COLD TURKEY

US, 1972, 102 minutes, Colour.
Dick Van Dyke, Pippa Scott, Bob Newhart.
Directed by Norman Lear.

Cold Turkey is a very American comedy that would probably have been quite hilarious to audiences there. Here it is funny, but we lack the feel for American ballyhoo and targets of satire.

The idea is good: an anti-smoking campaign whereby a town gives up smoking for a month to gain a money award (offered, needless to say, by a tobacco firm as a publicity stunt). The withdrawal symptoms provide much satiric humour.

Towards the end the film seems to go somewhat berserk as the town becomes a huge tourist attraction and schemes to stop the town winning lead to violence. The final sequences of the industrial fruits of non-smoking are quite ironical. A generally entertaining but moralising comedy.

1. Do you think that smokers would be able to enjoy this satire?

2. How much of the satire was actually on smoking and the smoking industries and how much on money and American society?

3. How satirical was the photographing of Eagle Rock, Iowa, during the credits? How real was it? The problems of depressed industrial growth for prosperity?

4. What did you think of the parallel of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Munitions factories with the tobacco companies' prize for a town's giving up smoking? How satirical was this?

5. How was the cynicism of the tobacco industries satirised?

6. How was the Rev. Clayton Brooks presented - as a genuine and sincere minister or as something of a hypocrite? Note his treatment of his wife, her not slouching, his 'dialogue' with her.

7. The personnel of the town: as persons, 'types', caricatures; the mayor and his wife, the schoolteacher, the members of the Council, the doctor, the head of the Christopher Mott society, the old lady who swore, the alcoholic?

8. Comment on the efforts to get the town to give up smoking -were they good or bad? What did these efforts bring out in Clayton Brooks?

9. How satirical were the sequences of rationalisation (the doctor and its being congenital) and of withdrawal (Clayton Brooks and his wife. tempers. the massage parlour. overeating etc.)? What comment did this make on smoking and on human nature?


10. what was being satirised in the Christopher Mott society -how typical of such groups were they? (How much was caricature and how much was fairly real - being vigilantes on the side of right)?

11. The film satirised American T.V. (Walter Chronic etc.). How effective was this (for non-U.S. audiences)?

12. The fear and tactics of the capitalistic tobacco people?

13. What role did the wife play in the film? How much commonsense did she have? Were the criticisms she voiced valid?

14. How was religion satirised in the Bishop and the question of parishes?

15. The satire on U.S. Administration and the Pentagon's building rocket sites? The arrival of the President and the local squabbles about the apportioning of the money?

16. How did the film generate excitement to the build-up of the final night? The speeches, the promises, the tactics of changing the clocks. dropping the cigarettes? How out-of-hand had it become? Why?

17. Did the film itself get out of hand at the end with the old lady spotting communists, the terror, confusion, the shootings? Was this meant to be a comment on recent U.S. ballyhoo, fears and violence? Was it successfully portrayed in the film?

18. How ironic was the result of giving up smoking and building the factory with its belching smoke?

19. The film had very many targets of satire. Did it cohere well? Do you think the film would have much effect on its audiences? Why?