[2] David H. Gibson, formerly of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, has claimed that New York governors Nelson Rockefeller and Hugh Carey were influenced by the film's recommendations.
[2] Stung from his experience with Cold River, Sullivan abandoned such serious themes and turned to comedy in his second and last film, The Beer Drinker's Guide to Fitness and Filmmaking.
The film combines footage of Sullivan's family life and mockumentary-style interviews with his friends and neighbors with scenes depicting his fantasies, many of which (such as one of his getting pelted with mud and whipped by a man shouting quotations from negative reviews) mock the failure of Cold River.
[9] Beer Drinker's Guide depicts Sullivan's struggle to raise a family, now including four children, with the money earned from filmmaking, and he eventually took on a full-time job at Paul Smith's College, on whose campus he had filmed parts of Cold River.
[1] Sullivan had written about his plans for a sequel to Beer-Drinker's Guide, an attempt to pin down the nature of "Adirondack humor", but the film was never made.