Quiz Show
Overview
Quiz Show is a 1994 American historical drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 produced and directed by Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...

. Adapted by Paul Attanasio
Paul Attanasio
Paul Albert Attanasio is an American screenwriter and producer of film and television, who is currently an executive producer on the television series House.-Life and career:...

 from Richard Goodwin
Richard N. Goodwin
Richard N. Goodwin is an American writer who may be best known as an advisor and speechwriter to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and to Senator Robert F. Kennedy.-Life and career:...

's memoir Remembering America, the film is based upon the Twenty One
Twenty One (game show)
Twenty One is an American game show which aired in the late 1950s. While it included the most popular contestant of the quiz show era, it became notorious for being a rigged quiz show which nearly caused the demise of the entire genre in the wake of United States Senate investigations...

 quiz show scandal
Quiz show scandals
The American quiz show scandals of the 1950s were a series of revelations that contestants of several popular television quiz shows were secretly given assistance by the show's producers to arrange the outcome of a supposedly fair competition....

 of the 1950s. It stars John Turturro
John Turturro
John Michael Turturro is an American actor, writer and director known for his roles in the films Do the Right Thing , Miller's Crossing , Barton Fink , Quiz Show , The Big Lebowski , O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Transformers film series...

, Rob Morrow
Rob Morrow
Robert Alan "Rob" Morrow is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of Don Eppes on Numb3rs and as Dr. Joel Fleischman on Northern Exposure, a role which garnered him three Golden Globes and two Emmy Award nominations for "Best Actor in a Dramatic Series."-Personal life:Morrow was born in...

, Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor and film director. He has appeared in such films as The English Patient, In Bruges, The Constant Gardener, Strange Days, The Duchess and Schindler's List....

, Paul Scofield
Paul Scofield
David Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...

, David Paymer
David Paymer
David Paymer is an American actor and television director, seen in such films as Quiz Show, Searching for Bobby Fischer, City Slickers, Crazy People, State and Main, Payback, Get Shorty, Carpool, The American President, Ocean's Thirteen, and Drag Me to Hell...

, Hank Azaria
Hank Azaria
Henry Albert "Hank" Azaria is an American film, television and stage actor, director, voice actor, and comedian. He is noted for being one of the principal voice actors on the animated television series The Simpsons , on which he performs the voices of Moe Szyslak, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Chief...

, and Christopher McDonald
Christopher McDonald
Christopher McDonald is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore, Tappy Tibbons in Requiem for a Dream, and Mel Allen in the HBO film 61*.-Personal life:...

.

The film chronicles the rise and fall of the popular contestant Charles Van Doren
Charles Van Doren
Charles Lincoln Van Doren is an American intellectual, writer, and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s...

 after the rigged loss of Herb Stempel
Herb Stempel
Herbert Milton "Herb" Stempel is a television game show contestant and subsequent whistle blower on the fraudulent nature of the industry, in what became known as the quiz show scandals...

 and Congressional investigator Richard Goodwin's probe of Twenty Ones game-fixing.
Quotations

Charles Van Doren — he wouldn't know the answer to a doorbell if you didn't give it to him.

This week on Twenty-One, watch Herb Stempel be fed to the Columbia lions. Watch Charles Van Doren eat his first kosher meal on Twenty-One.

[To a reporter outside the Congressional hearing room] You know what the problem with you bums is? You never leave a guy alone unless you're leaving him alone.

I remember five-six years ago my uncle Harold told my aunt about this affair he had. It was a sort of mildly upsetting event in my family... The affair was over, something like eight years. So I remember asking him, "Why did you tell her? You got away with it." And I'll never forget what he said. It was the getting away with it part that he couldn't live with.

Mark Van Doren: For $64,000, I hope they ask you the meaning of life.

Martin Rittenhome: You see, the audience didn't tune in to watch some amazing display of intellectual ability. They just wanted to watch the money.

 
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