I Watch Quiz Show: Cars and Wings
“I have flown too high on borrowed wings,” said Charles van Doren when he admitted at a Congressional hearing to having taken part in a scheme to fix a popular quiz show called Twenty-One on which he had been a winning contestant. The admission is a satisfying cathartic resolution for the many story lines woven into the plot of Robert Redford’s 1994 film Quiz Show about Van Doren and the scandal he was at the center of in 1959.
Quiz Show is the story of three men. Robert Goodwin (Rob Morrow) is a congressional staffer and recent law school graduate viewing the latest Chrysler model in a showroom when the film opens. The salesman tempts him to drive a car he can’t afford. The young professional enjoys entertaining the idea that he may one day own such a status symbol. “…[I]t used to be the man drove the car,” he says. “Now the car drives the man.”
Enter Herbert Stempel, a graduate student and married father of one from the Bronx. Stempel is a long-winning contestant on the quiz show Twenty-One who turns bitter after being forced to lose when ratings drop. He is replaced by Charles Van Doren whom producers spot auditioning for another game show. The professor is recruited and seduced -- after initially refusing -- into fixing the outcome of the show. Audience and producers, sponsors and contestants (Stempel excepted), are all happy with this arrangement. But a bright and ambitious Senate staffer, Goodwin, who also happens to be Jewish, becomes interested in uncovering the wrong doings in the game show industry and eventually blows the whistle on the fix.
While John Tuturro as Stempel threatens to steal every scene he’s in, Ralph Fiennes is the star of this show. If ever an actor personified introversion, it’s this intriguing man, an inspired choice to play the well-bred academic Charles Van Doren, son of poet and author Mark Van Doren, and member of a social circle that includes Thomas Merton, James Thurber, Edmund Wilson, and Wendell Wilkie. Film critic James Berardinelli describes the character of Van Doren as “a fascinating individual, equally seduced and repelled by greed…[a man who]…wallows in public adulation until it begins to stink from his own hypocrisy.” It’s Fiennes’ brilliant emoting that conveys that subtle reality. The actor’s ability to radiate intensity while still withholding the energy from you is what makes him such an exciting introvert to watch.
The well-plotted script by Paul Attanasio builds dramatic tension by intelligently exploring the relationships between the characters. While other reviewers have claimed the suspense of the story comes from guessing whether or not Van Doren actually participated in the fix, the real question that keeps viewers guessing is why a man of Van Doren’s stature and abilities would appear on some stupid game show in the first place, let alone cheat on one. When the host of Twenty-One first spots the patrician Van Doren at the NBC offices auditioning for Tic Tac Dough, he wonders aloud, “Why would a guy like that want to be on a quiz show?” A $64,000 question. The viewer stays involved with the plot not because she wonders whether Van Doren did it, but because she wants to know whether or not Van Doren will come clean about his guilt and explain what tempted him.
It turns out that besides the considerable monetary compensation (that was the apparent impetus for Van Doren to audition for Tic Tac Dough), there were psychological motives for the charade, as well. A few compelling scenes between Charles and his father, played by Paul Scofield, illuminate the psychological dynamics behind the Faustian deal. Here is how Janet Maslin describes their interaction: “Mr. Scofield is a marvel, managing in one brief performance to convey so much about an American as particular as Mark Van Doren, and so much that is universal between accomplished fathers and their sons.” When the son finally admits to having flown too far on borrowed wings, the confession has a double meaning. “Everything came too easy,” Charlie laments. “That is why I am here today.”
Van Doren is forced to give up a lucrative TV contract and admit his culpability, ending his academic career at Colombia (though he later went on to edit and write many well-respected books). The real culprits -- those who ran the show and conspired to corrupt Van Doren by putting him in almost impossibly irresistible position -- escape punishment. (In real life, the show’s producer and host returned to television years later with other game shows. Van Doren is still stigmatized.) Like Van Doren, Stempel is revealed as a fraud, but Tuturrro succeeds in putting over such a petty and unlikable character that his exposure is virtually a non-event. When the higher-ups at the network decide “they want a guy on Twenty-One who could get a table at 21,” it’s hard to disagree with them. While no one likes Stempel, it’s hard to resist Van Doren. “I want to think the best of you, Charlie. Everybody does. That’s your curse,” Goodwin tells the handsome bachelor.
The two contestants make an interesting contrast worth contemplating in terms of introversion and extroversion. Van Doren’s fall from grace is painful, but necessary considering his relationship with himself. Time and again he was given a chance to escape exposure, but he unconsciously conspires with Goodwin to expose his own fraud. Stempel, on the other hand, works consciously towards the same goal so that all America will finally know the truth: Herbert Stempel can name the winner of the best picture Oscar in 1955 (he was forced to answer a question about this incorrectly when he lost to Van Doren). His obsession with how the audience perceives him is not endearing. Goodwin had no trouble exposing Stempel, but hesitated to snare Van Doren in his trap. As Roger Ebert has pointed out, Goodwin’s sympathy for the popular professor seems to argue that he arrived at the same casting decision as the sponsor: the telegenic WASP is preferable to the “fat, annoying Jewish guy with a sidewall haircut.” It’s true that extroverts generally have all the “personality,” but introverts have a way of captivating that is sometimes far more attractive.
While the story unfolds against a backdrop of an America in cultural transition, the naiveté of the 1950s is not the real point of the film which is in fact a meditation on personal responsibility. Van Doren personifies the ramifications of slipping standards, while other characters, such as producer Dan Enright and loser Stempel, act as foils. I am not the first to point out it is a film without heroes. Though his actions are petty, you can’t hate Van Doren. The protagonist Goodwin, though respectable, lacks the grace, charm, and wit you like in your heroes. The genius of the film is to illuminate the humanity in both men. One, an outsider from apparently modest means, must work hard to prove to the world that he is worth something. The other, endowed with the privileges that come from familial wealth and status, must work hard to prove to himself that he is worthy of the value the world places on him.
Don’t be fooled by the movie’s title. This isn’t a film about a quiz show. It’s the story of three men: a parable of fathers and sons, friends and betrayal, good and evil. After Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the secret bombings of Cambodia, Iran-Contra, and Monica Lewinksy, Americans are more cynical than they were in 1959. But not all that much has changed. It’s still a classist, anti-Semitic, superficial nation. After the war on poverty, school busing, affirmative action, and the women’s movement, rich, handsome, WASP males are still the nation’s elite. This film challenges us to ask whether all that privilege doesn’t cripple character development. By taking a look at the fall of a golden boy, we return to our moral center where men drive cars -- and not the other way around. One suspects Charles Van Doren, the consummate introvert, knew that all along.
Note: Look for cameos by Martin Scorcese and Barry Levinson.
more reviews by Hadley Ajana
