`QUIZ SHOW' CRITICS FIND IT IRONIC THAT FILM PLAYS WITH THE FACTS (2024)

Is "Quiz Show" as dishonest as the movie's scandal-plagued TV game show? That's the real $64,000 question, say critics of the acclaimed film, which admittedly plays fast and loose with the facts.

The mounting accusations against the Robert Redford-directed movie mirror charges against "Twenty-One," the rigged 1950s game show whose contestants were secretly given answers.Specifically, both the game show and "Quiz Show" seem to dodge the truth and create clear heroes and villains for popularity's sake - more TV viewers in one case, bigger box-office in the other.

From invented dialogue to fabricated court transactions, "Quiz Show" often takes broad dramatic license. Because the film uses the names of real people (some still living) and has been positioned by its makers as a righteous statement on ethics and morality, the "Quiz Show" deviations raise provocative questions about Hollywood's conscience - or its lack of one.

"If Robert Redford had taken this movie and had changed the names, then I would have no argument," says Don Enright, whose father Dan produced "Twenty-One" and is vilified in "Quiz Show."

"But as this movie sits, it is now a half-truth, and a half-truth is the blackest of lies, because it's based on fact and it's impossible to fight."

Says Albert Freedman, Dan Enright's producing partner and a character portrayed very unfavorably in "Quiz Show": "All of my conversations (in the movie) were fiction. . . . Everything that they have me saying is fantasy."

Freedman, who says he was not consulted about the film, has threatened to sue. "I'm certainly not going to stand by and let him get away with it," he says of Redford.

Redford and screenwriter Paul Attanasio have said the fictional elements were added to make the story more dramatic and instructive. Their critics, however, say the inaccuracies destroy the film's credibility.

"I think the movie's a lot of bunk," says Jeff Kisseloff, author of the upcoming TV book "The Box," which includes a chapter on the quiz show scandal. "I was astonished. People will look at it and think it's history - and it's not. . . . Robert Redford has said in interviews he doesn't believe in lying for profits. But that seems like what he's doing here."

Retired New York Judge Joseph Stone is among the film's most knowledgeable faultfinders. Working four decades ago in New York's district attorney's office, Stone led the investigation and prosecution of the quiz shows, months before the film's investigator, Richard Goodwin, came along. Stone wrote about the affair in the book "Primetime and Misdemeanors: Investigating the 1950s Quiz Show Scandal."

"As far as I am concerned, the movie is a farce," says Stone, listing a variety of errors both large and small. He is especially bothered by the film's lionizing of Goodwin, who Stone says was a minor player in the scandal and never did half of what he is shown doing.

"The movie tries to give the aura that this is the way it happened - but it's full of baloney from beginning to end," Stone says.

But is such movie trickery so unusual?

Ask any filmmaker, and the response is the same - real life is not always interesting and rarely entertaining. Remember: Even "Schindler's List" was adapted from a novel, not a biography. Almost every other fact-based movie - from "Lawrence of Arabia" to "Gandhi" to "JFK" - builds a dramatic story on a foundation of truth, adding layers of fiction and speculation to create a more "compelling" film.

Redford and Attanasio candidly admit doing the same with "Quiz Show," which at its core is a true story.

Based on a chapter from Richard Goodwin's memoir "Remembering America," "Quiz Show" follows congressional investigator Goodwin (Rob Morrow) as he looks into the fantastically popular - and rigged - TV game shows. Coached contestant Herbert Stempel (John Turturro) helps Goodwin bring down rival contestant Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), who, like Stempel, was given quiz answers beforehand.

The film's liberties include (but are not limited to) elevating Goodwin's role in uncovering the fraud, sealing grand-jury files which in fact were given to Goodwin, mixing facts about "Twenty-One" with "The $64,000 Question," collapsing three years of events into one, and inventing dialogue between key participants.

Attanasio, who could not be contacted for this story, has said he and Redford wanted a "detective story" and had to create one because it wasn't there. Goodwin, similarly, has admitted the film is not "completely historically accurate."

Redford's publicist did not return telephone calls. Redford has said elsewhere that he used "dramatic license to make either a moral point or an ethical point and not move too far out of what could possibly have happened."

All this was done, the Oscar-winning director of "Ordinary People" said, to "elevate something so that people can see it."

It is such talk of "morality" and "ethics" that particularly angers the film's detractors, who note the film carries no disclaimers. If "Quiz Show" did not come across so high-and-mighty, these critics say, it would not be so hypocritical.

How, wonders Enright, can a film "be `moderately close to the truth,' and still use real names? That's my problem with it. It's positioned as revealed truth and it's mass entertainment."

"Redford stands on the soapbox of truth, and he's preaching the gospel. But he's sinning in the act of throwing the stones."

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Says Freedman: "What I am really disheartened by is someone with the integrity of Robert Redford has made it. . . . This is an update of George Orwell's `1984,' where you interpret things in the way you want them to be rather than the way they are.

"You start believing your own fantasy - and that's dangerous."

Film reviewers have given "Quiz Show" largely positive reviews, but several have been bothered by the film's liberties.

Wrote Newsday film critic Jack Mathews: "(Redford's) willingness to alter history for dramatic effect says as much about the corrupting qualities of the media as the events depicted in the film itself."

`QUIZ SHOW' CRITICS FIND IT IRONIC THAT FILM PLAYS WITH THE FACTS (2024)
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