Are Stars Being Paid to Smoke in Movies?
Christine H. Rowley

Until I quit smoking a couple of years ago, I was not in the habit of taking note of how much smoking was being done in the movies and who was doing the smoking. Nor did I think about whether this was meant to influence young folks or whether it just meant lots of actors and actresses were smokers and had told their directors that they had better let them smoke if they wanted them to make the movie! It took until I was smoke-free for more than a year before I even began to notice how MUCH puffing was going on in films. Talk about naïve!

While searching for some tobacco-related news one day, I ran across a cryptic link in an anti-tobacco web page that said "The Infamous Sylvester Stallone letter". My eyes popped wide open with surprise and I raised an eyebrow. Here was a big star of many movies. A hero to many young kids! What letter was he suddenly infamous about? I clicked on that link and it literally woke me up about what Stallone and the film industry was agreeing to do for very large sums of money. I was never able to look at films or Sly Stallone in quite the same way again. It was just too shocking.

According to the UCSF, fully 77 percent of movies made last year contained at least one tobacco related scene. Their study found that half of the movies made during 1990 through 1995 featured one of the lead characters smoking. In the 1970's, this figure was a mere 29 percent. It is well known that our youth and teens emulate their "heroes" in order to be "cool" and no one knows that fact better than the people who see that our Hollywood stars are seen smoking cigars and cigarettes in movies.

Margaret A. McGurk, feature writer for the Movie Guide for the Cincinnati Enquirer said, "A quick survey of current screen fare shows smoking in some form is nearly inescapable. Cigarettes and cigars are as common in adult films - those rated R or NC-17 - as lusty profanity."

"Among movies aimed at children and teens - those rated G, PG and PG-13 - you might expect a different pattern."

"You would be wrong." she declared.

Gene Borio creator of the Tobacco BBS, said "The last time we had a huge percentage of people smoking in this country, we had a huge number of media celebrities smoking and promoting smoking. Many smokers will tell you they started because Humphrey Bogart or Bette Davis smoked."

Borio also proclaimed, "The point should be made its such a cheap, easy piece of screenwriting/acting/directing shorthand. That'll do when you can't think of anything really original or trenchant to get a point across."

"I also think the point should be made the most smoking events per half hour on TV are on Siskel and Ebert. I brought this to Ebert's attention on his CompuServe forum 2 years ago. S&E have never seen fit to address this subject, which is shameful to me."


"SMOKING IS BEGINNING TO REPLACE ACTING."
Other movie reviewers are also getting tired of seeing more smoking going on in movies than they see on the streets! About 25% of adults smoke in the USA with figures continuing to decline, but it appears to be much more, if one were to guess this figure based on smoking in the movies. Here's what two reviewers had to say about the new movie, "The Locusts":

"Smoking is Beginning to Replace Acting" said G. Allen Johnson, reviewer in the San Francisco Gate on Oct. 3, 1997. Johnson also said,

"And it would be comical to count the number of scenes that begin with a character lighting a cigarette. In movies like this, smoking is beginning to replace acting. Where once a telling look or offhand glance might have conveyed thought and emotion, now it's just one big, cinematographically elegant drag."

In the Washington Posts' "The Family Filmgoer", reviewer Jane Horowitz says of the same film, "The characters drink and smoke nonstop and swear now and then."

"Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!" is a project by the American Lung Association and does a fine job of rating the movies. It needs to be kept more up to date, but for fairly recent movies, you can find out where there's smoking going on and where it's not. For example, consider:

"Marvin's Room: Thumbs Down! Marvin's Room was selected as a Thumbs Down because smoking by an underaged youth is encouraged by his mom and is utilized as means of showing teenage rebellion."

"In Marvin's Room, Meryl Streep's character, "Lee" smoked throughout the movie so it isn't surprising her 17-year-old son, Hank, uses tobacco. Since Hank managed to burn down his mom's home, she is concerned with his use of matches, however. Her solution: she has her preteen son light Hank's cigarette."

Television fans were able to cast their votes for characters, both villains and heroes, based on television tobacco usage just before the Emmy Awards, via the ALA's Phlemmy Awards, where shows that portrayed tobacco as being addictive and harmful to health received a Pink Lung Award. Those shows that glamorized or showed smoking as being something "cool" to do, received the Phlemmy Award. The America Lung Association, believes that celebrities who smoke on and off films are part of the cause of the rise in teens and youngsters increasing use of tobacco products and will help make people more aware of what they see in films and television.

Some disturbing trends have been noted while researching movies for this ALA project. Evaluating the 1995 and 1996 Oscar nominations in the following categories: Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress, youth reviewers noted how often tobacco was used, who used tobacco and if there were any anti-tobacco statements.

Based on this trend and believing that some, if not ALL, stars are paid to smoke in movies, ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) is seeking to put a stop to this propensity. This long, but compelling legal petition seeks an investigation to determine if the increase in smoking in movies is the result of money or other things of value is being given to movie makers by the tobacco industry.

If this were the only part of society that has been affected by this payoff to keep actors smoking in TV and films, it would be bad enough. However, there's a whole industry out there that FEEDS on smoking in films… the smoking fetish. There are people who are turned on by scenes of women smoking in the movies and they go to great lengths to ferret out and describe the scenes to enable other smoking fetish folks to find the scenes. One such Internet site is the Smoking Movies List - Part 1, all critiqued and described according to the smoking technique of the films' leading lady.

The Internet keeps it alive with the alt.sex.fetish.smoking newsgroup that also features a list of "hundreds of women celebs and whether they smoke on-screen or in real life." One can also subscribe to Smoke Signals, which describes itself as follows:

"Smoke Signals, now in its fourth year, is the only publication devoted entirely to the smoking fetish. We've been recognized as the "bible" of the smoking fetish, by sources as varied as Leg Show, The Times of London and The Wall Street Journal, and have been utilized as a resource by organizations ranging from Playboy to "60 Minutes."

Judging by the yearly price of their service and the apparent depth of this fetish, I believe the tobacco industry probably benefits from placing cigarettes in movies, just to satisfy the obsessive desires of this segment of society alone.

But how do people get to be Smoke fetishers in the first place? Perhaps it starts with a young teen enthralled by the movies, who sees someone like Sylvester Stallone, puffing away with cool nonchalance. He feels its cool and grownup to smoke, and so begins a lifetime of addiction thinking that he is now invincible and really the coolest. This is WHY the tobacco industry sees to it that smoking continues to be portrayed as "the thing to do"; in 77 percent of last years' movies and probably a similar figure (if not more!) will be found in this years' films. Where will it ever end? This is part of what we are up against in fighting this fatal attraction that tobacco has over our youngsters.

What does the future hold for our well-paid cigarette or cigar-puffing celebrities who are household names today? They are off to a smoking start in stardom. I wouldn't presume to be a psychic, but I've known plenty of people who have said they'd never get sick from smoking, including myself. As a matter of fact, I believe many of these deceased Stars and Celebrities you all know thought the very same way.

Source: http://quitsmoking.about.com/library/weekly/aa100697.htm