IN MY VIEW: American Legacy Foundation's Call for R-Rating for Any Movie that Depicts Smoking Non-Historically is Hypocritical and Misguided
May 11, 2007
By Michael Siegel
The inconsistency, exaggeration, and blatant hypocrisy of the anti-smoking groups is ripe grounds for satire. If only I had Buckley's wit, perhaps I could write my own film. Any ideas for what I could call it?
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Put It Out, Shweetheart
Hollywood Kicks the Habit, Rules That Movies With Smoking Could Go From PG to R Rating

By Frank Ahrens, Washington Post Staff Writer
May 11, 2007

Would "Casablanca" have been rated XXX?

Depictions of smoking in movies will now be a factor when deciding what a film's rating will be, possibly making a PG-13 movie R-rated, the Motion Picture Association of America said yesterday. The policy affects only new movies.

Along with violence, depictions of sex, adult language and other content considerations, ratings organizations will examine new releases to determine if they glamorize smoking or if it is pervasive through the films, even among adults. Underage smoking has always been considered when rating a film.

"Clearly, smoking is increasingly an unacceptable behavior in our society," Dan Glickman, chairman of the motion picture association, said in a statement. "There is broad awareness of smoking as a unique public health concern due to nicotine's highly addictive nature, and no parent wants their child to take up the habit."

A number of groups have called for almost all movies that depict smoking to automatically receive an R rating, a plan the movie studios oppose. Children under 17 are not allowed in R-rated films unless they are with an adult.

Cigarettes were once an indispensable movie prop -- something for actors to do with their hands and to establish character traits, such as "edgy" and "rebellious." Sex symbols such as Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis helped make smoking seem sophisticated. A leading man was not a gentleman unless he lit a lady's cigarette.

But in recent years, public policy and sentiment have turned against smoking, as its health hazards have become plain. The motion picture association's policy is the latest move against smoking, following the multibillion-dollar settlement with the tobacco industry in 1998.

Tobacco industry giant Philip Morris USA said yesterday it supported the new policy and has for years refused requests to use company products in films.

Washington bars and restaurants enacted a smoking ban in January, following those in other major U.S. cities and countries around the world. Some California municipalities have banned all public smoking.

The new policy for the movies allows for mitigating circumstances in which smoking may not affect a rating, the trade group said. For instance, the rating on historical films -- such as 2005's "Good Night, and Good Luck," set in 1953, when indoor smoking seemingly was required by law -- would not be affected.

Foreign films will also fall under the new ratings criteria. New versions of French art films, such as the 1960 classic "Breathless," in which even the main character's dying breath is seen in a puff of smoke, could be particularly hard hit.

The movie ratings system was put in place by former motion picture association chairman Jack Valenti in 1968 to head off threats of federal regulation in response to rising public concern over violent and sexual images in films.

Today, groups such as the American Legacy Foundation -- created as a result of the 1998 tobacco settlement -- the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization have called for films with smoking to receive an automatic R rating unless the smoking is historically necessary or portrayed in an unfavorable fashion. The foundation called the new policy "wholly inadequate" because it falls short of slapping an automatic R on films that contain smoking.

In a March interview on National Public Radio, Stanton A. Glantz, a University of California at San Francisco professor of medicine who started the Smoke Free Movies campaign, said research shows that children who see a great deal of smoking in movies are three times more likely to start smoking than children who do not.

Over a recent two-year period, the number of new films that included even a fleeting image of smoking dropped from 60 percent to 52 percent, reports an MPAA study, and 75 percent of those films already received an R rating for content other than smoking.

Christopher Buckley's 1994 satirical novel, "Thank You for Smoking," follows a tobacco lobbyist's efforts to counter the anti-smoking tide by encouraging Hollywood to include more smoking in movies. The film version of Buckley's book depicts no smoking.

Of the policy, Buckley wrote by e-mail: "I can only hope this means that the MPAA will strip such films as 'Casablanca,' 'To Have and Have Not' and 'Sunset Boulevard' of their G-ratings and re-label them for what they were: insidious works of pro-smoking propaganda that led to millions of uncounted deaths. Bravo."
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From the Motion Picture Association of America
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, May 10, 2007

FILM RATING BOARD TO CONSIDER SMOKING AS A FACTOR

Los Angeles – The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) today announced that the rating

system is enhancing the amount of information provided to parents on the issue of smoking in films.

In the past, illegal teen smoking has been a factor in the rating of films, alongside other parental

concerns such as sex, violence and adult language. Now, all smoking will be considered and

depictions that glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or

other mitigating context may receive a higher rating.

The MPAA oversees the Classification and Ratings Administration (CARA) on a joint basis with the

National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). Today, MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan

Glickman issued the following statement:

“The MPAA film rating system has existed for nearly 40 years as an educational tool for parents to

assist them in making decisions about what movies are appropriate for their children. It is a system

that is designed to evolve alongside modern parental concerns. I am pleased that this system

continues to receive overwhelming approval from parents, and is consistently described as a valuable

tool they rely upon in making movie-going decisions for their families.”

“With that in mind, the rating board chaired by Joan Graves will now consider smoking as a factor—

among many other factors, including violence, sexual situations and language—in the rating of films.

Clearly, smoking is increasingly an unacceptable behavior in our society. There is broad awareness of

smoking as a unique public health concern due to nicotine’s highly addictive nature, and no parent

wants their child to take up the habit. The appropriate response of the rating system is to give more

information to parents on this issue.

“This action is an extension of our current practice of factoring under-age smoking into the rating of

films. Now, all smoking will be a consideration in the rating process. Three questions will have

particular weight for our rating board when considering smoking in a film: Is the smoking pervasive?

Does the film glamorize smoking? And, is there an historic or other mitigating context?

Additionally, when a film’s rating is affected by the depiction of smoking, that rating will now include

phrases such as ‘glamorized smoking’ or ‘pervasive smoking.’ This ensures specific information is

front and center for parents as they make decisions for their kids.

“Some have called for a ‘mandatory R’ rating on all films that contain any smoking. We do not

believe such a step would further the specific goal of providing information to parents on this issue.

Unfortunately, the debate on this extreme proposal has become heavily politicized, and many

inaccurate statements have been made. While those pushing this proposal are no doubt wellintentioned,

it is important that there is an accurate understanding of the declining prevalence of

smoking in non-R rated films. The rating board has comprehensively reviewed depictions of

smoking in every rated film over the past several years. From July 2004 to July 2006, the percentage

of films that included even a fleeting glimpse of smoking dropped from 60 percent to 52 percent. Of

those films, 75 percent received an ‘R’ rating for other factors. So, three out of every four films that

contained any smoking at all over the past few years are already rated ‘R.’

“In our regular dialogue with parents, they frequently note that depictions of smoking in films have

significantly declined in recent years. They often tell us that they cannot recall a recent incident in

which they took their child to a G, PG or PG-13 film and found a scene involving smoking that was

objectionable. Moreover, parents are very clear to us that they—not the industry and certainly not

the government—should determine what is appropriate viewing for their kids. What they want is

information, and that is the action we are now taking.”

About the MPAA

The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) serves as the voice and advocate of the

American motion picture, home video and television industries from its offices in Los Angeles and

Washington, D.C. Its members include: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution; Paramount Pictures; Sony

Pictures Entertainment Inc.; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Universal City Studios LLLP;

and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

###

For more information, contact:
MPAA
Seth Oster
(818) 995-6600
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Joel Stein: Relax, smoking in movies is, like everything else, just fiction

Apr. 24, 2007
By JOEL STEIN

People look cool when they smoke. That long, confident pause on the inhale. The ability to make smoke billow forth from inside their bodies. Who’s going to argue with someone gesturing with a laser pointer that’s on fire? The only thing that could make smoking look cooler is if they made cigarettes that smoke tiny cigarettes.

That’s why movies show people smoking and doing other cool things like killing people and sleeping around, and not guys typing their newspaper columns. Especially if they move their lips while typing. And don’t wear pants.

But a group of decidedly uncool people — people at Harvard — want to get rid of smoking in movies. A report delivered to the Motion Picture Association of America by the Harvard School of Public Health advised that studios “eliminate the depiction of tobacco smoking from films accessible to children and youths.” I like that Harvard still uses phrases like “accessible to youths.” Harvard is going to have to revamp a lot of its research procedures when it hears about the Internet.

The study was run by Associate Dean Jay Winsten, the guy who helped bring us the designated driver program in the late 1980s. That was a huge success because it lent moral authority to my decision to stop drinking Milwaukee’s Best in high school. Also, he claims it has saved lives. All I know is that Jessica Pagasch got in my car once.

When I asked Winsten if directors should only make movies in which people eat vegetables and lean protein and work out all the time, he said that wasn’t what he was after. Which was disappointing, because a world in which every movie contains a “Rocky” training sequence seems pretty awesome.

“I’m not sure where you draw the line, but I’m pretty sure that tobacco smoking is on one side of it,” he said. “Because it’s the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. And we’re talking about protecting kids.”

Winsten said studies have shown that kids who see lots of movies with smoking in them are 2.7 times more likely to try a cigarette. That’s a higher correlation than in studies about violence or sex in movies. Which I know is true because I watched “Porky’s” about 200 times in junior high and I still wasn’t getting any.

In fact, according to an ad taken out in Variety by Smoke Free Movies, films are responsible for 5,000 smoking-related U.S. deaths a month that might have been prevented by an R rating. Time Warner alone, the ad says, is responsible for 35,000 such preventable deaths in the past 2 1/2 years. It also might have killed the souls of whoever had to count those smoking scenes.

Stanton Glantz, the University of California, San Francisco professor who runs Smoke Free Movies, says movies are responsible for causing half of the 800,000 kids a year who start smoking to pick up the habit. He thinks the Harvard study is going to force MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman to put an R rating on any film that shows a lighted cigarette. “All we’re asking for is that Hollywood treats smoking in the movies as strongly as using (the f-word).” Nothing puts you off balance like a moralist with a potty mouth.

I have trouble believing that the media are as powerful as Winsten and Glantz claim, possibly because my columns have never had any effect on anything.

I also don’t believe that showing implies approval. Not everything a character does is meant to be positive or desirable. Even if smoking looks cool, it doesn’t necessarily make you want to do it. Getting a machine gun for a prosthetic leg looks pretty cool too, but three weeks after “Grindhouse” opened, most people are sticking with their legs.

It’s clear that Glantz and Winsten mean well. Even amid the teenage consumption of coverage of Paris and Lindsay and Britney’s partying, getting rid of smoking in movies might have some effect in signaling that smoking is socially unacceptable. But even if Leonardo DiCaprio’s chain smoking in “Blood Diamond” causes kids to try cigarettes, that’s the price of liberty. Art is empty propaganda if it just shows the world as we want it to be. The Harvard report states that “most smoking in movies is both unnecessary and cliched.” But most everything in movies is unnecessary and cliched.

When smoking becomes as shocking and publicly unacceptable as nudity, gore and cursing, you can reflect that by putting an R on those movies. But by that time, it won’t be in movies any more than men wearing hats. Which, by the way, also looks cool.

Joel Stein is a columnist for The Los Angeles Times. E-mail him at jstein@latimescolumnists.com
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How to identify America's totalitarians

May 2, 2006
Dennis Prager

As a graduate student in international affairs at Columbia University, I specialized in the study of totalitarianism, especially, though not only, the communist variety. I found the subject fascinating, but I never for a moment imagined that any expertise gained in this field would prove relevant to American life.

Sad to say, it has turned out to be the most valuable subject I could have studied. The totalitarian temptation is not confined to Nazis and communists; it can rear its head in any society and gradually destroy it. And as the Soviet dissident joke notes, one quick way to identify totalitarian threats to liberty is to identify those who falsify the historical record on behalf of their cause.

In America today, two groups are most actively engaged in falsifying history: the American Civil Liberties U nion and the anti-smoking movement.

The ACLU is suing cities and counties to remove crosses from their city and county seals. One of the ACLU's greatest victories was getting the Board of Supervisors in a 3-2 vote (the three were the three leftist supervisors) to remove the tiny cross from the seal of Los Angeles County. Of course, this was done in the name of separation of church and state; no one falsifies history without some higher motive. But falsifying Los Angeles County's history was the issue. The cross was on the seal because Los Angeles was founded by Catholics. That is why it is named "Los Angeles," "the angels." (Once the ACLU successfully removes all crosses from cities and counties, will it move on to changing religious names such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and St. Louis, not to mention Corpus Christi?)

The attempts by the ACLU – and the Left in general – to expunge the Judeo-Christian roots of America from American history are mirrored by the attempts of America's anti-smoking organizations to expunge the history they object to – images of Americans smoking.

Examples of anti-smoking fanatics doctoring photographs are so legion that I can only offer a few examples in the space of a column.

In 1999, the U.S. Postal Service released a stamp depicting the famous abstract expressionist artist Jackson Pollock. The most famous photograph of Pollock, who loved to smoke, was a Life Magazine photo of him with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. The Postal Service used the photo, but digitally removed the cigarette.

As a columnist in the MIT student newspaper wrote at that time, "To strip Pollock of his cigarette would be like taking away the character-defining cigar from Sigmund Freud. Would you replace Freud's cigar with a fat pencil?"

The question is not rhetorical. Of course, the Postal Service would.

This is all new. As recently as 1982, the Postal Service issued a stamp honoring President Franklin D. Roosevelt that showed a profile of the president and his trademark cigarette holder.

The Disney Corporation has done this to characters in its films – even the arts are falsified because of the totalitarianism of the anti-smoking movement. In its 2000 re-release of the 1948 film "Melody Time," Disney removed the cigarette from the cartoon character Pecos Bill. (Instead of a cigarette in his mouth, kids now see him holding a gun by his mouth!)

In his newest book, "Hitler and Stalin" (Yale University Press), historian John Lukacs notes that Hitler, the original anti-smoking zealot, had a cigarette removed from a photo of Stalin that Nazi Germany circulated when it signed its non-aggression treaty with the Soviet dictator. Hitler felt it was bad for Germans to see such a "statesman" (Hitler's term) with a cigarette between his fingers.

And Stalin, of course, was the father of doctoring photos, removing rival Bolshevik Leon Trotsky from all photographs in which Trotsky had appeared. (In one such photo, Stalin's photo changers failed to remove Trotsky's shoes, leaving Stalin amid a group of early Bolsheviks standing next to a pair of shoes.)

In 2001, the Salt Lake City newspaper Deseret News altered a photograph of James Dean to remove an unlit cigarette from his lips. To its credit, once this doctored photo was exposed, the paper's managing editor told the Associated Press, "It was a mistake ... We did want the cigarette to be less dominant, but when you start messing around with a picture, that's wrong."

Exactly. That's wrong. In fact, it's worse than wrong, it's totalitarian.

Those who want a fully secular America don't care about what the Left is doing to America's Christian history. And those who loathe cigarettes don't care about what the anti-smoking zealots (again, usually folks on the Left) are doing to photos and films. But, as Shakespeare said about a rose, totalitarian behavior by any other name smells the same – and that is a lot worse and a lot more dangerous than even cigarette smoke.

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Tobacco as an unwelcome Hollywood star

July 21, 2006

By MEGHAN A. O'CONNELL. UPI Correspondent

A Hollywood icon has fetched some bad press lately -- tobacco.

The substance garners more screen time in youth-rated films than R-rated movies, concludes a new national study.

"There's nothing else, no other single thing, that can be done to reduce youth smoking in the United States and the world than getting smoking out of movies," said Stan Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California and founder of Smoke Free Movies.

The study, "Trends in Top Box Office Tobacco Use: 1996-2004," was led by James Sargent of Dartmouth Medical School and supported by the National Cancer Institute and American Legacy Foundation. It analyzed the Top 100 box-office hits for each year from 1996-2004 and found that 56 percent of smoking occurrences are portrayed in youth-rated films, with 75 percent of youth-rated and 90 percent of R-rated movies depicting tobacco.

"Movie smoking is a little bit like lead poisoning," said Sargent -- it's something that an industry places in the environment of children that harms them. The American Legacy Foundation states that tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.

A 2005 report on a previous study by Sargent found that 38 percent of youth smoking can be traced back to tobacco imagery in films and that children with the highest exposure to cigarette use in movies are more than three times as likely to begin smoking than those with the least exposure.

Glantz said that prohibiting smoking imagery in movies rated PG-13 and under, except when it would lead to historical inaccuracy or when negative health effects are clearly shown, could easily be accomplished and would eliminate an estimated 120,000 tobacco-related deaths each year.

Smoke Free Movies advocates four policy goals to this end that have been endorsed by the World Health Organization, the American Heart Association, the American Legacy Foundation and the American Medical Association, among others. These recommendations include assigning an R rating for all future films containing smoking, prohibiting tobacco brand identification in films, airing anti-smoking ads before any movies containing tobacco imagery, and certifying in closing credits that no one working on film production was compensated for product placement.

"Sadly, many producers excuse themselves from their role in youth smoking citing artistic necessity and ignoring the health threats their films pose to the millions of America's children," said Stephen Havas, vice president of science, quality and public health for the American Medical Association.

Between one-third and one-half of all youth who try a cigarette will go on to become daily smokers, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that of all these, eventually one in three will die of a tobacco-related disease.

Some see the anti-tobacco effort in movies as a form of censorship, arguing that viewers should be able to choose for themselves what they want to see in films.

"The important principle is that filmmakers should have creative rights to depict human behaviors because that's what movies are about," said Gayle Osterberg, spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America, "and that is one of our great freedoms in this country, that freedom of speech and expression."

Osterberg agreed that smoking is a major health threat but noted that the MPAA has always urged parents to be informed about film content when allowing their children to see a movie. While the MPAA Web site provides links to other sites focusing on movie ratings, tobacco imagery is not a specific consideration when assigning an age-appropriate category for films.

Cheryl Healton, president of the American Legacy Foundation, said that this is not censorship because eliminating tobacco imagery in films would save lives. "These depictions actually kill people," she said.

The Major Settlement Agreement of 1998, a legally binding agreement negotiated between the four largest U.S. tobacco companies and 46 U.S. states, restricted advertising and marketing of tobacco products and required billions of dollars in payments to the states and anti-tobacco campaigns. Paying for product placement and authorizing the use of brand names is prohibited under this settlement, but producers can still choose to include tobacco imagery in their films.

The study report noted that tobacco brands appeared in 11 percent of the 100 top-grossing movies in 2004, down from 22 percent in 2000.

"We don't want our brands or brand imagery depicted in movies or television shows, and that has been our policy for nearly 15 years," said Jennifer Golisch, a spokeswoman for Philip Morris USA. "Although we don't engage in product placement, that doesn't mean that our brands are never shown. Some directors choose to depict our brands in their work without our permission."

Mark Smith, a spokesman for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, also emphasized that his business does not encourage product placement. "When you do see our products in films, it happened without our consent," he said.

Philip Morris USA and RJ Reynolds both are involved in youth smoking prevention efforts, including national advertising campaigns, youth development organizations and communications for parents on how to help prevent their children from smoking.

By restricting the use of tobacco in films, Smoke Free America hopes to also change tobacco's portrayal in television.

"There's a pecking order in Hollywood, and the movies are at the top of the pecking order," said Glantz, "and if we can change the movies, it will change in these other places."
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Flick Ashes
Do movies cause smoking?

Jacob Sullum | August 19, 2005

In the 2005 movie The Jacket, Kelly Lynch plays a drunk who burns to death after falling asleep while smoking. According to the research cited by activists who object to cinematic portrayals of smoking, Lynch's character is part of an insidious plot to lure children into the habit by making it seem cool and glamorous.

Studies in this area typically define pro-tobacco messages broadly enough to include all instances of smoking, actual or implied, along with discussions of tobacco and glimpses of cigarette logos, lighters, or ashtrays. A new study that takes a more discriminating approach, looking at the behavior of the leading characters in 447 popular films released since 1990, contradicts several claims made by critics who blame movies for encouraging kids to smoke.

Anti-smoking activists assert that smoking is more common in movies than it is in real life. The new study, reported in the August issue of the journal Chest, found that, overall, "contemporary American movies do not have a higher prevalence of smoking than the general U.S. population."

Activists complain that movies put cigarettes in the hands of attractive protagonists and link smoking to success and affluence. The Chest study found that "bad guys" were more likely to smoke than "good guys" and that, as in real life, smoking was associated with lower socioeconomic status.

"Most investigators have concluded that smoking is portrayed as glamorous and positive, but our study shows that the exact opposite is true," said lead author Karan Omidvari, a physician at St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark. Likewise, there was no evidence to support the idea that movie studios conspire with tobacco companies to target women or minorities.

Having shown that the indictment of Hollywood for pushing cigarettes is based largely on weak studies and loose talk, Omidvari and his colleagues were quick to say they nevertheless object to smoking in movies. Robert McCaffree, president of the foundation that publishes Chest, said "this study...emphasizes the need for change in this area, including increasing antitobacco messages in coming attractions and films."

Stanton Glantz, an anti-smoking activist who was involved in much of the research debunked by Omidvari's study, has a different solution in mind: a mandatory R rating for movies that include smoking. Last fall his Smoke Free Movies campaign took out full-page ads in The New York Times and other publications claiming that adopting this policy "would cut movie smoking's effect on kids in half, saving 50,000 lives a year in the U.S. alone."

It's hard to say how many teenagers would be deterred by greater use of the R ratin—especially if their parents knew that a single smoking scene was enough to qualify an otherwise unobjectionable movie for the not-without-a-parent-or-guardian category. But the weakest link in the chain of reasoning that charges the Motion Picture Association of America with killing 137 (middle-aged or elderly) "kids" a day by failing to make this simple change in its rating system is the assumption that half of the teenagers who start smoking do so because they saw it in the movies.

That assumption is based on a 2003 study that found 10-to-14-year-olds who had seen movies with many smoking scenes were more likely to try cigarettes than kids who had seen movies with fewer smoking scenes. The problem with attributing this association to the modeling effect of cinematic smoking is that it's impossible to control for all the differences in personality and environment that make kids more likely to see movies with a lot of smoking in them, which already tend to be R-rated movies.

Methodological difficulties aside, the size of this alleged effect is implausibly large, to put it mildly. Glantz says cinematic smoking accounts for even more real-life smoking than advertising does: 52 percent vs. 34 percent. Is it even conceivable that exposure to movies and advertising causes 86 percent of smoking? That all other factors in life together contribute only 14 percent?

At least as offensive as such patently absurd claims is the premise that every filmmaker should make his work conform to the dictates of the health nannies. Omidvari and his colleagues found that smoking was especially common in independent films, a fact they said may be due to the "antiestablishment or free-spirited" character of such movies. If anyone is making smoking seem cool, it's self-righteous busybodies like Stanton Glantz.
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