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SMOKING ON SCREEN

ANYBODY GOT A LIGHT? | March 14th 2008

Vanessa Pike-Russell/Flickr

Only villains and neurotics puff away in films these days, writes Scott Castle, a veteran smoker and cinema manager. But anti-smoking advocates are still unhappy with Hollywood. The problem is those dumb kids--hundreds of thousands of them--who still get inspired to take up smoking every year ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

In late February, full-page ads appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal calling for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to give any film with tobacco-smoking in it an R-rating. The ad, a copy of a letter sent to the chief executives of major film studios (ie, Disney, News Corp, Sony, General Electric and Viacom), came from the New York State Department of Health. It is part of an $800,000 advertising campaign that includes spots in Variety and posters outdoors in areas frequented by studio executives and their peers. 

According to the letter, 200,000 American adolescents will take up smoking this year as a direct result of seeing smoking in films rated G, PG and PG-13. Besides the R-rating, the letter demands three other steps from studios: that they certify the production was not compensated for depicting tobacco in the film; eliminate specific tobacco brands and related imagery; and run "strong anti-smoking ads (not one produced by a tobacco company)" before any film with tobacco, regardless of the its rating.

Removing brands and payoffs seems entirely reasonable, but should moviegoers really be subjected to shots of gangrenous legs and tumours before they sit down to see a romantic comedy?

As someone who's smoked a pack a day for 12 years--and who has been trying to quit--the last thing I want to see in a film is smoking. All it does is remind me of the fact that I'm not, right then and there, and persuade me to leave the theatre to fix that. The R-rated, romantic epic "Atonement", set in 1930s England, was an endurance test. One scene had the sultry Keira Knightley smoking in slow motion for what seemed like 20 minutes--tendrils of smoke slowly escaping her lips and encircling her face so seductively that I kept waiting for an announcer to try and sell me Chanel No. 5. Never had I wanted a cigarette at the movies more.

In May 2007, the MPAA made headlines by announcing: "Now, all smoking will be considered and depictions that glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or other mitigating context may receive a higher rating." Almost a year later, anti-smoking advocates are not satisfied with the results. No film has yet been rated R due to its tobacco content, and the MPAA has been lax in noting instances of smoking in their ratings descriptions. It bears mentioning that an R-rating can seriously hurt the box-office success of film that's meant to have wide appeal. The health department's letter states, "Any film that shows or implies tobacco use should be rated R." Exceptions may be made in the case of "a real historical figure" or if the film "unambiguously reflects the dangers and consequences" of smoking. Under these guidelines, Edward R. Murrow can smoke, but Jack and Rose from "Titanic" cannot, unless Jack dies from emphysema rather than hypothermia.

Smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu, an anti-smoking watchdog, lists which top-ten films "promotes smoking." It counted four in the weekend of February 22^nd, three of which were rated PG-13. The one that seemed out of place was "Juno", which I couldn't recall having any smoking in it. A linked site, SceneSmoking.org (which rates hundreds movie based solely on tobacco content) cites "Juno" because Ellen Page holds a pipe in two scenes. But Juno's empty pipe won't cause cancer any more than her hamburger phone causes heart disease. Nor is it logical to believe this will lead to a pipe craze among teenage girls. The pipe would, however, merit "Juno" an R-rating under the proposed guidelines. So would a full ashtray, an unopened box of cigars or an extra glimpsed smoking as the lead actors pass by. Smoking pot on screen, however, may only warrant a PG-13 rating.

In "Thank You For Smoking", also from "Juno" director Jason Reitman, a subplot involves Nick, a tobacco lobbyist (played by Aaron Eckhart), working with a studio executive to get cigarettes away from "RAVs" (Russians, Arabs and villains) and into the hands of someone kids can look up to--"Indiana Jones meets Jerry Maguire, but on two packs a day". The anti-smoking websites throw all sorts of intimidating numbers at you, but since they factor in unlit pipes and data from R-rated films, the figures don't really reflect the facts. Indiana Jones doesn't smoke; the Nazis do. For that matter, none of the characters headlining last year's top film franchises puffed a single cigarette--not Jason Bourne, Peter Parker, Jack Sparrow or even Harry Potter (despite his entrance into the tumult of adolescence).

It's usually the bad guys and their henchmen who smoke, because it helps the audience identify them as evil. Smoking is also routinely used to show the stressed mental state of a character, like Laura Linney in "The Savages". The proposed ratings rule doesn't discriminate between good guys and bad guys, or between glamorous or pathetic smokers, because the anti-smoking position is that any depiction of smoking, even a negative one, makes teenager more likely to smoke.

A film still in theatres that makes an excellent case study is the PG-13 rated "Definitely Maybe", in which a young father (Ryan Reynolds) tells his daughter (Abigail Breslin) how he met her mother. When he lets slip that he smoked, the film literally grinds to a halt. His daughter is crushed. "You smoked?" she asks in a heartbreakingly frail voice, her eyes glassy with tears, as if he'd just admitted to euthanizing puppies. "I was young and stupid," he explains.

In the offending scene, Reynolds meets a woman (Isla Fisher) while buying cigarettes. The pack's warning ("Smoking Leads to a Slow and Painful Death") is seen in close-up, and they end up smoking together to settle a bet about which brand contains more harmful chemicals. After this, neither of them is seen smoking. When they meet up again years later they mention, apropos of nothing, that they've both quit. The film's other smoker is a womanising professor played by Kevin Kline. When his character ends up in the hospital with aortic problems, smoking is mentioned as a possible cause.

The film clearly positions smoking as a dangerous habit you'll be embarrassed to tell your kids about. It also features a tobacco warning more poetic and succinct than the real ones. Should this romantic comedy have been rated R?

It's not that the anti-smoking lobby doesn't have a valid point to make, especially regarding the MPAA's enforcement of their smoking policy. And their intentions are noble. The problem is their zero-tolerance approach, a policy that always leads to zero thinking--about the merits of individual films and the messages regarding smoking contained within them.

If this automatic R-rating for smoking gets implemented, why wouldn't anti-drug groups demand an automatic R-rating for drug scenes? What about teen or unprotected sex? New York City's anti-smoking mayor, Michael Bloomberg, went from banning smoking in bars and restaurants to banning trans-fats. With a growing child-obesity problem in America, why not ban scenes featuring fried chicken? Or at least run PSAs about the dangers of fatty foods prior to the offending film. Perhaps the answer is to simply excise all vice from films viewed by anyone under 17. 

The MPAA should take smoking into account when rating films, in order to fulfil its mission to provide parents with a sense of what is suitable for their children. But automatically giving films with any hint of tobacco an R-rating puts the cart before the horse. Though it may help to further demonise the habit, it may end up making smoking seem more taboo, and therefore more cool to teenagers.

(Scott Castle is a writer based in Brooklyn, where he manages the Pavilion Theatre. His last piece for More Intelligent Life was about the Oscars.)