One of the main issues of interest when discussing the fact-based film is the extent to which the screen story should adhere to the facts. A good example of this can be found in Robert Redford’s acclaimed drama, Quiz Show.
Director: Robert Redford
Screenwriter: Paul Attanasio
Screenplay: Script Slug
Based on: The non-fiction book, Remembering America: A Voice from the Sixties, by Richard N. Goodwin.
Synopsis:
*Spoilers* US, 1958. Quiz shows dominate the television schedules, bringing in millions of viewers and lucrative sponsorship deals, while turning the participants into celebrities.
The biggest of these shows is NBC’s Twenty-One, in which two contestants compete against each other. The long-time reigning champion is Herb Stempel, whose success has turned him into a working-class hero, and has also gone to his head.
The show’s producers, Dan Enright and Albert Freedman, decide they need a different champion to boost ratings. They select the photogenic, clean-cut college teacher Charles Van Doren, who comes from a prominent family of writers and academics. To ensure Van Doren unseats Stempel and remains on the show, they give him the questions, and later the answers, ahead of time. Van Doren wins, becomes the show’s returning champion (much to Stempel’s chagrin) and quickly becomes a celebrity, ‘winning’ thousands of dollars in the process.
Dick Goodwin, a young lawyer working for a Congressional subcommittee, becomes aware of sealed records of a previous grand jury hearing relating to potential quiz show fraud. He becomes suspicious and investigates. Along the way, he strikes up a genuine friendship with Van Doren. Goodwin sets his sights on nailing the president of NBC and the CEO of the show’s sponsor, Geritol, while protecting Van Doren.
Stempel reveals that he too was fed the answers to the questions and Goodwin finds another contestant who has proof of the fraud.
At a Congressional hearing, Enright takes the fall for the whole scheme, letting the executives off the hook. In the process, Van Doren is called to testify and tells the truth, leaving his reputation and teaching career in ruins.
Analysis:
While Quiz Show was largely praised by critics and received award recognition, it was also subject to a degree of backlash. Negative comments focussed on how far the screen story departs from the facts.
For example, in the Time Magazine article, ‘Why Quiz Show is a Scandal’, Richard Zoglin highlights:
– the compression of events, from several years to a few months
– the extent of Goodwin’s role in the investigation
– the representations of Van Doren and Stempel
Similarly, in the Washington Post article, ‘Quiz Show’, Desson Howe, gives short shrift to the filmmakers’ arguments about their use of poetic (or dramatic) licence. He writes:
“…When a high-minded movie dips into history to make implications about America and asks to be taken seriously, it cannot escape certain responsibilities.”
The irony that a film about a fraud against the public was accused of inaccuracies was also not lost on Howe.
Going further, in the Associated Press article, ‘Quiz Show Gives a False Picture of a Scandal’, published in the Times-Picayune, John Horn presents interviews with some of the film’s real-life counterparts, who complain about the representation of events and “invented’ dialogue”. Judge Joseph Stone even goes as far as to call the film “a farce”.
Finally, in their book, Adaptation: Studying Film & Literature, John M Desmond and Peter Hawkes, accuse the film of two main “lies” (p200). These are the exaggeration of Goodwin’s role in the events and the fact that at the beginning of the film, a judge (not Stone) refuses to give Goodwin the grand jury proceedings of the earlier investigation into the quiz shows, when, in reality, the transcripts were provided.
From a factual point-of-view, the commentators may well be right. In fact, the real Goodwin acknowledged in the Horn article that the events, as portrayed, were not “completely accurate”.
However, it seems these critics are forgetting one important point:
Real life does not usually provide a narrative that works on film.
Certain elements must be in place for a narrative film to work. These include:
- Defined act structure
- Compelling protagonist
- Adversaries (antagonists)
- Obstacles
- Internal and external conflict
- Increasing tension
- Satisfying and complete resolution
If history doesn’t provide those elements, it is up to the writer to use their creativity to invent them, while adhering to the spirit of the original.
In the case of Quiz Show, strengthening the character of Goodwin and amplifying his role allows him to take up the reins as the protagonist.
We then get to see his determination to hold television to account for the fraud; we see this young man taking on weighty adversaries who are seemingly untouchable; we see him struggling to keep focussed on his task through his burgeoning friendship with Van Doren; we see him uncovering damning evidence; we see his dismay when he is unable to protect his friend from the fallout.
This is far more effective than having a group of lawyers and investigators poking about while Goodwin hovers in the background and conducts the occasional interview. Likewise, compressing the events leads to a much tighter narrative. It makes little difference to the viewer whether the events take place over weeks, months or years. The outcome remains the same!
As to the “lie” about the grand jury proceedings that Desmond and Hawkes highlights, which adds more to the drama? a.) Goodwin going to a judge and being given the transcripts without a fight, or b.) the judge turning down the request and, thus, complicating Goodwin’s task, putting a further obstacle in his way, and making him more proactive in tracking down the information he needs?
In the Horn article, the screenwriter Paul Attanasio says that he and director Robert Redford wanted to formulate a “detective story” and fit this over the factual events. This meant departing from history in order to provide audiences with a coherent, effective and entertaining narrative.
That doesn’t mean that they got everything right. Maybe the most problematic criticism is what Zoglin refers to as the “Hollywood clichés”; namely turning Van Doren and Stempel into what he believes are extreme caricatures. He goes as far as to call the film incarnation of Stempel “perhaps the most offensively stereotyped Jew in modern American cinema”.
The narrative choice here is clear. The show’s producers were looking for an appealing, popular opposite to the whiny, manic working-class Stempel, so they chose the refined and educated Gentile Van Doren. Maybe this necessitated pushing the fictional characters to the extreme to make a cultural point. However, it is understandable why the portrayals could be seen as offensive, even though the performances by Ralph Fiennes as Van Doren and John Turturro as Stempel reveal multi-dimensional characters.
Van Doren was clearly complicit in the fraud and doesn’t walk away from events scot-free. In fact, he has far more to lose than Stempel. He may have looked clean-cut and have been held out as an educator and moral example, but he is revealed to be weak and something of a fraud in his own life, skating by on his privileged background and family name. Stempel, on the other hand, may also have been guilty, but there are no airs and graces. He wants television to give him fame and fortune and doesn’t deny that he took a dishonest route. As such, it is arguably Van Doren who comes off worse in the story.
Conclusion:
In his article for Images Journal, ‘Quiz Show as Persuasive Docudrama’, Steve Lipkin suggests we need to suspend our disbelief when it comes to the fact-based film, which is true. As with any film, it’s an unspoken bargain that we the filmgoers suspend our belief in order for the filmmakers to transport us to another world and tell us a compelling story.
However, Lipkin goes on to argue:
“We are asked to grant that [events] might have happened in much the way we are about to see them depicted.”
This is arguably inaccurate, as what the filmmakers are trying to do is to ‘fictionalise’ an episode from history. They are not presenting the narrative structure itself as historically accurate; they are suggesting the spirit of the narrative is accurate. In order to achieve this:
Creative decisions must be made to reconcile the conflict between history ‘as it happened’, which may not lend itself to drama verbatim, and the demands of a screen story, which has certain conventions that audiences expect to be present.
The responsibility that fact-based film owes to history is an ongoing argument and there are cases to be made at both extremes.
Maybe the best idea is to simply enjoy Quiz Show for what it is – a well-made, well-acted fictional representation of an interesting and little-known episode from history. If you want the ‘facts’, read the book on which it was based…
But this also raises its own questions of accuracy. The book was written by the real-life Goodwin, so how objective is it? Indeed, what is ‘the truth’ when it comes to how historical events are recounted? Can we ever be sure that we’re not being fed a skewed version of events to serve the writer’s agenda? Indeed, Goodwin makes it clear that he aligned himself with Van Doren. Likewise, he is not shy of exhibiting contempt towards Stempel. This differing attitude informs the source material and therefore gives readers a subjective view.
This leads to the inescapable question:
If we can’t always believe ‘factual’ accounts, why should we be required to believe fictionalised screen stories?
References:
- Desmond, John M and Hawkes, Peter, Adaptation: Studying Film & Literature, McGraw-Hill (New York: 2006)
- Horn, John, ‘Quiz Show Gives a False Picture of a Scandal’, Times-Picayune, 23 September 1994
- Howe, Desson, ‘Quiz Show’, Washington Post, 16 September 1994
- Lipkin, Steve, ‘Quiz Show as Persuasive Docudrama’, Images Journal, 6 June 2002
- Zoglin,Richard, ‘Why Quiz Show is a Scandal’, Time Magazine, 10 October 1994
Go further:
For more on the dramatic licence taken by the filmmakers, take a look at this interesting Television Academy Foundation interview, in which the real Herb Stempel discusses Quiz Show: