QUIZ SHOW
A film review by N'Gai Croal
Copyright 1994 N'Gai Croal/Terrordome Bookworks
QUIZ SHOW is the worst good film of 1994, which says as much about the current state of American film as it does Robert Redford's most recent directorial effort. It sports an intriguing premise, a top-notch cast, an ace cinematographer (Scorsese partner-in-crime Michael Ballhaus) and a famously intelligent director. But all of these elements, like the trappings of the actual quiz show scandals, are smoke-and-mirrors that conceals the fact that something is wrong at the center--in this case, Paul Attanasio's screenplay--but for only so long.
The film begins with great promise. Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin (Rob Morrow) circles a spanking new convertible at the center of a gleaming showroom; circling directly overhead is a smooth-talking salesman who recites the specifications of the car like the virtues of a lover. Redford and Ballhaus depart from the Sundance Kid's notoriously formal style; here, the two cross-fade from shot to shot as Goodwin walks around the car, a rhythm that establishes the seductiveness of the moment as well as its artifice. The scene has nothing to do with the narrative, but it's got everything to do with the film's theme: the importance of probing beneath shiny surfaces.
Redford effortlessly tops anything he's done to date with the next sequence, which introduces us to the quiz show of the title, "Twenty-One." The camera prowls the studio where the show is shot, introducing producers, contestants and a rapt studio audience. Outside the NBC building and across the country, men, women and children flock to their television sets to watch long-running champion Herbert Stempel (John Turturro) defy the odds and win yet again.
The sequence is a marvel of simple-yet-effective cross-cutting, but Redford doesn't stop there. As he shows us the brilliantly scripted puppet show taking place on national TV, he pulls back the curtain to reveal the puppeteer standing behind it; in this case the Geritol sponsor (director Martin Scorsese). While the bosomy blonde sitting next to him remarks that Stempel's face was "was made for radio," the sponsor calls up the head of the network, who in turn calls up the show's producers, who in turn inform Stempel that it's time for him to go.
The search is on for a new face--a "Twenty-One" champion "who looks like he could get a table at Twenty-One." Enter Charles van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), an Ivy Leaguer who teaches at Columbia and whose family seems to breed literati like rabbits. A WASP among WASP, he's the perfect replacement for the overbearingly Jewish (or is it Jewishly overbearing) Stempel. Needless to say, Stempel doesn't take the coup very well, and determines to show the uncircumcised Hamptoner what little Queens boys are made of, kicking off a grand jury investigation that catches Goodwin's attention.
What Stempel and Goodwin don't realize is the full extent of the power wielded by the two institutions they're taking on--the old whiteboy network and big business. Goodwin is very nearly seduced by the former; in investigating Charles van Doren, he finds himself so drawn to their easy, erudite life of privilege that he resists implicating van Doren until he can no longer protect him. And the latter, with millions of dollars behind it, walks into Goodwin's line of fire and emerges unscathed. "I thought I was gonna get television," he says, "but the truth is, television's gonna get us."
For a while, QUIZ SHOW gets by on its gentle humor. But Redford is ill-suited to get to the bottom of the human comedy of the quiz show scandal. He trots out the usual suspects: Stempel is motivated by his resentment of WASPs, Goodwin by his ambition and van Doren by an Oedipus complex (minus the sexual component, of course). None of these are complicated enough to justify a two-hour movie--particularly one with three main characters--unless it's balls-out satire. Directors with acid for blood, like Scorsese, Altman or Kubrick understand that, which is why superficially superficial films like GOODFELLAS, THE PLAYER and DR. STRANGELOVE shoot right to our core. Redford is so mistakenly brings a knife to a gunfight, so it's no surprise that he fails to draw blood.
Attanasio's script, while competent, is content to lay out a map so complete that there are no surprises; there isn't a single moment in the film that can't be predicted. The source material may be insubstantial, but there is a lot of ground the narrative has to cover. Attanasio's mistake is to attempt both breadth and depth simultaneously; it's inevitable and unfortunate that both fail spectacularly.
The actors seem to understand that QUIZ SHOW should be a satire, which has the effect entertaining us superbly even as it exposes the hollowness at the film's core. Ralph Fiennes, so effortlessly chilling as Amon Goeth in SCHINDLER'S LIST reminds us why Day-Lewis status isn't too far away for this young Brit. Here, he strains for a credible New York accent (as does Yank Rob Morrow), but the demons that lie beneath his patrician exterior are only too believable. Paul Scofield puts in an award-worthy supporting turn as van Doren's father, an man who intuitively, if not intellectually, understands the danger that television represents. And Martin Scorsese gives such a scabrous performance an unflappable Geritol executive, that, at greater length, could have rivaled his infamous backseat pussy-and-a-.45 monologue in TAXI DRIVER.
But the bravura performance is delivered by John Turturro. He sinks his teeth into Stempel's Jewish inferiority complex with such over-the-top gusto that were this a Spike Lee film, cries of anti-Semitism would be unleavened by Goodwin's good-Jew role. More sweaty, jittery and boorish than Tommy Lee Jones' warden in NATURAL BORN KILLERS, the part is right out of Der Sturmer. But Turturro plunges so far into the part that he creates a truth completely outside of Attanasio's scripting, refusing to sentimentalize Stempel in the least. It's as if Turturro were saying, "I double-dare ya to like this shmuck."
Unfortunately for Redford, the truth Turturro creates is so effective that we can't be bothered to take him up on his dare. Both van Doren and Stempel may be frauds, but van Doren's smooth, all-American beauty is far better company than Stempel's snaggle-toothed chutzpah, so we can't begrudge Goodwin or Redford for deciding to spend more time with van Doren. We see van Doren at work, rest and play, but every time we see Stempel, he's monomaniacally focused on "Twenty-One." By hewing so tightly to Goodwin's point-of-view, Redford reinforces our opinion that Charlie isn't so bad, and Stempel is a bit of a loser. If van Doren were more vacant, more greedy, more grasping than he turns out to be, Redford could have punished us and Goodwin for falling for van Doren's golden-boy charm. Instead, Redford's even-handedness becomes infuriating, and his insistence that television is the real bad guy rings more-and-more hollow.
Despite the screenplay's significant problems, QUIZ SHOW is very entertaining. Redford's skill with actors is very much in evidence, particularly in the quiet scenes, and most impressively with Fiennes and Scofield; the stunned expression on Scofield's face after hearing his son confesses to him suggests a loss of innocence that was never America's to lose. But Redford slyly saves his best and most disturbing image for last: behind the end credits, a studio audience laughs and applauds in ominous slow-motion, as if the scandal had ever happened. Turning the camera back on us, in fact, is the most intelligent choice Redford makes in the entire film, a choice that almost justifies QUIZ SHOW's existence.
-- n'gai croal croaln@washpost.com
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