I'm not crying it's just smoke gets in my eyes
“Cigarettes are cool, available and addictive. Hell our job’s almost done!” Only a tobacco lobbyist could use that as a rev up for his troops. Mind you, it’s a pretty compelling argument. So what’s Thank You For Smoking really about?
     One could claim it’s about cigarettes. Again a compelling argument given the title of the film, the fact that its main character is a Washington DC-based Big Tobacco lobbyist and virtually all the characters work for tobacco or other industries which have high attrition rates amongst their customers, namely: alcohol, firearms and the movie business.
     However, not one of the characters actually smokes a cigarette at any time during this motion picture. Bobby Duval plays the ‘Captain’ of Big Tobacco and, though he does die of lung cancer (or maybe it was emphysema), he only smokes Cuban stogies and drinks mint juleps.
     Sam Elliot plays the role of the Marlboro Man — plays the role, hell I thought he was the Marlboro Man! Sam’s dying, of lung cancer, and he’s run off to tell the media, Congress and anyone who’ll listen that Marlboro killed the Marlboro Man. Quite frankly, in the post-Brokeback Mountain era, I think it’s a damn fine thing that cowboy should die of lung cancer. Of all the terminal illnesses a rugged man could suffer, this is the easiest one to explain to your family and friends.
     Enter the hero of this epic, the professor of spin doctoring Nick Naylor, who, while doing his bit for population control manages to convince Sam that he’s still part of the tobacco family. Sure Sam’s on the outer — every tobacco family has a black lung — but Nick Naylor puts a reassuring arm on his shoulder and convinces Sam that he should ride off into the sunset, alone. The fact that he left his briefcase at Sam’s place, and the fact it was stuffed with cash, may have helped.
  Aaron Eckhart plays Nick, the poster boy for the righteous folk who simply want to preserve everybody’s right to decide. And he is the fox of the business — he reports and he decides. Though I am loathed to admit it, Eckhart did an excellent job. 
    Nick starts out this story at the top of his game. He slam dunks the anti-tobacco lobby on the Joan Lunden Show in the opening scene and stays in the zone. Seated next to the unfortunately labelled 'cancer boy' he wins over the young man's support by convincing him that it's in the interests of the anti-tobacco lobby for him to die. Big Tobacco, on the other hand, wants him to stay around as long as possible . . . they don't want to lose a customer.  
   Nick's on a roll but then he’s cornered by a Washington Post type reporter played by Katie Holmes. It’s not Katie’s finest work. In fairness, Katie’s family has suffered the same fate as so many other American families. Just months after giving birth to their first child, Katie’s husband Tom was laid off and she’s now the bread winner in the Cruise-Holmes home. Now they’re left to survive on her meager pay check and her young family’s faith in . . . whatever the hell Scientologists believe in. (I think they must all be CPAs because the Scientologists that accost me in the street all say that I need to be ‘audited’. Come to think of it Scientology might be a front for the IRS — no wonder it’s called a cult.)
    For once I think I’ve fatally sidetracked my argument. How could one possibly argue that smoking is bad for your health once you’ve introduced Scientology into the mix?
     Katie plays the archetypal ambitious young reporter out to get her big story. She meets Nick, they drink wine, they talk, they have dinner, she asks him a few tough questions, they have some more wine, they go to Nick’s apartment and they wind up in the sack. And Nick fails to observe the cardinal rule of spin doctoring – nothing you ever say is off the record. Katie’s story comes out, it’s a big hatchet job and it temporarily derails our hero — but only temporarily.
     Personally I’ve been both an ambitious young reporter and a spin-tern for Big Tobacco (spin-tern is my noun defining an intern to the spin doctoring profession). And I find my time with tobacco a bit easier to justify. Don’t get me wrong, cigarettes dramatically increase your chances of an early death, though, in fairness, it is entirely plausible to smoke two packs a day and live to be 90 years old. It’s plausible, just very unlikely. My pals at Big Tobacco — and believe me they’ve got all the best research — assure me that you’ve only got a 50% of dying of a smoking related illness if you smoke.
    I told them I admired that fact but then wondered (out aloud) if Russian Roulette would have caught on if the revolver had three chambers loaded instead of just one?
    The anti-smoking lobby, on the other hand, will tell you that you that you’ll get gangrene and your lower limbs will fall off if you smoke. Now I’m no doctor but I have never seen anyone with gangrene. So just who’s spinning what?
     It’s all spin. The anti-tobacco spins use imagery such as gangrene and mouth cancer not because the chances of it happening to you are great if you smoke. The reality is that chance is very very slim. However, they figure (correctly) that most smokers can weigh up and rationalize the risks of death but cannot really fathom the thought of facing life with a horrendous tobacco-related deformity. Just plain spin.
    Cameron Bright, who runs the risk of becoming the next “it kid” in Hollywood pops up as Nick Naylor’s boy. Mom and Dad are, of course, divorced and the struggle to shape their child is emotional on Mom’s end and intellectual on Dad’s. Dad wins hands down. The only thing they couldn’t explain is why the 11 year old child of two American parents has a Canadian accent. Cameron’s real parents should get with the program, the reason Aussies like Kidman, Crowe, Watts, Rush, Jackman and others get work in Hollywood is that they can speak with American accents.
     Back to Thank You For Smoking. About half way through the film I realized that it had a plot . . . it was okay without ever threatening brilliance. However, it was filled with very clever satire and a few lines I wish I’d written. Jason Reitman’s screenplay was a nice adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s novel (Buckley even makes an un-credited cameo in the film). So it didn’t need a plot to work for me. 
     This film is not about tobacco it’s about spin. One can only hope it does not spin off a series of spin flicks. Hollywood can handle them but not all at the same time. Wag The Dog, Bob Roberts, Bulworth and Primary Colors like a fine red wine were all left open long enough to breathe. The one thing I must say about Thank You For Smoking it helped me breathe a lot easier.