Asked in early 1995 why audiences hadn’t flocked to see his 1950s-set drama Quiz Show, Robert Redford got philosophical: “Either we don’t want to face our loss of innocence, because it’s asking us to admit we’ve lost one of our virtues. Or we don’t want to face it because we’re as shallow as people accuse us of being, and as spoiled. Or maybe it’s too painful, and we don’t have the experience of facing these things. And I don’t know which it is.”
Quiz Show, which recounted—with some historical liberties—the scandal that unfurled around the NBC game show Twenty-One in the late 1950s, was hardly the first movie to ponder the negative impact of television. But while not as righteously furious as Network or as prophetic as Broadcast News, Quiz Show holds up remarkably well more than 25 years later as an examination of television’s power to turn someone into a star—and how difficult it can be to control them from there. On this week’s Little Gold Men podcast, Hillary Busis joins Richard Lawson, Katey Rich, and Joanna Robinson to look back at Quiz Show, the polished period piece whose Oscar thunder was stolen by Forrest Gump but whose legacy may be that much stronger for it.
The episode also includes a look at the news that next year’s Academy Awards will be held in late March, yet another date shift that reflects another awards season shaped by the pandemic. The episode ends with two interviews: Joanna talks to The Flight Attendant star Zosia Mamet, and Katey catches up with Master of None cowriter and star (and former Vanity Fair cover star) Lena Waithe. You can read more about that interview here.
Listen to the episode above, and find Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. You can also sign up to text with us here.
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