Cold Turkey | |
---|---|
Directed by | Norman Lear |
Screenplay by | Norman Lear |
Story by | Norman Lear William Price Fox, Jr. |
Based on | I'm Giving Them Up for Good by Margaret and Neil Rau |
Produced by | Norman Lear |
Starring | Dick Van Dyke Pippa Scott Tom Poston Edward Everett Horton Bob and Ray Bob Newhart |
Cinematography | Charles F. Wheeler |
Edited by | John C. Horger |
Music by | Randy Newman |
Production company | |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release dates |
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Running time | 101 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $11,000,000 [1] |
Cold Turkey is a 1971 satirical black comedy film starring Dick Van Dyke and a long list of comedic actors. The film was written for the screen and produced by Norman Lear, who also directed the film, marking his directorial debut and his only directorial feature film credit. Cold Turkey was based on the unpublished novel I'm Giving Them Up for Good by Margaret and Neil Rau. Randy Newman composed and performed original music for the film.
In the film, the fictional Valiant Tobacco Company stages a publicity stunt, offering $25 million tax-free dollars to any American town whose entire population can stop smoking cigarettes for a month. A charismatic, ambitious preacher, Reverend Clayton Brooks, encourages the depressed small town of Eagle Rock, Iowa, to take on the challenge, but the town struggles to overcome its addiction to tobacco.
The film was shot in Greenfield, Iowa and local residents served as extras. [2]
The film was produced in 1969 but was shelved for two years by the distributor over concerns about its box-office potential.
As part of a public relations and marketing strategy to compare the empathy of Big Tobacco to the nobility of the Nobel Peace Prize, advertising executive Merwin Wren convinces the Valiant Tobacco Company to propose a challenge: a tax-free check for $25,000,000 ($207.7 million today) to any city or town in America that can stop smoking, going cold turkey, for thirty days.
According to Wren, the offer will generate Valiant worldwide free publicity and praise as a humanitarian gesture, but no town in America would ever be able to claim the prize, with cigarette smoking being too addictive to stop.
The Reverend Clayton Brooks, a kindly but fearsome minister of the Eagle Rock Community Church, takes up the challenge as a spiritual call. He urges the economically depressed community of Eagle Rock, Iowa, to go for the prize.
The town council has been trying to woo back the military ever since it closed a base a few years earlier, hoping its return would help the local cash flow. Families have been moving out almost on a monthly basis and the town center is almost deserted.
Reverend Brooks recruits every smoker in the town to sign up. Needled for being a former smoker, he begins smoking again to find solidarity with his "flock."
As the deadline to start the thirty-day clock approaches, only a very few of the town's residents haven't signed the no smoking pledge. One of them is alcoholic Edgar Stopworth, whom Reverend Brooks decides to pay a house call on, to convince him to take the pledge. But Edgar knows himself pretty well and in desperation tells the Reverend "My drinking is directly connected to my smoking. The booze bone's connected to the smoke bone." The Reverend looks defeated but comes up with the idea of Edgar leaving town for a thirty-day vacation, which Edgar immediately departs on.
At midnight, the challenge begins. For the next thirty days, no smoking is permitted, with Eagle Rock being the only city in America that got all of its smokers to pledge.
Once the smoking ban begins, Reverend Brooks gets extremely frustrated with not being able to smoke. His only relief is having frequent sex with his wife Natalie. At one point she barely gets finished making the bed and straightening up from the preceding episode before the Reverend is back home again for more.
The tobacco company sends Merwin to report the progress of the townspeople's commitment. The company needs just one person to fail. Among the weakest: the elderly Doctor Proctor, who must always have a cigarette before surgery, and the anxiety-ridden wife of the mayor, Mrs. Wappler, who counts the small gherkin pickles she eats as the hours pass. However, a group of 29 non-smoking residents, all members of the ultra-conservative Christopher Mott Society have been asked by Brooks to police all traffic entering Eagle Rock to ensure no tobacco products enter.
The attention of the nation's leading newscasters at the time turns the small community's efforts into a matter of highly publicized failure or success. Soon the community is invaded by buxom "massage therapists," beer vendors, souvenir shops and more. Rev. Brooks appears on a Time magazine cover, which leads him to another epiphany: if he can save the town, he will be a hero.
Merwin is told by Valiant's board members to undermine the town's efforts at all costs, doing whatever he must to get someone to smoke before the thirty days are up.
With a few minutes left to midnight, Merwin pulls out all the stops to make sure that someone smokes. He fixes it so that the town clock chimes midnight before it is midnight and has helicopters dropping cigarettes into the anxious crowd. Dr. Proctor frantically and desperately leaps into the crowd trying to smoke a cigarette. Reverend Brooks goes into the crowd to find and stop him. Merwin has a cigarette lighter shaped like a gun and is trying to get to Dr. Proctor. Odie Turman, an elderly conservative lady, has a real gun and is lurking about in the crowd. A drunken Edgar Stopworth has just arrived in time for the midnight deadline. When Merwin, Reverend Brooks and Odie meet, they accidentally drop their lighter/guns on the ground. Merwin picks up what he think is the lighter and ends up shooting Dr. Proctor. Then Edgar walks up to Merwin, takes the gun away from him and mistakenly shoots him. Odie comes over, grabs the gun, and shoots Reverend Brooks.
Ultimately Eagle Rock succeeds and wins the $25 million prize. To cash in on the publicity, The president of the United States arrives in a motorcade and makes an announcement that Eagle Rock will be the home of the new missile plant. As the film ends, it shows the huge smokestacks of the new plant spewing columns of black smoke into the air around Eagle Rock.
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The only profanity used in its entirety in the film was by Judith Lowry, whose character often referred to "a bullshit." The president of the Valiant Tobacco Company was bleeped when he told David Chetley twice to "leave me the f(bleep)k alone."[ citation needed ]
Most of the film, which is set in the fictional small town of Eagle Rock, Iowa, was shot in and around Greenfield, Iowa, and many local people were used as extras. [3] Some neighborhood scenes were shot in Winterset, Iowa. [4] The Methodist church in Orient, Iowa and the bank in Macksburg, Iowa were used as well. The Grayson Mansion scenes were filmed at Terrace Hill, official residence of the governor of Iowa, located in Des Moines. The kitchen scenes with Jean Stapleton and Vincent Gardenia and several other exteriors were shot in Marshalltown, Iowa. Some were also shot in the town of Columbia in south-central Kentucky.[ citation needed ]
Cold Turkey features original music by Randy Newman, including "He Gives Us All His Love", a ballad with a gospel influence that serves as the film's theme song. It was Newman's first film soundtrack.
In 2007 the Percepto Records label issued a limited-edition soundtrack CD for the film. [5]
The film premiered on January 30, 1971, at the Galaxy Theatre in Des Moines, Iowa, and it opened in 30 theaters in Iowa on February 3, 1971. [4]
In 1993, Cold Turkey was released on VHS and LaserDisc in the pan-and-scan format. In 2010, the film was made available as a manufactured-on-demand DVD through Amazon.com. [6]
Cold Turkey grossed $131,616 in its first five days in 30 theaters in seven towns,. [7] The film went on to earn $5.5 million in theatrical rentals in the United States and Canada. [8]
Arthur Krim of United Artists later assessed the film during an evaluation of the company's inventory:
An old commitment to Dick Van Dyke, and what seemed to be a good idea for the American market, became an overpriced film with a has-been personality by the time of it's[sic] release. Albeit funny, the picture is way overpriced for its value, which is strictly for the American market – mainly for mid America. The producer and director went over a million dollars over budget on the film to deliver a minor American comedy with no overseas value. This film would be programmed today only if it could be made at one-half the cost. [9]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that "it is, within its limitations, a very engaging, very funny movie." [10] Variety called it "an often-hilarious, partly-muffed contemporary comedy" marred by "sluggish pacing" and a climax called "bizarre: Lear seems to have written himself into a corner, with no way out except to shift abruptly from human comedy to stylistic nonsense." [11] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film four stars and praised several aspects of the production before concluding: "Even if you don't smoke, you'll find Cold Turkey funny." [12] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded it two and a half stars out of four, calling it "a fine and funny idea for a short film," but "scene after scene runs too long. Too many gags are repeated too often." [13] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "an enterprising, very amusing, very contemporary social commentary." [14] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote: "A shallow, self-deluding sort of comedy, it fails to make sense out of its own premise and characters and then tries to cover up by getting cynical about everything-in-general. It's as if Lear had been inspired to imitate Billy Wilder at his worst." [15]
Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus Nicotiana of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rustica is also used in some countries.
A cigar is a tobacco product made to be smoked. Cigars are produced in a variety of shapes and sizes. Since the 20th century, almost all cigars are made of three distinct components: the filler, the binder leaf which holds the filler together, and a wrapper leaf, for appearance and flavor, which is often the highest quality leaf used. Often there will be a cigar band printed with the cigar manufacturer's logo. Modern cigars can come with two or more, highlighting special qualities such as age and origin of the tobaccos used.
A cigarette is a narrow cylinder containing a combustible material, typically tobacco, that is rolled into thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end, causing it to smolder; the resulting smoke is orally inhaled via the opposite end. Cigarette smoking is the most common method of tobacco consumption. The term cigarette, as commonly used, refers to a tobacco cigarette, but the word is sometimes used to refer to other substances, such as a cannabis cigarette or a herbal cigarette. A cigarette is distinguished from a cigar by its usually smaller size, use of processed leaf, different smoking method, and paper wrapping, which is typically white.
The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any warm, moist environment, which means it can be farmed on all continents except Antarctica.
Tobacco smoking is the practice of burning tobacco and ingesting the resulting smoke. The smoke may be inhaled, as is done with cigarettes, or simply released from the mouth, as is generally done with pipes and cigars. The practice is believed to have begun as early as 5000–3000 BC in Mesoamerica and South America. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 17th century by European colonists, where it followed common trade routes. The practice encountered criticism from its first import into the Western world onwards but embedded itself in certain strata of a number of societies before becoming widespread upon the introduction of automated cigarette-rolling apparatus.
Craven A(stylized asCraven "A") is a British brand of cigarette, currently manufactured by British American Tobacco under some of its subsidiaries. It was originally created by the Carreras Tobacco Company in 1921 and made by them until its merger into Rothmans International in 1972, who then produced the brand until Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999.
Camel is an American brand of cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the United States and by Japan Tobacco outside the U.S.
Smoking bans, or smoke-free laws, are public policies, including criminal laws and occupational safety and health regulations, that prohibit tobacco smoking in certain spaces. The spaces most commonly affected by smoking bans are indoor workplaces and buildings open to the public such as restaurants, bars, office buildings, schools, retail stores, hospitals, libraries, transport facilities, and government buildings, in addition to public transport vehicles such as aircraft, buses, watercraft, and trains. However, laws may also prohibit smoking in outdoor areas such as parks, beaches, pedestrian plazas, college and hospital campuses, and within a certain distance from the entrance to a building, and in some cases, private vehicles and multi-unit residences.
Chesterfield is a brand of cigarette, named after Chesterfield County, Virginia. The brand is owned by conglomerate Altria and produced by its subsidiary Philip Morris USA.
Gitanes is a French brand of cigarettes, owned and manufactured by Imperial Tobacco following their acquisition of Altadis in January 2008, having been owned by SEITA before that.
Gauloises is a brand of cigarette of French origin. It is produced by the company Imperial Tobacco following its acquisition of Altadis in January 2008 in most countries, but produced and sold by Reemtsma in Germany. Until 2017 the cigarette was manufactured at a plant in Riom, Puy-de-Dôme, in France, but they are now manufactured in Poland.
Smoking is a practice in which a substance is combusted and the resulting smoke is typically inhaled to be tasted and absorbed into the bloodstream of a person. Most commonly, the substance used is the dried leaves of the tobacco plant, which have been rolled with a small rectangle of paper into an elongated cylinder called a cigarette. Other forms of smoking include the use of a smoking pipe or a bong.
In the early 20th century, German researchers found additional evidence linking smoking to health harms, which strengthened the anti-tobacco movement in the Weimar Republic and led to a state-supported anti-smoking campaign. Early anti-tobacco movements grew in many nations from the middle of the 19th century. The 1933–1945 anti-tobacco campaigns in Nazi Germany have been widely publicized, although stronger laws than those passed in Germany were passed in some American states, the UK, and elsewhere between 1890 and 1930. After 1941, anti-tobacco campaigns were restricted by the Nazi government.
The history of smoking dates back to as early as 5000 BC in the Americas in shamanistic rituals. With the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century, the consumption, cultivation, and trading of tobacco quickly spread. The modernization of farming equipment and manufacturing increased the availability of cigarettes following the reconstruction era in the United States. Mass production quickly expanded the scope of consumption, which grew until the scientific controversies of the 1960s, and condemnation in the 1980s.
Tobacco control is a field of international public health science, policy and practice dedicated to addressing tobacco use and thereby reducing the morbidity and mortality it causes. Since most cigarettes and cigars and hookahs contain/use tobacco, tobacco control also concerns these. E-cigarettes do not contain tobacco itself, but (often) do contain nicotine. Tobacco control is a priority area for the World Health Organization (WHO), through the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. References to a tobacco control movement may have either positive or negative connotations, depending upon the commentator.
Inflight smoking refers to smoking tobacco on an aircraft while in flight. While once prevalent, it is now prohibited by almost all airlines and by many governments around the world. The bans on inflight smoking have been imposed in a piecemeal manner around the world beginning in the 1980s. The use of electronic cigarettes is also prohibited on many flights.
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