|
 "Fifty
million people watched, but no one saw a thing"
Adapted for the cinema by Paul Attanasio from the book ‘Remembering
America: A Voice from the Sixties’ by Richard N. Goodwin.
Stars include John Turturro (as Herb Stempel), Ralph Fiennes
(Charles Van Doren) and Paul Scofield (Van Doren Snr.).
Watch out also for film-maker Martin Scorsese in a cameo role,
playing an executive of the show's sponsors 'Geritol'.
The
film tells of a scandal that rocked the States in the late 1950s.
Both the makers & sponsors of the then leading TV quiz show,
"Twenty-One", were accused of rigging the show by
feeding contestants the answers to questions - to manipulate viewers'
emotions and so boost ratings.
Interest
is heightened as issues of class and race prejudice come to the fore when
one of the show’s ‘stars’, a Jew, is superseded by a white,
Anglo-Saxon Protestant from a privileged academic background – Ralph
Fiennes as the real life Charles Van Doren (with 12 others Van Doren was
arrested for perjury in 1960 after first testifying they'd not been given
the answers).
This
is an excellent film which earned Oscar nominations for its director,
writer and Scofield (‘best supporting actor’). It also
garnered its writer Attanasio a BAFTA award.
1994: directed by Robert Redford, 132 minutes.
Further
reading
Below
are
some links to other articles about the film and the issues it deals with.
Some of the pieces are complementary, others not so. In the final
analysis you should see the film and decide for yourself!
Why
Quiz Show Is a Scandal
"The
rigging of Twenty-One is juicy material, but Robert Redford's film opts
for easy TV bashing"
By Richard Zoglin of 'TIME Domestic'
October 10, 1994 Volume 144, No. 15
Quiz
Show succeeds with moral message
By Craig K. Chang
Staff Reporter on Boston’s “The Tech”
Public
Forgiveness of TV scandal
by Jeremy Lloyd (Time 1995)
The
Million-Dollar Trivia Buff
David Neff
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