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Finally achieved a long-time ambition by seeing the 1971 movie "Cold Turkey" again after decades. An ad man too smart for his own good, inspired by Alfred Nobel's Peace Prize, comes up with a plan for a tobacco company to generate publicity by offering $25 million to any city that can quit smoking for 30 days. The little town of Eagle Rock, Iowa, destitute since the Pentagon took away its military base, is reluctantly persuaded by its ambitious minister Dick Van Dyke to take the tobacco company up on the deal - which means the folks giving up their only remaining pleasure in life. Now the problem for the tobacco company becomes how to keep them from managing to do it, after it begins to look like greed might miraculously win out over the power of addiction. The "happy" ending of the movie is one of the finer satirical moments in cinema, I swear.
It's still a very funny film, with (for me at least) only a few false notes or dated bits, and the satire bites perhaps harder today in some ways than when it was new. It was co-written and directed by Norman Lear, and it's stronger than what he could get away with on television. Along with Dick Van Dyke, there's the beloved Jean Stapleton, Edward Everett Horton (in I believe his last role), a young Bob Newhart as the ad man, and a lot of other people who used to be, or later became, very well known. One of the delights of the film is the many minor characters who are all tremendously funny, and who you get to know as well as if you lived in a small town with them yourself. Incidentally, I believe it was also Randy Newman's first movie score (the same one that he's been writing ever since, haha). I was surprised at how much of the movie had stayed with me, especially considering I was still living in Canada at the time and the ways of Americans were rather alien and mysterious.
Actually, since I moved to the US they've become even more so. Things that I used to think were wildly exaggerated or pure fantasy turn out to be simple fact. I had the same problem with "Inherit the Wind" - who could believe people could be that medieval in the 20th century? But now, 100 years later, they're all back again and more intransigent than ever.
I hope there are some anthropologists studying American religion, it's a unique phenomenon. Which has little or nothing to do with what I started out talking about, but ... bah.
It's still a very funny film, with (for me at least) only a few false notes or dated bits, and the satire bites perhaps harder today in some ways than when it was new. It was co-written and directed by Norman Lear, and it's stronger than what he could get away with on television. Along with Dick Van Dyke, there's the beloved Jean Stapleton, Edward Everett Horton (in I believe his last role), a young Bob Newhart as the ad man, and a lot of other people who used to be, or later became, very well known. One of the delights of the film is the many minor characters who are all tremendously funny, and who you get to know as well as if you lived in a small town with them yourself. Incidentally, I believe it was also Randy Newman's first movie score (the same one that he's been writing ever since, haha). I was surprised at how much of the movie had stayed with me, especially considering I was still living in Canada at the time and the ways of Americans were rather alien and mysterious.
Actually, since I moved to the US they've become even more so. Things that I used to think were wildly exaggerated or pure fantasy turn out to be simple fact. I had the same problem with "Inherit the Wind" - who could believe people could be that medieval in the 20th century? But now, 100 years later, they're all back again and more intransigent than ever.
I hope there are some anthropologists studying American religion, it's a unique phenomenon. Which has little or nothing to do with what I started out talking about, but ... bah.
