Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Cold Turkey: A Mass Smoking Cessation Event Induced By A Film, Elsie E. Sheppard

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Popular culture can influence how people act in real life. The film Cold Turkey, directed by Norman Lear, provides an example of how people can take inspiration from a film's plot and recreate it to an extent. The people of Greenfield, Iowa, where Cold Turkey was filmed, decided to quit smoking for 30 days, similar to the movie's events. As a result, tobacco companies, such as Philip Morris International, became interested in how and why these people quit smoking for a prolonged period.

My project aimed to compile documents, interviews, and other content about Cold Turkey, Norman Lear, and the …