April 29, 2011

Smoking in the Movies

Smoking in the Movies

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Home Page > Arts & Entertainment > Smoking in the Movies

Smoking in the Movies

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Posted: Sep 07, 2007 |Comments: 2
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There are so many traits that as screenwriters we can assign to our characters. Quirks, eccentricities and habits – good and bad. Do we have a moral, social or ethical responsibility to bear in mind that some viewers might watch this character and want to emulate him or her? This doesn’t necessarily mean the viewer is a blank slate or idiot – I quit smoking a few weeks back. And I tell you, when I see a character smoking in a movie – I want to affix my face to the screen and suck that smoke straight into my lungs. It’s tough. People Magazine used to have a policy of photoshopping out the cigarettes usually clutched in the hands of so many celebrities. But they have begun to show the cigarettes anyway. The public deserves to see the whole picture, they figure. So celebrities do it – and the public sees it – so how can a writer be in any way compared to that? We aren’t writing about real people, we are writing about pretend people. To me, it’s about avoiding glamorizing or making smoking look cool. In BLADE RUNNER, smokers abound. But it’s part of the broke-down, dark, dystopian vision of the story. I mean, look at that world. Shoot, I’d buy my smokes by the truckload.

I just recently read an interview with Shia LaBeouf, and the interviewer included that LaBeouf lit up a smoke before answering the next question. Should that detail have been included? If the interviewer had not mentioned the smoking, nobody would ever have known that LaBeouf is a smoker. So why did he or she include it? Journalistic veracity? Or was it irresponsible. Until his picture shows up in a celebrity rag with a blurry cigarette in one hand. Should the interviewer have skipped over this detail? Should LaBeouf not have lit up, knowing it would probably be noted? Which? Neither?

Where is the line between social responsibility and doing our jobs as story-tellers? I am currently ghost-writing a mystery novel with a Texan client who depicted his main character drinking – a lot. I mean – a lot. Maybe it’s a Texas thing. I told the writer that we are going to have to show less drinking. Why? Because we want our readers to like this guy, not raise their eyebrows everytime he slams back another one. I mean, I’m working on this material and I don’t know how the guy stands up and solves anything. It would be different if the material were LEAVING LAS VEGAS, right? Or would it?

Do writers get carte blanche or do we have to bear in mind that this thing we do is bread and circus? We are selling our stories, right? To buyers. Who turn around and sell the story to the public. Who will have judgments and reactions to our material.

It’s a complex issue and a slippery slope. Maybe the writer who wrote BUT I’M JUST A CHEERLEADER (wonderful movie by the way) should not have written it. It did feature homosexuality, after all. That’s not a bad habit though – that’s the way you’re born. Right. But not to a conservative it isn’t. It’s a bad lifestyle choice. Which really shouldn’t be depicted. That’s an argument that I cannot get behind.

For my money, writers create art which is inspired by life. Messy, heartbreaking, funny, imperfect life. In in real life, people have bad habits and flaws. That’s what makes us human.

Recently, the MPAA decided to warn audiences about movies with a great deal of smoking, particularly smoking that is not contextualized historically. This decision seems strange when movies likE CAPTIVITY, depicting women getting tortured and killed are splashed across huge billboards across major US cities for us all to see and be horrified by. Now that’s offensive. Values are skewed when smoking is a worse offense than torture and mayhem. Don’t get me wrong – smoking is bad. I’m glad I quit; it’s a terrible habit. But surely we have bigger fish to fry as a viewing public. And as we inch toward a 1984-esque scenario, with the MPAA (i.e.the 5 major corporations that own the movie studios) deciding for us what we can and cannot see, it is crucial that writers be honest about what they depict rather than succumb to pressure to whitewash. We owe it to our readers and viewers to tell the truth about what we see.

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Julie Gray –
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Julie Gray is a screenwriter and story analyst living in Los Angeles.
http://www.thescriptwhisperer.com

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Comments on this article

julie gray Sep 29, 2007

that’s a GREAT comment, Jonathan! I quit smoking a few months ago myself and I know how insidious the path to smoking was for me personally. The association of smoking with “cool” people is still a very persuasive thing for teens. I’ve never written a script with a smoker – not consciously, but because it didn’t occur to me as a necessary definitive quality.

Jonathan Polansky Sep 28, 2007

Epidemiologists estimate that eventual tobacco deaths among the new teen smokers recruited by their cumulative exposure to smoking on screen outnumber current U.S. deaths from drunk driving, violent crime, drug use and HIV/AIDS combined. An economist working with them says that each year’s crop of teens recruited by movies is worth billion in sales, over a lifetime, to the tobacco companies. Files uncovered during lawsuits show that the tobacco companies have invested millions to get smoking and their brands on screen. So — you can contribute to this global disaster or decide not to. I don’t believe anyone ever left a movie theater muttering, “You know, there should have been more smoking in that.”

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Julie Gray is a screenwriter and story analyst living in Los Angeles.
http://www.thescriptwhisperer.com

Tags: Movies, Smoking

Filed under Smoking Is Cool

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