Regards, Ivan
(A non-smoker)
Posted on 06/19/2004 2:14:59 AM PDT by MadIvan
ONCE they plied Hollywood stars with free cigarettes and paid producers to feature their brands. From Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep to Sean Connery as James Bond, smoking in films often seemed sexier than most Hollywood love scenes.
Now cigarette companies are lobbying Hollywood studios to remove shots showing characters smoking their products.
In Paramount Pictures’ film Twisted Samuel L Jackson, the film’s star, is clearly seen lighting a Marlboro at a key moment. In the past Philip Morris, the world’s largest tobacco firm, would have welcomed such free advertising. But no longer.
The company’s vice-president, Howard Willard III, wrote to the fillm-makers in May stating: "We believe the motion-picture industry should voluntarily refrain from portraying or referring to cigarette brands or brand imagery in movies."
Philip Morris asked that Paramount cut any scene in which Marlboro cigarettes could clearly be identified from future releases of the movie on video and DVD.
This was not the first time a tobacco company has asked for its product to be edited out of a major motion picture. In January RJ Reynolds, who manufacture Camel and Winston cigarettes, warned Sony Pictures: "You do not have permission to mention or depict our brands in your films." RJ Reynolds asked that scenes showing a Camel advertisement and a character smoking Winstons be cut from the Julia Roberts picture Mona Lisa Smile.
Both Sony and Paramount refused the demands, citing both their artistic integrity and the difficulties of editing out smoking scenes. But that the exchange of letters took place at all shows how scared "Big Tobacco" has become of being seen to promote their products.
Under the terms of the 1998 legal settlement which forced Big Tobacco to pay $200 billion to US states over the next 25 years to compensate for the costs associated with smoking, firms are expected to take all "commercially reasonable" steps to crack down on any unauthorised use of their brand. The use of paid product placement in cinema, billboard and television advertising was banned.
The film industry defends its First Amendment rights to show the products and denies any paid product placement has occurred. But that it appears at all is anathema to the anti-smoking lobby.
According to Stan Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and one of the United States’ most prominent anti-smoking campaigners, "smoking in the movies is a more powerful promoter of smoking than traditional cigarette advertising".
Prof Glantz claims 390,000 American children are influenced and persuaded to start smoking each year by the depiction of smoking on the silver screen. It can even neutralise the effect of non-smoking parents as role models, he said.
A recent study by Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire suggested that children who are regularly exposed to on-screen smoking are many times more likely to smoke.
California’s deputy attorney-general, Michelle Fogliani, told the Wall Street Journal this week: "It isn’t enough for a tobacco company to say, ‘We had nothing to do with our brand of cigarettes being in that movie’."
But film-makers worry that the attack on cigarettes in films is the thin end of a wedge which will eventually force open the door to restrictions on a range of other products.
"Is Ford going to write letters saying don’t use our cars if you’re crashing them? Or is Smith & Wesson going to write letters saying don’t let bad guys use our guns?" asked Vans Stevenson, the vice-president for state legislative affairs at the US film industry body, the Motion Picture Association of America.
Regards, Ivan
(A non-smoker)
Ping!
I get the urge to take up smoking every No-Tobacco Day. (So far resisted, but if I get annoyed enough...)
So the tobacco companies don't want their products in films to avoid bad publicity and lawsuits.
The world has gone cukoo.
Stanton Glantz at it again...............
This is a good point. The Walther PPK .38 is James Bond's signature gun. It's nearly iconic to the movies.
I've got a big Sancho Panza 8x54 cigar in my humidor that I'm going to break out on the next "Snuff out smoking day" the American Lung Association puts on in town.
The anti-smoking lunatics have gotten their taste of tyranny and they love it.
The tobacco companies are reaping what they've sown.
Tobacco barons try to kick a bad habit in Hollywood
You've got that right.
too bad it's not stanton glantz's face in that picture.
Is that the Naughty Nun? I may convert.
too bad it's not stanton glantz's face in that picture.This face ??
Threw that together really fast. Gotta head out the door. See ya'll later .....
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks!!!!!!!!! that's great.
ewwwwwwwwwww. You ruined it
Or is Smith & Wesson going to write letters saying don’t let bad guys use our guns?"
We can only hope. There are too many Hollywood hypocrites who made their living in violent movies.
THAT'S the face!!!!!
Glantz is a professor of MEDICINE?
When did THAT happen?
If in fact this is truth and not another anti lie it must have been an honorary degree.
He is a professor in the medical department............but I doubt he ever has time to do anything as mundane as teach a class.
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