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Puffing Up a Storm
Smoking is on the rise in movies, sparking
a campaign to stub it out. A look at who's behind it
By MARGOT ROOSEVELT
Rob Reiner, co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment, was
appalled when he saw his studio's film Proof of Life. It wasn't
that he could predict the movie's demise at the box office.
"I thought, ÔWow, why is Meg Ryan smoking up a storm?'"
Reiner says. "It didn't add to the plot." Fourteen
months later, Castle Rock now has a policy of discouraging
tobacco use. Any actor, director or screenwriter who wants
to depict it must first meet with Reiner. "They have
to make a really good case," he says. "Movies are
basically advertising cigarettes to kids."
Movie characters light up more often than people do in real
life, argues Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the
University of California, San Francisco, who has launched
a "Smoke-Free Movies" newspaper ad campaign. His study, funded
by the National Cancer Institute, found that on average the
20 top-grossing films featured 50% more instances of smoking
an hour in 2000 than in 1960. And an American Lung Association
survey discovered that 61% of the tobacco use in films last
year occurred in family- and teen-rated movies. With youth
smoking up dramatically in the past decade, a movement is
building to hold Hollywood accountable. Says Glantz: "The
entertainment industry is in denial."
But it's getting an education. Susan Moses, deputy director
of Harvard's Center for Health Communication, and Lindsay
Doran, former head of United Artists, have been going door
to door among the studios. They hit the honchos with hard
facts: a million American teens a year become daily smokers,
and a third of those will eventually die from tobacco-related
illness. When Doran and Moses met with executives from Imagine
Pictures, says Doran, "they said, ÔSmoking is not in any of
our scripts.' But then they called the next day and said,
ÔWe looked, and it's everywhere.'" Karen Kehela, co-chairman
of Imagine, recalls trying to take smoking out of one script
after the meeting, "but the actor insisted on smoking," she
says. In fact, many movie stars are hooked on the habit. "Actors
who smoke look for any reason to incorporate it into their
characters," Reiner says. "You have directors who don't care
about the social implications or are kowtowing to the actors."
Last month, the American Lung Association gave its Hackademy
Award to Sissy Spacek and In the Bedroom for using Marlboros
throughout the film. Dishonorable Mentions went to Charlie's
Angels and Save the Last Dance-smoke-filled movies aimed at
adolescents. "Teens imitate onscreen behavior," says Doran.
And it's not enough to make the good guy a nonsmoker because
"bad guys are cool."
If all the friendly meetings and cutely named awards fail,
critics have a solution the industry will hate: require an
R rating on movies that glamorize smoking. "If your movie
has the F word twice, you get rated R," says Reiner. "But
that's a lot less harmful to a kid."
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