When a bitter Stempel decides to go public, and Congressional investigator Dick Goodwin (Rob Morrow) listens to him, a national scandal erupts. Producers Dan Enright and Albert Freedman are surprised when Columbia University instructor Charles Van Doren, son of a prominent literary family, visits their office to audition for a different, less difficult show by the same producers, Tic-Tac-Dough. Realizing that they have found an ideal challenger for Stempel, they offer to ask the same questions during the show which Van Doren correctly answered during his audition. He refuses, but when he nears a game-winning 21 points on the show, he is asked one of the questions from his audition. Stempel deliberately misses an easy question and loses, having been promised a future in television if he does so.
In 1958, the questions and answers to be used for the latest broadcast of NBC’s popular quiz manga quiz show Twenty-One are transported from a secure bank vault to the studio. The evening’s main attraction is Queens resident Herb Stempel, the reigning champion, who correctly answers every single question he is asked. Eventually, both the network and the program’s corporate sponsor, the supplementary tonic Geritol, begin to fear that Stempel’s approval ratings are beginning to level out, and decide that the show would benefit from new talent.
By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes. By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands. The film received generally positive reviews and was nominated for several awards, including a Best Picture Oscar nomination and several Golden Globe Awards, but was a financial disappointment, grossing $52.2 million against a $31 million budget.
We have surveyed the experts to come up with a list of 15 of the likeliest Best Picture nominees among all films released in 2024. Find a schedule of release dates for every movie coming to theaters, VOD, and streaming throughout 2024 and 2025, updated daily. Find a list of new movie and TV releases on DVD and Blu-ray (updated weekly) as well as a calendar of upcoming releases on home video. John Turturro is exceptional as the uncharismatic Herbie Stempel, a man so petty and dislikable that it’s impossible to sympathize with him even when he’s presented as a victim. Rob Morrow is good enough not to be completely overshadowed by his co-stars, although his forced accent could have been toned down.
Towards the end of the movie, David Paymer’s Dan Enright comments that the sham of “Twenty-One” created a situation in which nobody lost — not the sponsor, NBC, the public, or the contestants. Viewers of Quiz Show, however, are likely to form the opposite impression — that, in the end, there were no winners. Crisply directed by Redford from a thought-provoking script by Paul Attanasio, and featuring a slew of strong performances (including appearances by Barry Levinson and Martin Scorsese), Quiz Show is the first giant of the Fall 1994 movie schedule.
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Biographical snapshots contain lessons about integrity, pride, jealousy, trust, compromise, morality and greed. On the other side of the father/son conflict is Paul Scofield’s character. Masterfully rendered, Mark Van Doren is far more than the usual stern, disapproving patriarch.
Today on TV, so many sins are justified in the name of ratings that any other standard hardly exists. The 1950s have been packaged as a time of Eisenhower and Elvis, Chevy Bel-Airs and blue jeans, crew cuts and drive-ins. It’s so rare to find intellectual issues dealt with anymore in American movies, so rare that some film-industry observers are questioning whether Quiz Show will be a commercial success. Accept the film purely as entertainment, it is a pretty sensational movie, the best in Redford’s decorous directing career, and perhaps the most captivating non-action thriller since All the President’s Men.
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 prominent poet Mark Van Doren (Paul Scofield), decides he’d like to take a crack at appearing on a quiz show. Quiz Show is a 1994 American historical mystery-drama film[3][4] directed and produced by Robert Redford. Dramatizing the Twenty-One quiz show scandals of the 1950s, the screenplay by Paul Attanasio[5] adapts the memoirs of Richard N. Goodwin, a U.S. Congressional lawyer who investigated the accusations of game-fixing by show producers.[6] The film chronicles the rise and fall of popular contestant Charles Van Doren after the fixed loss of Herb Stempel and Goodwin’s subsequent probe.
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Mira Sorvino, in her first mainstream film after appearances in several independents, provides a spark as Goodwin’s wife. The Oscar winner really, really, really wants to get his hands on that diamond. A terrifically entertaining account of the tarnishing of television’s Golden Age. It’s a very good movie, just short of greatness, carried along on outstanding performances by John Turturro and Ralph Fiennes, and Robert Redford’s simple, evocative direction. The heart-stopping performance is that of Paul Scofield as Van Doren’s poet father, Mark, who brings the full measure of patrician spine and patriarchal despair to the part of a famous father seeing his son chase after false fame. What’s so good about Robert Redford’s sleek version of the story is how delicately such issues as motive and emotions are sketched, and how ambiguity, not glib moralizing, is prized.
Van Doren is nothing like Schindler’s List’s Amon Goeth, but, taken together, both roles display the actor’s ability and versatility. If he continues to choose his parts carefully, Fiennes will soon be a major motion picture draw. There’s a secondary theme dealing with the shortness of the public’s memory. Less than twenty years following his “Twenty-One” disgrace, producer Dan Enright returned to the game show business with another hit. Today, programs like Jeopardy are big draws, and the lure of a repeat champion is as strong as ever. Goodwin believes that he is close to a victory against Geritol and NBC, but realizes that Enright and Freedman will not jeopardize their own futures in television by turning against their bosses.
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As a direct consequence, Congress amended the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit networks from prearranging the outcomes of quiz shows. In the United States, it has since become standard industry practice for game show producers to monitor their own shows closely for cheating and to ensure fairness in play and compliance with broadcasting law to the highest degree possible. In the subsequent weeks, Van Doren’s winning streak makes him a national celebrity, but he reluctantly buckles under the pressure and allows Enright and Freedman to start giving him the answers. Meanwhile, Stempel, having lost his prize money to an unscrupulous bookie, begins threatening legal action against NBC after weeks pass without his return to television. He visits New York County District Attorney Frank Hogan, who convenes a grand jury to look into his allegations. Consecutive films have now presented superb performances by Fiennes.
In a way, the movie subtly argues, Goodwin arrived at the same casting decision as the sponsors. A class act — a big, important film, more relevant than ever, questioning the ways art and information and truth are rejiggered by TV as it increasingly blurs the line between news and entertainment. Fiennes’ ability to project the pain behind a well-mannered facade, to turn intellectual and emotional agony into a real and living thing, is devastating. Robert Redford’s soft-spoken, intelligent but never less than entertaining movie reminds us of exactly what we’ve been missing — a story that seems utterly fresh and a filmmaking style best described as civilized. The film buff can defend these historical distortions according to the thematic aims of Quiz Show. Sputnik discredited the faith in the scientific supremacy of the United States, and makes admiration for Van Doren as an intellectual celebrity plausible and his motives more complicated than mere greed.
Stempel’s volatile personality damages his credibility, and nobody else seems willing to confirm that the show is fixed. Fearing Goodwin will give up the investigation, Stempel confesses that he was fed the correct answers during his run on the show, and insists that Van Doren must have been involved as well. Another former contestant gives Goodwin a set of answers that he mailed to himself two days before his quiz show appearance, which Goodwin takes to be corroborating evidence. When testifying in the congressional investigation into the game show rigging, he turns into a showboat, reveling in the chance to once again command the national spotlight. Much like Van Doren, Stempel recognizes television’s ability to make a celebrity out of an ordinary person, and he’s nearly destroyed when his fifteen minutes are up.