Cold Turkey (film)
| Cold Turkey | |
|---|---|
1971 movie poster by Sandy Kossin
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| Directed by | Norman Lear |
| Produced by | Norman Lear |
| Written by | Norman Lear William Price Fox, Jr. |
| Based on |
I'm Giving Them Up for Good by Margaret and Neil Rau |
| Starring |
Dick Van Dyke Bob Newhart Pippa Scott Tom Poston Edward Everett Horton Bob and Ray Jean Stapleton |
| Music by | Randy Newman |
| Cinematography | Charles F. Wheeler |
| Edited by | John C. Horger |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
|
February 19, 1971 |
|
Running time
|
101 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $11,000,000 |
Cold Turkey is a 1971 satirical comedy film. It stars Dick Van Dyke plus a long list of comedic actors. The film was directed, co-produced and co-written by Norman Lear and is based on the unpublished novel I'm Giving Them Up for Good by Margaret and Neil Rau.
The film was made in 1969, but was shelved for two years by the distributor due to concerns about its box-office potential.
A musical theatre version of Cold Turkey was workshopped at the Village Theatre in Issaquah, Washington in February 2005.
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 (Bob Newhart) convinces the Valiant Tobacco Company to propose a challenge: a tax-free check for $25,000,000 (equal to $163,271,325 today) to any city or town in America that can stop smoking, or go 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, cigarette smoking being too addictive to stop.
The Reverend Clayton Brooks (Dick Van Dyke), a kindly but fearsome minister of the Eagle Rock Community Church, takes up the challenge as a spiritual call. He urges the economically depressed fictional community of Eagle Rock (population 4,006), 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 back, 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 not smoking himself (he used to, but had quit), he begins smoking to find solidarity with his "flock."
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Wikipedia