Cigarettes and Hollywood: Where do you draw the line?

I've been the first to criticize Hollywood for dragging its feet when it came to taking smoking out of the movies. If you go back six or seven decades, it's probably fair to say that Hollywood's glamorization of smoking has caused untold millions of impressionable moviegoers to take up smoking and end up in an early grave. But times have changed. Virtually every one of today's studios has become far more vigilant about not depicting smoking in films that appeal to younger audiences (meaning ones rated PG and PG-13) as well as announcing in the end credits of the films that no one accepted product placement for any tobacco products.

The industry's most outspoken anti-smoking advocate has been Warner Bros. chairman Alan Horn, who has made it clear to filmmakers, even when their films are still in script form, that he frowns on any depiction of smoking. (Horn is so strict that Warners insiders wonder whether the studio chief managed to take the pipe out of Robert Downey Jr.'s mouth for the studio's upcoming version of "Sherlock Holmes." So it's especially ironic to see the news that an arm of the American Medical Assn. intends to lodge an official complaint with Warners and its parent company over what the health advocacy group called "disturbing images of specific cigarette brands" in the studio's current youth-friendly hit, "He's Just Not That Into You."         

As someone who has especially strong anti-smoking views, having lost my favorite uncle to lung cancer, I'm happy to see a largely smoke-free world and am a big supporter of groups who keep an eye on any infractions from media conglomerates. But I'm worried that in this case, the AMA has gone too far in singling out Warners about "He's Just Not That Into You." First off, no one ever smokes in the film, which is rated PG-13. While it's true that you can clearly see packs of Natural American Spirit Light cigarettes during the film, a spokesman for the cigarette company says the studio never contacted them about using the product and insists that it never sent out any cigarettes.

Even more important, the character in the film who is seen with the cigarette packs -- played by Bradley Cooper -- is portrayed as a utter sleazeball, not only cheating on his wife but actually having sex with her while his girlfriend (whom he was about to have sex with) is stashed in a closet. His wife, played by Jennifer Connelly, ends up dumping him as much for lying about his smoking habit as for lying about cheating on her.

Still, the mystery remains: If no product placement was involved, how did those pesky American Spirit cigarettes get into the movie? The question is complicated by the fact that the movie was put into production by New Line Cinema but released by Warner Bros. after it absorbed New Line last year. So the people involved with overseeing props -- like packs of cigarettes -- at the time of filming were from a different studio than the people in charge of policing the finished film for cigarette-related transgressions. My sources say it's possible that the person who viewed the finished film -- studio policemen not being the hippest people in the room -- may have thought that American Spirit was an invented product, not an actual brand.

I'd be curious to hear your take on this issue. If no one is seen smoking in the movie and the guy who owns the smokes is a loser, is the AMA overreaching its own policing abilities, turning a ticky-tack foul into a furor? Or should cigarettes be treated like any other harmful drug and given no wiggle room? I think Warners is getting a raw deal. But I confess that this is one of those issues where my basic libertarian notions about free speech are in conflict with my support for health advocacy groups. As longtime blog readers might have noticed, there are some things that I'm very sure of -- the Oscars were dull, Jeffrey Katzenberg is a nutty 3-D crusader and the Cubs will finally make it to the World Series this year -- but this time I'm stumped. When it comes to cigarettes, where do you draw the line?

Comments

[Dan]

First off, I'm very sorry about your uncle. And I can respect why you personally would be against smoking.

But bluntly, I think blaming Hollywood for anybody taking up smoking is ridiculous, and stars or movies for promoting smoking to "impressionable youths" just shows how long the person with that opinion has been out of their teenage years. Of course teens take up smoking, especially if their friends are doing it and especially if it works up their parents. But they don't do it because some movie star does it. A movie star to them is a person on a poster or a screen. It's their friends and their parents who get them to light up, especially in the face of being well informed that smoking will kill them. You think a couple of movies on a Saturday night can counteract year-round efforts to get them not to start in the first place? Just how stupid are we assuming teenagers are, these days?

Also, this movement has been out of touch pretty much from its inception. Remember when they selected the actress who smoked the most, thus making smoking cool to teens, and gave her a "Hackademy Award"? The actress who happened to be Sissy Spacek (great actress but I don't think she feels herself to be a teen idol) for "In the Bedroom", where I might literally have been the only teenager to actually have seen that movie in the first place?

I don't smoke, I don't encourage people to smoke, but enough with the aversion fad. The truth is, people still smoke, and the movies should be able to reflect this without hand-wringing from bored housewives about "monkey see monkey do." That way lies the second coming of the Production Code: no thanks.

[Sandi]

Wow! Where to start?

Well, first I think it’s only fair to acknowledge that you’ve raised a pretty common sense question, even for those who support banning images of tobacco use in movies. Isn’t it counterproductive to attack the studio for displaying a brand in a movie that delivers an anti-smoking message and does not actually show anyone smoking?

Moving on to more pressing matters, it is ridiculous and irresponsible to blame movies for people’s personal choices and habits!

You said, “it's probably fair to say that Hollywood's glamorization of smoking has caused untold millions of impressionable moviegoers to take up smoking and end up in an early grave.”

Are you kidding me? For one thing, simply showing someone doing something in a movie doesn’t qualify as glamorization. More importantly, if movies have such an irresistible influence, why haven’t millions of impressionable moviegoers taken up train robbing, bank robbing, and “honorable” revenge killing?

No, I don’t mean the rare, disturbed individual that gets caught for a crime and blames it on some movie they watched 100 times in the days preceding their heinous crime. I am talking about the “millions” of average moviegoers who are apparently completely incapable of making conscious choices for themselves and simply DO whatever they see on the screen.

Also, I’m curious, you said, “I'm happy to see a largely smoke-free world and am a big supporter of groups who keep an eye on any infractions from media conglomerates.”

Did you actually go look at the site that you linked to? Did you read the one and only movie review posted by a “talented youth reviewer” lauding the movie “What Happens in Vegas” for its depictions of “getting married while drunk, peeing in the sink, and viciously arguing at marriage counseling,” and closing with the statement, “In general, it was a great movie that was free from tobacco messages”?

Is that attitude representative of what you are hoping will be accomplished with this “youth-friendly” move of anti-smoking movie censorship?

And finally, you said, “this is one of those issues where my basic libertarian notions about free speech are in conflict with my support for health advocacy groups.” As far as I can tell you have NO libertarian notions about free speech. By supporting this ban on smoking in movies, you make it clear that you are one of those “freedom of speech with some ‘reasonable exceptions’” people that leans more toward the exceptions than the freedom of speech part.

On a more personal note, I have never and will never ask my doctor what kind of movies it would be OK for me or anyone else to watch. I do not believe that the AMA has any place in approving or filing official complaints about movies, television, music, or any other kind of art or entertainment.

[Gene]

There are lots of ways to get brands in without going through the studios.

A simple payoff to a prop guy can get your brand on any table in the movie.

[sjstockton]

This is PC run amok, for some characters, smoking can make for an authentic character, this is one small reason why movies are not as entertaining anymore.

[Roy Turner]

Loaded question. I find it ironic that we use the same criteria for supporting that "seeing people in the movies" smoke influences young people to smoke, while arguing that "seeing violence, sex,doing drugs, drinking booze, etc" in the movies has no influence. It either does or doesn't. Plain and simple. I am mid fifties and smoke. I have even considered writing an article titled: I smoke because of Bette Davis. No one smoked like Bette - made it look as good or glamorous as Bette. Damn right I was influenced by the stars of the 50's and 60's into a lot of my habits. But I do not think today's youth are as influenced by these people. We have no stars today with the selling power of yesterday's stars. The point is that anti tobacco is a hot topic, while no one is concerned about the lives that will be ruined by booze, promiscuity, etc. And while tobacco ads have been absent on TV for decades, pharmaceuticals have flourished. Any wonder drug company stock is a good bet? Food for thought. And yes I still smoke. Dammit Bette.

[Mendy Spencer]

I completely agree with your statement, “it's probably fair to say that Hollywood's glamorization of smoking has caused untold millions of impressionable moviegoers to take up smoking and end up in an early grave.” Nearly every very actor in the thirties through the sixties had a cigarette hanging from their supple lips; they looked handsome/beautiful and glamorous.

I lost both of my parents due to smoking related illness. When I was young I always used to ask them why they smoked. They both said because it looked so cool in the movies and they would list off some of their favorite actors/actresses. I think if you ask many of the older generation, they will tell you the same thing. I think it is sad that folks commenting on your piece are blind to this truth.

I’m sure if Paris Hilton was seen in a film puffing on a Marlboro, you would see a jump in Marlboro cigarettes the next week. This is not fiction, it is a solid truth. Remember when ET gobbled down those Reese’s Pieces? Every kid in this country started eating that peanut butter confection and the folks over at M&M’s were cursing themselves.

I give kids a lot of credit for not doing illegal stuff they see in movies; most will not go around hacking people to death like Michael, Jason and Freddy but when they see characters on screen doing something legal: drinking a certain brand of beverage, wearing a certain brand of clothing or smoking a certain brand of cigarette, they will follow. They always have and they always will.

[Mike]

It is valid to argue that keeping cigarettes out of movies aimed at America's youth is an admirable practice, but like other posters have noted, why are these same limits not then applied to depictions of drinking, sex, violence, etc. in films? I personally don't agree with "limiting content" as it treds dangerously close to censorship and last I checked, the First Amendment is still intact. However, I think it is completely valid that the MPAA should consider depictions of un-healthy behavior such as smoking, drinking to excess and promiscuous sexual encounters when they rate films. My only question is, doesn't anyone think for themselves anymore? Obviously, the government doesn't think most Americans can, but anyone that hasn't been living under a rock for the past 50 years knows that smoking kills, I mean we are beaten over the head with it daily in TV commercials. The responsibility for regulating the behavior of "impressionable youths" of course ultimately falls to the parents. If you don't want your kid to see a move with smoking in it, don't let them see the movie. Don't blame the studio. Take responsibility. I know that concept is increasingly foreign to most in the ridiculously letigious society that we live in.

[Jonathan Polansky]

Only on-screen smoking has been shown to actually influence real-life adolescent behavior on a large scale. And unlike sex and violence, tobacco has a long, documented record of buying its way on screen. It has to. Sex and violence in movies sell tickets. Smoking in movies only cells cigarettes. This issue isn't about the "show." It's about the "business."

Alan Horn should just say that this will never happen again because Warners will never show tobacco brands again. End of story.

[Watchdog]

What is needed, perhaps, is a movie ABOUT smoking.
It would cover the period from the early and mid-1900s when cigarette makers began in earnest to contaminate tobacco with residues of hundreds of pesticides, including those that produce dioxin, and with phosphate fertilizers that hit unwitting smokers with cancer-causing PO-210 radiation, and with no end of untested and often toxic non-tobacco ingredients, and with added burn accelerants to maximize chance of fires.

The film would focus on complicit public officials who allowed and benefited from all that, and who now don the "no smoking" halo, feigning concern for, well, their own Guinea Pigged victims. It would also cover medical professionals, "Company Doctors" as it were, who blame their patients and "smoking" as they ignore the industrial non-tobacco toxins and carcinogens that contaminate most products. And it would look at corporate scientists who study effects of one of the most complex, highly-processed, adulterated products of all time, one that may not even contain a shred of tobacco (fake tobacco is "legal") and who then declare that "tobacco kills".

The film would cover the current move towards tobacco prohibition...a crusade designed to blame and penalize the uninformed, unprotected, deceived victims, and to scapegoat the conveniently "sinful", traditionally-used tobacco plant....a crusade largely funded and pushed by under-the-radar parts of the cigarette industry (pesticides, pharmaceuticals, their insurers/investors, etc) as a way to evade exposure, penalties and significant liabilities...to protect the "good name" of pesticides and chlorine...to save health costs for insurers...and to eliminate a natural, public-domain plant that, like cannabis, competes with patented synthetic drugs.

The movie title might be "Corporate Flacks Gone Wild".
If it has a happy ending--- "Revenge of The Guinea Pigs".

(Actors ought use only plain, organic tobacco to eliminate the plethora of industrial non-tobacco dangers...and a statement at end of credits might be "No Contaminated Tobacco Used In Production of This Film.")

[Dan]

@ Jonathan Polansky

Please provide links proving your claim, because I can turn that into a fill-in-the-blanks statement: this [behavior] in this [medium] causes [behavior]. And the one thing that is consistent about those claims and the studies that seem to back them up is that they turn out to be at best exaggerated and at worst fictitious.

My asking just how stupid we think teenagers are these days wasn't idle sarcasm. I'm serious. Do you have any earthly idea how many anti-smoking messages I saw when I was in school, from 1988 all the way through the end of college in 2004? There wasn't a single day I didn't see a PSA of some sort. So, by the very logic that "smoking in movies causes kids to smoke", we have to assume that seeing these message constantly influences them to NOT smoke. Or we could just work on the assumption that human beings take up habits and behaviors for reasons vastly more complex than just "monkey see monkey do."

Also, I think Horn taking Sherlock Holmes' pipe away from him because of his personal tastes is a bit like colorizing "Citizen Kane". Holmes smoked in the stories. The pipe's a part of the character, who isn't exactly obscure; even the most illiterate teenager knows what a skinny guy in a deerstalker and a pipe in his mouth is supposed to be.

And I say this as both a non-smoker and a Sherlockian.