Word: redfords
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...exactly hardened criminals here," says the TV producer testifying before Congress at the end of Quiz Show. "We're in show business." By this point in Robert Redford's critically acclaimed new movie, no one can miss the irony of that line. The people who conspired to rig the big-money quiz shows in the 1950s, according to the film, were criminals all right -- and not despite but because of the fact that they were in show business. These connivers didn't just feed a few answers to favored contestants to boost ratings. They destroyed a nation's innocence...
Quiz Show is more discreet in its indictment of television but no less insulting. Director Redford and screenwriter Paul Attanasio have converted a fascinating and complex episode in TV history into a simplistic morality play, with TV as the bad guy in virtually every scene. Jack Barry, host of Twenty- One, rehearses to himself before the show like some hammy dinner-theater thespian. When the quiz shows come on, Average Joes troop home to their TV set like sheep to the slaughter (with those same emblematic '50s-family-glued-to- th e-TV shots that Stone uses in Natural Born...
...Redford and company, however, the scandal foreshadows just about every mess from Vietnam to Watergate. Near the end of the film, after the congressional hearings have exposed the rigging, an associate congratulates | Goodwin. "For what?" he scoffs, upset that the top TV execs have denied any role in the affair. "I thought we were going to get television. The truth is, television is going to get us." It's the film's most disingenuous line. The bigwigs may have escaped punishment, but the scandals rocked TV as nothing before or since: quiz shows vanished from the air, ethical standards were...
Granted, in the great scheme of things, the Second Quiz Show Scandal is a trivial affair. But we would hope that Redford could at least, in some small way, practice what he preaches. As it stand, the film deserves two thumbs up. As it stands, the film deserves two thumps up. Redford, on the other hand, gets the finger...
...liars, negotiated a million- dollar deal for a confessional book and eventually gone into politics. It is one of the several virtues of this thoughtful and hugely entertaining movie that it encourages such reflections. Written with clean-cut force by Paul Attanasio and directed with panache by Robert Redford -- they know how to efficiently shape a character and point a scene -- Quiz Show neither nostalgizes about nor inflates its drama. Rather it contextualizes it, makes us see it not merely as an antique controversy but as a symbolic turning point in recent cultural and social history...