Serious Business]]: Stempel is determined most of all that the American public will know that he actually knew ''[[Marty]]'' won the Best Picture Oscar of 1955.

* [[Smug Snake]]: The executives, and especially Martin Scorsese's character.

* [[Stop Being Stereotypical]]: It's never stated outright, but implied that this is part of Goodwin's discomfort with Herb Stempel (both are Jewish).