Herb and Renewal

Blowing the whistle on the quiz show Twenty-One was the toughest decision of my life. Many people, including those in my extended family, said to me, ''Herbie, you should've taken the money and run.'' But I couldn't. And for many years after the whole incident I lived in the shadows. Everywhere I went I was known as the guy who destroyed Charles Van Doren but people are funny that way, you know? (Stempel, a graduate student at the time of his appearance on Twenty-One, currently works as a city-planning technician in the New York City Department of Transportation Office of Litigation Support.)

The funniest part of it all is that if Twenty-One producer Dan Enright—who had promised me that he would put me on the show's staff and arrange appearances for me-had kept his word, I would've said nothing. He could've bought my silence very cheaply. I'd be a liar if I said I raised the issues I did for moral reasons. It was a sheer act of revenge.

I think the movie pretty accurately shows this. Most of the details are right-like the fact that Van Doren wouldn't shake my hand, and that a couple of stagehands said when he won, ''Now we have a clean-cut intellectual, not a freak with a sponge memory.'' There was some poetic license here and there, but I don't begrudge the filmmakers for that. For example, the show never paid for my psychiatric visits, and the Rob Morrow investigator character didn't play that big a part in the whole thing, but this way it was a good detective story. Also, I think John Turturro was a little too hyper. I do sometimes get a little frenetic, but he was really, really frenetic.

The way he's made up in the film, John Turturro does look somewhat like me, though not 100 percent. But he had my gestures down pretty well. I met with Turturro at the producer's house, and he studied my gestures and we talked for several hours. I watched him perform on the set a couple of times, and he's a very intense guy, a real craftsman. I had seen his movies with Spike Lee and Miller's Crossing. I also saw Barton Fink, and I asked him what it was all about. He said even he wasn't sure. We had a laugh about that. Of course, Ralph Fiennes is much better-looking than Van Doren.

Naturally, it's exciting to see yourself portrayed on the screen it's very flattering. It's been 36 years since this thing happened, and for all that time I've been an obscurity. And now it's like my second chance to become a little bit famous.