COLD TURKEY
The creative surge which defined the 1960s spilled over onto the tabletop of foreign and domestic celluloid, one consequence being that the youth culture and all its undisciplined dollars came to properly recognize television as being a prime tool of the Enemy. Television was that thing used by Aaron Spelling to puke up "The Mod Squad," an attempt to co-opt the sincerity of youth rebellion. Television was a series of refusing-to-die westerns such as "Gunsmoke," "Cimarron Strip" and "Bonazza," none of which dared move beyond the cliches of good versus evil. Television was cop shows, medical dramas and situation comedies that either purposefully avoided social relevance or exploited significance for its own vile ends. So, yes, by 1971, television was clearly the domain of the square, the cube, the straight, the unenlightened, the hard hat, the tranquilized housewife, and strictly for those over the age of thirty.
Enter Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear, two wise acres who aimed to change all that. They knew that the television box was inherently capable of doing good. After all, "The Dick van Dyke Show" had been good. "The Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits" had been good. Good was not out of the question. What was missing was sincerity and relevance.
Bam! 1970. "Til Death Do Us Part" was piloted before an ABC-TV audience. The Archie Justice (later renamed Bunker) character played to perfection by Carroll O'Connor stormed onto the stage as a confirmed bigot. The liberal son-in-law was, in real life, the son of the man behind "The Dick van Dyke Show." Sally Struthers had a nice set and Jean Stapleton was a legitimate actress. And with stories about black people moving in next door, the racial make-up of Jesus, and a homosexual ex-fullback, one could hardly get more relevant.
ABC passed on the show. CBS picked it up the following year and "All in the Family" became the biggest kid on the block, first among the middle-agers and soon enough by young liberals and old conservatives, as well as the other way around. The name Norman Lear became one of the few behind the camera names to break into the public consciousness.
And then a funny thing happened. Time magazine named Archie Bunker its "Man of the Year." That fact put upon the program and its endless spin-offs the mark of left-handed respectability, something that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were about to do to the new crop of movies influenced by the creativity of the 1960s.
The second funny thing that happened was the release of a Norman Lear movie called Cold Turkey. At a time when very nice people such as Pauline Kael were pronouncing backlash movies like Dirty Harry fascist masterpieces, it was actually the liberal Norman Lear who inadvertently ruined everything with this charming little picture.
The movie's premise was clever enough. An evil tobacco company, looking to enhance its public relations, offers a small Iowa town $25 million for all of its citizens (all 4006 of them) to quit smoking for thirty days. The tobacco company doesn't expect to have to pay off, of course, so their benevolence shouldn't have to cost them anything. The reason the local parson--Dick van Dyke--wants the town to win is so he can get transferred out of what he perceives to be a dying town. The town council wants to win the money so it can build new hospitals, schools and shopping malls, the intent being to lure military contractors to their rustic village. Hypocrisy is the name of the game on all levels and Lear quite correctly perceived that a savvy youth would be hip to the idea of exposing the core hypocrisy inherent in the American class system. The only problem. . .
The only problem was the actors. Without exception, each and every actor in the film was one associated with the generation presumed by youth to be responsible for all the hypocrisy in the first place. Bob Newhart, Jean Stapleton, Bob and Ray and the rest of the cast--among the nicest people one could hope to meet and certainly excellent comedic actors, one and all--were not going to lure Bobby and Rose to the drive-in to watch a movie. And of course, the old folks didn't go see too many movies in 1971, what with musicals changing into things like Cabaret and everything else so fuckin' dirty and damnably violent.
So the movie bombed, leaving a crater the size of Hollywood, dragging half the talent in America down with it. Jesus, if a naturally hilarious plot and ready-made talent in the hands of the biggest name in television couldn't make the transition to movies--
A ha! That was the problem. The transition to movies very seldom works, as the people who made the first Star Trek movie can attest. TV is obvious while motion pictures are subtle. TV has a live spontaneity while movies are polished and refined, however crude the topic. TV has low budgets while movies cost millions. And certain actors, such as the cast of Cold Turkey, are thought of as TV actors and the people at home don't want the two worlds to intermingle.
None of this means that the movie is anything less than wonderful. While certain bits of the comedy are predictable, most of it is still hilarious and the internal ambiance of the town is so exact and accurate it's scary. What it does mean is that the confusion over audience identification doomed the picture while the attempt at making the jump to the big screen not only failed to elevate television, it cast aspersions on movies in general.
I'm not saying Cold Turkey ended the adventurous nature of motion pictures in the 1970s. It would take the aforementioned Lucas and Spielberg to do that. What it did do was put a sizable chink in the armor worn by a creative army of Hollywood and overseas talent. Watching the film today, the humor is still ripe, you still hate the tobacco company, you still hate the clergy and the town council, you still marvel at the genius of Bob and Ray. It's an easy film to digest because there's nothing at all unsettling in the way it is presented. It is that worst of all old style films: safe.
Enter Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear, two wise acres who aimed to change all that. They knew that the television box was inherently capable of doing good. After all, "The Dick van Dyke Show" had been good. "The Twilight Zone" and "Outer Limits" had been good. Good was not out of the question. What was missing was sincerity and relevance.
Bam! 1970. "Til Death Do Us Part" was piloted before an ABC-TV audience. The Archie Justice (later renamed Bunker) character played to perfection by Carroll O'Connor stormed onto the stage as a confirmed bigot. The liberal son-in-law was, in real life, the son of the man behind "The Dick van Dyke Show." Sally Struthers had a nice set and Jean Stapleton was a legitimate actress. And with stories about black people moving in next door, the racial make-up of Jesus, and a homosexual ex-fullback, one could hardly get more relevant.
ABC passed on the show. CBS picked it up the following year and "All in the Family" became the biggest kid on the block, first among the middle-agers and soon enough by young liberals and old conservatives, as well as the other way around. The name Norman Lear became one of the few behind the camera names to break into the public consciousness.
And then a funny thing happened. Time magazine named Archie Bunker its "Man of the Year." That fact put upon the program and its endless spin-offs the mark of left-handed respectability, something that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were about to do to the new crop of movies influenced by the creativity of the 1960s.
The second funny thing that happened was the release of a Norman Lear movie called Cold Turkey. At a time when very nice people such as Pauline Kael were pronouncing backlash movies like Dirty Harry fascist masterpieces, it was actually the liberal Norman Lear who inadvertently ruined everything with this charming little picture.
The movie's premise was clever enough. An evil tobacco company, looking to enhance its public relations, offers a small Iowa town $25 million for all of its citizens (all 4006 of them) to quit smoking for thirty days. The tobacco company doesn't expect to have to pay off, of course, so their benevolence shouldn't have to cost them anything. The reason the local parson--Dick van Dyke--wants the town to win is so he can get transferred out of what he perceives to be a dying town. The town council wants to win the money so it can build new hospitals, schools and shopping malls, the intent being to lure military contractors to their rustic village. Hypocrisy is the name of the game on all levels and Lear quite correctly perceived that a savvy youth would be hip to the idea of exposing the core hypocrisy inherent in the American class system. The only problem. . .
The only problem was the actors. Without exception, each and every actor in the film was one associated with the generation presumed by youth to be responsible for all the hypocrisy in the first place. Bob Newhart, Jean Stapleton, Bob and Ray and the rest of the cast--among the nicest people one could hope to meet and certainly excellent comedic actors, one and all--were not going to lure Bobby and Rose to the drive-in to watch a movie. And of course, the old folks didn't go see too many movies in 1971, what with musicals changing into things like Cabaret and everything else so fuckin' dirty and damnably violent.
So the movie bombed, leaving a crater the size of Hollywood, dragging half the talent in America down with it. Jesus, if a naturally hilarious plot and ready-made talent in the hands of the biggest name in television couldn't make the transition to movies--
A ha! That was the problem. The transition to movies very seldom works, as the people who made the first Star Trek movie can attest. TV is obvious while motion pictures are subtle. TV has a live spontaneity while movies are polished and refined, however crude the topic. TV has low budgets while movies cost millions. And certain actors, such as the cast of Cold Turkey, are thought of as TV actors and the people at home don't want the two worlds to intermingle.
None of this means that the movie is anything less than wonderful. While certain bits of the comedy are predictable, most of it is still hilarious and the internal ambiance of the town is so exact and accurate it's scary. What it does mean is that the confusion over audience identification doomed the picture while the attempt at making the jump to the big screen not only failed to elevate television, it cast aspersions on movies in general.
I'm not saying Cold Turkey ended the adventurous nature of motion pictures in the 1970s. It would take the aforementioned Lucas and Spielberg to do that. What it did do was put a sizable chink in the armor worn by a creative army of Hollywood and overseas talent. Watching the film today, the humor is still ripe, you still hate the tobacco company, you still hate the clergy and the town council, you still marvel at the genius of Bob and Ray. It's an easy film to digest because there's nothing at all unsettling in the way it is presented. It is that worst of all old style films: safe.
