Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(1994)

I do enjoy historical films from time to time, even if it’s not about some Earth shattering event. Quiz Show is about a show on NBC called 21 that producers allegedly started to manipulate in arguably unethical ways to minutely govern the popularity of the show. Problems started when the previous “Champion” (Turturro) felt slighted after taking a fall and the new “Champion” (Fiennes) became wracked with guilt for reluctantly going along with the scam.

John Turturro and Ralph Fiennes are both superb. It’s rare to see Turturro in a serious role. He finally found a place to register in my mind with O Brother Where Art Thou? and, once I started recognizing him, it dawned on me just how many movies he’d been in which I have seen, starting with Brain Donors (1992). Brain Donors was basically an homage to the Marx Brothers in which Turturro played a Groucho Marx-like character. He was brilliant. Ralph is pretty good too but he wasn’t in Brain Donors.

This might seem like a tangent but bear with me.  In my youth I was very acquainted with the 1959 song Mack the Knife thanks to the 1986 “Mac Tonight” commercials for McDonald’s when they started being open later hours.

The commercials featured a new mascot: Mac Tonight, a literal moon-faced classy guy in a three-piece suit singing a parody of Mack the Knife. As a kid I was super excited that we could now go to McDonald’s for dinner. My parents had the following response:

When I later encountered the actual song Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin, that’s when I realized the McDonald’s commercial was parodying it. That made me love it and I learned the lyrics verbatim despite it being rather violent in subject matter. This knowledge came in handy when the song was an option at a karaoke event held at Paramount’s Great America Amusement Park in San Jose when I was about 14.

Mack the Knife was not the song this audience wanted to hear. I couldn’t get through all the names at the end of the song which recounts the victims of the infamous Mack, a character from Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 play The Threepenny Opera. Thankfully, my lackluster performance was overshadowed by a total nutbar who turned himself beet red while overenthusiastically shouting the lyrics to “Do You Love Me?” by the Contours. The audience was amused.

I saw Quiz Show several times actually. I saw it at home and then again in school. At school, when the Mack the Knife song starts playing in the film, naturally I started singing along in class.

Once again I found the entire class (teacher included) turning around and staring at me because of my obvious eclectic musical tastes. (See my Non-review for Fantasia for further instances like this.)

The teacher asked me if I had been reincarnated or something. I guess I have an old soul.

Anyway, good movie.