{"id":88689,"date":"2015-08-10T19:01:17","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T23:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=88689"},"modified":"2015-08-10T19:51:19","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T23:51:19","slug":"the-battle-of-the-butt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/08\/10\/the-battle-of-the-butt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Battle of the Butt"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From the theatrical release poster for Cold Turkey<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

Before he found success with All in the Family <\/em>and its spin-offs, Norman Lear wrote and directed Cold Turkey<\/em>, a cynical 1971 antismoking comedy that is, to date, his only credit as a film director. It\u2019s showing August 13, 15, and 17 at New York\u2019s Anthology Film Archives as part of their One-Film Wonders<\/a> series, a collection of cinematic one-offs and also-rans.<\/p>\n

Cold Turkey<\/em> has the kind of stupefyingly ridiculous premise we need to see more often in our movies: in a bid for good PR, a big tobacco company promises twenty-five million dollars, tax free, to any town whose residents can stop smoking for a full month. (Their magnanimity earns them comparisons to the Nobel Peace Prize.) The 4,006 residents of Eagle Rock, Iowa, are up to the challenge, at least once their minister\u2014played by Dick van Dyke, typically affable and guileless\u2014goads them into action. <\/p>\n

And so for roughly ninety minutes we watch a town descend into the anarchy of nicotine withdrawal. In his memoir, My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business<\/em>, Van Dyke writes that he came up with the idea after attending an antismoking clinic that specialized in a brutal form of behavior modification: sitting in a room the size of a phone booth beside a massive tub of cigarette butts, he was made to smoke an entire pack as quickly as he could. (The treatment failed.) \u201cIt struck me that millions of people across the country were struggling with the same filthy habit,\u201d he writes, \u201cand I thought the story of someone going to great lengths to give it up would make a good movie.\u201d He pitched it to Lear, who had a strange critique: \u201cNorman called me up and said he couldn\u2019t write a story about one guy. He didn\u2019t see it carrying an entire movie \u2026 Instead of one guy trying to quit, what if it was an entire town?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what makes Cold Turkey<\/em> so singular, so weird: it really is about a whole town. Though it would\u2019ve been a more cogent, familiar film had it focused on one person or even one family, the movie instead unfolds as a kind of prolonged montage. The camera prowls the streets and peeks into windows, watching as everyone expresses their desire for cigarettes, cutting between anxious bundles of nerves. An irascible crossing guard shouts at a little girl. A housewife shoves salami-wrapped gherkins down her throat. A prostitute, masquerading as a masseuse, shows up to relieve stress. A group of Birchers police the town limits for contraband smokes. Van Dyke\u2019s minister, having heard on the radio that \u201cthe act of physical love\u201d between a man and his wife will help curb cravings, is seen giving his spouse wide-eyed can-we-fuck-now glances on no fewer than three occasions. Walter Cronkite comes to Eagle Rock; Chet Huntley comes to Eagle Rock; Richard Nixon comes to Eagle Rock. Oh, and all of this is scored by Randy Newman.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t spoil the ending except to say that it\u2019s as bleak as you\u2019d hope\u2014and in keeping with the movie\u2019s hysterical tilt. To give a sense of the pitch, here\u2019s the monologue given by a lush who decides to skip town rather than follow the smoking ban:<\/p>\n

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My drinking is directly connected to my smoking. Now, when I say \u201cdirectly,\u201d I mean there\u2019s a thing\u2014a physical thing\u2014that is directly connected from my liquor buds to the smoke pouch in my lungs. If you want me to quit smoking, you would have to cut\u2014I mean, you\u2019d have to physically cut that thing! And when you do, my head\u2019s gonna fall off! Do you understand, reverman? The booze bone\u2019s connected to the smoke bone. And the smoke bone\u2019s connected to the head bone. And that\u2019s the word of the Lord!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Though it\u2019s broader and less assured in its satire, Cold Turkey <\/em>is cut from the same cloth as Robert Altman\u2019s MASH\u00a0<\/em><\/small>and Robert Downey Sr.\u2019s Putney Swope<\/em>\u2014two black comedies released in the same three-year period, as sixties idealism dwindled and the nation focused its ire on corporate greed. Downey was the second-unit director for Cold Turkey<\/em>, actually, and you can see his hand in some of the deranged slapstick of the movie\u2019s long montage sequences. Yes, Cold Turkey<\/em> lacks the avant-garde bite of Putney Swope<\/em>\u2014it stars Dick van Dyke, after all\u2014but if you can cope with its occasional longueurs, it\u2019s agreeably bizarre. Norman Lear should be proud to count it as his only film, even if evidence suggests it failed to help him quit smoking. \u201cI wrote the screenplay for Cold Turkey <\/em>in a small study off our living room,\u201d he wrote in his autobiography Even This I Get to Experience<\/em>, \u201csmoking three-plus packs a day and an occasional cigar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of us were using the picture as a motivation to quit,\u201d Van Dyke writes. Lear was doing okay,<\/p>\n

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until it came time to shoot a scene featuring a room full of people, all locals cast as extras, who were chain-smoking fiendishly. There was one woman who wasn\u2019t a smoker and it was obvious. So Norman showed her how to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, you take it like this,\u201d he said, putting the lit cigarette in his mouth, \u201cand then you inhale like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026 I saw his eyes glaze over. Before the day was finished, he\u2019d smoked an entire pack.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n