Cigarettes and Movies

Just read an NYT article about the ongoing campaign by the AMA to ban cigarettes from movies. Apparently, the PG13-rated film, He's Just Not That Into You, has some cigarettes in it but no smoking. There's also a sort of anti-smoking storyline in the film.

In the past couple of years, the AMA has been fighting to get Hollywood studios to eliminate any acknowledgment of the existence of cigarettes, or their use, from films, saying that smoking in films causes 200,000 teenagers to start smoking each year. The organization wants any film with smoking in it to get an R rating.

As someone who has recently quite smoking after 15 years of the habit, I recognize how dangerous smoking can be and how difficult it is to stop. It's a pretty stupid thing to do that, I admit, I probably saw as cool or fun or grown-up in part because of depictions of smoking in popular culture. When I smoked, seeing someone smoke in a film would often trigger a desire to have a cigarette myself - of course, this was once I was already a dedicated smoker.

But fuck the AMA. It offends me deeply when some organization or another works to ban something in pop culture as a means of social engineering. And evidently, as in this latest skirmish, you don't even have to have smoking in the film to warrant a rebuke, just cigarette packaging. In the article, Melissa Wathers of the AMA Alliance (apparently a domestic spying organization in which volunteers are asked to police films for violations) says, "There is absolutely zero artistic justification for this." And you are...who, exactly?

I haven't seen the film, but I would hazard a guess that there is little "artistic justification" for its entire existence. But that's the filmmakers business, as is whether or not they find a contextual need for cigarettes in the film. Quite possibly the AMA could find some better things to do with its time.

Very few discerning people

The Oscars

The 81st Academy Awards were held the other night and I've barely thought about them since, though I'm sure that's not so for Danny Boyle. Scott had an Oscar party, which was fun, though I always feel bad when people are enthusiastic about films that I really dislike. Makes me feel like a dick. And it's weird, because it's the opposite with my film school buddies - they hate everything and say that I LOVE everything.

Anyway, some parts of the show were really hilarious - like Hugh Jackman's opening song-and-dance routine. I love how he's such a classic Broadway entertainer type-guy and also Wolverine. The best bit was the part about The Reader. The Pineapple Express skit was also a highlight of the evening:

Dustin Lance Black's speech, when he won for the Milk screenplay, was really moving. And I was glad to see Penn win again, also for Milk, which should have won Best Picture, though I would have applauded a Mickey Rourke win, too.

Seeing Black and Penn win reminded me of an Op-Ed in the NYT that day. It was co-authored by two writers on opposite sides of the gay marriage issue and proposes the compromise of federally-recognized civil unions without forcing religious groups to recognize those marriages. In other words, give gays and lesbians the right to marry by another name, with most of the same rights as straight people, but if one of these gays or lesbians happens to be a church secretary, allow that church not to extend benefits to the partner if they don't want to - much the way Catholic hospitals are not forced to perform abortions.

"In the case of gay marriage, a scorched-earth debate, pitting what some regard as nonnegotiable religious freedom against what others regard as a nonnegotiable human right, would do great harm to our civil society. When a reasonable accommodation on a tough issue seems possible, both sides should have the courage to explore it."

This is a good point, worth considering, but I don't think "separate-but-equal" works, does it? The issue is not about whether churches would actually have to marry gays and lesbians - they will never have to do so, if they don't want to, because of the First Amendment. And if religious organizations want to be able to discriminate against whomever in terms of benefits and whatnot for employees, well I think that's probably also protected, if super-dickish. I mean, we allow people to be dickheads in all kinds of ways in our society.

But I fail to see how this adds up to no federal protection for gay marriage. Carve out exceptions for churches, fine, but civil law is civil law. Full marriage rights should be available to all adult couples, right now.

The New Guy

The new guy gave a great speech last night - sort of an unofficial State of the Union. I just kept thinking, "This new guy is So Much Better than the old guy!" It was nice to hear the Congress (half of it anyway) applauding endlessly a guy who actually deserved applause, instead of cravenly whooping it up for a frightening demagogue.

I'd be interested to see an un-biased fact-check on this speech - when he says something like America invented the automobile, well, that's not strictly true, but it's also not something a Republican politician would likely dispute. There's always Presidential rhetoric to contend with and, thankfully, at least now it's not being garbled by an idiot or packed with lies. Half-truths, sure!

I also kept wanting him to throw in a couple of "bitches" and "motherfuckers" for good measure. I guess that makes me racist, since I keep hoping that Obama's gonna Shaft it up a bit.

That photo is by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.

Coming this Sunday: The Oscars

The 81st Academy Awards will be held on Sunday; as of last night, I caught up on my Best Picture nominee viewing by watching The Reader. That I am a filmmaker and film-lover does not require me to watch the Oscars or care about them, but I am also fascinated by Hollywood history and the film business itself, and that does. I am also curious to see to what extent the "leak" of the Oscar winners turns out to be true. I do not think the leak is real, but I'm curious to see if the author is a good guesser.

The BP nominees are Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. For me, there is no question that Milk is the best film in this batch. Ideally, we'll see an upset this year - a kind of Revenge of Brokeback Mountain - that will throw over heavy-favorite Slumdog for Gus Van Sant's gay-martyr biopic, but I'm not holding my breath. (Memorably, Brokeback seemed a likely winner at the 78th Awards, only to be upset by the unfathomably stupid Crash, one of the worst BPs in my lifetime.) I also enjoyed Benjamin Button, which was an extraordinary technical achievement and which has stayed with me in ways I would not have expected initially.

I have long had a love/hate relationship with Ron Howard's work. On the one hand, I grew up with him in "Andy Griffith" reruns and on "Happy Days" and with films like Splash and Parenthood. And then there's "Arrested Development," one of the greatest TV shows of the past 30 years, which he was closely involved in producing. On the other hand, I think he's often a terrible director, responsible for awfulness like A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code. So, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Frost/Nixon. Previous to this film, I thought Apollo 13 was his best work, so it all kind of makes sense: when he's working closely with history and has strong source material, I usually like what he does.

F/N, which I illegally downloaded and watched on my television (yep, I'm the enemy), has the benefit of a couple of great impersonations as well as being full of ideas; it's "about something." It's about a great many things, actually. These qualities go a long way to making a film watchable from my point of view, regardless of how well-directed it is; Howard is a competent craftsman, so this film is highly-watchable, involving and thought-provoking, if not particularly emotionally stirring or surprising in its outcome. I happen to really enjoy watching actors playing modern historical figures (that is, real people I have actually seen in another context), so this bias certainly aided my enjoyment of the film. My mind wandered when anyone made a speech longer than 30 seconds or so - such as Nixon's late-night drunken harangue on the phone with Frost - because I was taken out of the film at those moments and reminded that it was based on a play. And I also didn't care about the Nixon character, particularly, and didn't care what the playwright felt he should have said. But these moments were only a minor distraction from the telling of a truly interesting encounter, well-dramatized.

I feel less charitably toward The Reader. I also watched this film from a ripped screener (although, unlike F/N, it did not have Dutch subtitles), but I don't think I'd have felt better about the film if I had seen it in a theater. Kate Winslet is pretty much my favorite female star, and she's perfectly good here (I think it's likely to be her year to finally get an Oscar, too), but this is one of those "prestige" films, those Oscar-bait films, that come out at the end of each year and lull us quickly to sleep. It's a film about makeup, period details, famous-actress nudity and the Holocaust. There are no surprises - even the surprise twist is no surprise - the story just marches onward into the gloom. Every scene of the film is slathered with music to help us understand what to feel moment to moment, a practice I find endlessly irritating. Well, I guess that's Hollywood for you.

I was not a fan of director Stephen Daldry's last prestige film, The Hours, which bored me stupid. Apparently, he is set to remake My Fair Lady in 2010. Sheesh.

The Return of the Ants and Making Lemonade

The ants are back. It's been raining, practically non-stop, for days. This week's theme is "Making Lemonade." We've got plenty of water for it. There's something that happens if you just force yourself to smile every time you react to anything. I think it tricks you into being slightly happier.

I don't know. Happiness can be created, I think. It may not come from the things you think. It may not, for example, come from having a job or whatever special thing you think you want. It might just be the thing that you feel when you smile. If that's so, then you can create some for yourself by smiling rather than frowning or being stone-faced. I've been sort of trying out this approach. If I can convince myself to smile and be optimistic, then maybe I'll start feeling that way.

As it is, these could be considered dark days. But that darkness is really all in my head. People sometimes say, "I'm not being pessimistic, just realistic." Hell, I've said it - or switched out pessimism for optimism. But what does it mean to "be realistic?" If I say I want to be an astronaut, well, that's not a very realistic goal. But maybe it would make me happy to say that's what my goal was, and then something else would happen. I mean, who's to say what's realistic and what's not?

And so with happiness, it's just a feeling. I might be able to convince myself that I am happy, just by acting happy, the way you prime a pump.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

This is one of the best films of the year. It's quite an artifact or, rather, it's full of artifacts from a case so bizarre I expect a musical version is coming soon. Roman Polanski is a fascinating figure; he's one of the unluckiest human beings of the past hundred years, at least, as well as one of the best film directors. Whatever your impression of him, this documentary has a thing or two to teach you. At times, it feels more like a fiction film.

I think RP got a raw deal, personally. The shit he's gone through - really, it's plenty. He's suffered enough. Cut the poor bastard a break.