Quiz Show (1994)

Paul Scofield: Mark Van Doren

Photos 

Quotes 

• Mark Van Doren : I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm an old man, it's all a little difficult for me to comprehend!

  Charles Van Doren : It's television, Dad. It's... it's just... just television...

  Mark Van Doren : You make it sound like you didn't have a choice!

  Charles Van Doren : What was I supposed to do at that point, disillusion the whole goddamn country?

  Mark Van Doren : Charlie, you took the money!

  Charles Van Doren : Yes, yes, I took the money!

  Mark Van Doren : Is that what this was about?

  Charles Van Doren : No... no, um, I don't know...

  Mark Van Doren : It was a goddamn quiz show, Charlie.

  Charles Van Doren : An ill-favored thing, sir...

  Mark Van Doren : This is not the time to play games!

  Charles Van Doren : At mine own, it was mine!

  Mark Van Doren : Your name is mine!

• Charles Van Doren : They gave me the answers.

  Mark Van Doren : They gave you the answers... they gave YOU the answers?

  Charles Van Doren : Well, no... no, at first they'd ask me questions they already knew I knew the answers to. We ran through those, and I really didn't want them to give me the answers, so they gave me the questions and I'd look up the answers on my own, as if that were any different. Well, we ran through those in a couple of weeks and I just didn't have the time, finally, and it just seemed silly, so...

  Mark Van Doren : They gave you all that money to answer questions they knew you knew... now, that's inflation!

  Charles Van Doren : You're not being very helpful!

• Mark Van Doren : Cheating on a quiz show? That's sort of like plagiarizing a comic strip.

• Mark Van Doren : Sixty-four thousand dollars for a question, I hope they are asking you the meaning of life.

• Mark Van Doren : Your name is mine!

• Mark Van Doren : If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

• Student At Book Party : Professor Van Doren, I took your course at Columbia - "Hawthorne, Original Sin, and the American Experience". Well, as silly as it sounds, it changed my life.

  Mark Van Doren : Was it the Hawthorne or the sin?

• Charles Van Doren : Dad, I can't simply just tell them the truth.

  Mark Van Doren : Can't tell them the truth? Why on earth not?

  Charles Van Doren : Because it's complicated.

  Mark Van Doren : Complicated?

• Mark Van Doren : [reciting poetry at his birthday party]  Now see summer bloom upon this lee, three score rings around this tree, once green, now bare, once lush, now sere, consoled only that I am planted here...

  John Van Doren : You certainly are!

  Mark Van Doren : Roots thick...

  Thomas Merton, The Monk : And bold...

  Mark Van Doren : And deep...

  John Van Doren : And doddering...

  Mark Van Doren : Assuage my woes...

  Bunny Wilson : And termites nibbling at my toes!

  Mark Van Doren : Et tu, Bunny!

• Cornwall Cousins : Charles, is Jack Barry single?

  Charles Van Doren : I think so.

  Cornwall Cousins : My roommate has a huge crush on him, she wants you to introduce her.

  Cornwall Cousins : What's Dave Garroway like?

  Charles Van Doren : Cheap.

  Cornwall Aunt : 'Cheat'?

  Mark Van Doren : Wasn't I talking?

  Bunny Wilson : You were, just talking, and talking, and talking...

  Cornwall Cousins : Charlie's famous, like Elvis Presley!

  Mark Van Doren : And like Leopold of Belgium, usurped by his son before his time!

  Charles Van Doren : Oh, that makes me King Baudouin!

  Mark Van Doren : Next birthday, you all get a dirty limerick.

  Thomas Merton, The Monk : I certainly hope so!

• Mark Van Doren : What these books have conclusively proven is that the diffence between men and women is exactly 38 pages.

  Man 1 : Can I quote you, Mark?

  Mark Van Doren : Not before I quote me.

  Dorothy Van Doren : His own quotes are his greatest pleasure.

  Man 2 : Did you hear the market dropped 30 points today. There's a rumor Eisenhower died.

  Dorothy Van Doren : How could they tell?

  Mark Van Doren : Oh, please. Don't get Dorothy started on politics. There'll be a raid.

• Charles Van Doren : Last week alone, I had 11 proposals of marriage!

  Mark Van Doren : Perhaps you should accept one of them.

  Dorothy Van Doren : [to Mark]  And to think, they unleash you on those impressionable young minds.

  Mark Van Doren : Well, why not? He's 33 years old, Jesus Christ had a girlfriend at 33 years old.

  Dorothy Van Doren : Look how that turned out.

  Thomas Merton, The Monk : And, he shared an office with His Father!

• Mark Van Doren : Charlie, from what I understand, it's just a bunch of frauds showing off an erudition they really didn't have. All you have to do is...

  Charles Van Doren : The problem is, Dad, is that it seems I was one of those frauds.

• Mark Van Doren : Why don't you just put it in the bank Charlie? That's what I've always done with my prize money.

  Charles Van Doren : It's just, you don't understand dad, it's, there are all sorts of tax implications

  Mark Van Doren : You Think I can't understand the concept of taxes.

  Charles Van Doren : At this level it's a bit more complicated.

  Mark Van Doren : And at my level? I never thought of myself as having a level. What level might that be?

• [coming upon a large gift box; it contains a TV] 

  Mark Van Doren : Well, what do we have here?

  Party guest : Aftershave.

  Mark Van Doren : Aww.

• Mark Van Doren : [Charlie takes an 11-point question on World War II planes]  That's much harder than the question they asked that woman, and hers was 10 points! Do you know the names of those planes?

  Dorothy Van Doren : Of course not. Sit down...

  Mark Van Doren : Who would know the names of those planes, he's not the Secretary of Defense.