Posted on 04/02/2002 11:26:33 AM PST by Max McGarrity
KCRW Santa Monica (NPR) (listen to the show)
Host: Warren Olney
Stanton Glantz (SmokeFreeMovies) and Todd Field (Director, In the Bedroom)
WO: Dr. Stan Glantz is an anti-smoking advocate at UC San Francisco and he helped turn up the inside documents that forced the tobacco industry into its multi-billion dollar settlements with states and the Federal Government. Now he has his sites set on Hollywood. He wants movies in which actors smoked to be given "R" ratings starting with the Oscar nominated film "In The Bedroom" Stan Glantz, always good to have you.
SG: Thank you.
WO: What's wrong with "In The Bedroom".
SG: Well, "In The Bedroom" is actually a very fine film and I recommend people see it. The problem is that it has four times where it totally unnecessarily explicitly promotes Marlboro cigarettes and the reason that we in fact selected "In The Bedroom" to talk about in a full page ad, which was incidentally refused by Variety under pressure from Miramax, was precisely because it was such a good film. In the last year's American movies, the amount of smoking has about doubled and the American movies have become the main pro-tobacco influence in many parts of the world, and what I'm saying is that Hollywood needs to stop doing the tobacco industry's dirty work. Now "In The Bedroom" is actually an "R" rated movie so my recommendation that movies with smoking be rated "R" wouldn't really have effected "In The Bedroom" but the problem is that about two-thirds of the smoking in movies now is in PG, G, and PG-13 films and there's very strong scientific evidence that even after you account for all kinds of social factors and demographics, kids who see a lot of smoking in the movies are about 2½ or three times more likely to start smoking than kids who don't. And so the "R" rating recommendation is one of four recommendations I am making. The other three is that there be no brand identification, that there be a certification at the end of films that no-one got any payoffs for putting the smoking in the film, and that any film with any smoking in it have an anti-smoking advertisement in the trailers preceding it. These are recommendations which do not require actually altering the content of the film at all, other than getting rid of brand identification. It's just a matter of I think full disclosure to the public of what is going on.
WO: So is this a way of avoiding on your part a charge of censorship?
SG: Well, yeah, I'm a professor and I'm a great foe of censorship. I've been - the university has been sued by the tobacco industry twice trying to censor my work and so I'm absolutely the last person who would want any censorship but I also think that the stated purpose of the rating system is to give parents the information they need to decide what films their kids should see and given the very strong pro-tobacco influence of smoking in films they should get an "R" rating and given the long well documented history using some of the same secret documents you alluded to earlier about the tobacco industry's ties to Hollywood, I think we need to see a certification associated with each film that no-one got anything in exchange for whatever smoking they put in the film.
WO: You certainly are when you're talking about no brand ID. You are getting into the area of content. What is the explicit promotion of Marlboro that you refer to in "In The Bedroom"?
SG: Well there are two scenes in "In The Bedroom" where there is a pack of Marlboros sitting right in the middle of the frame and two places they talk about Marlboros. First of all, I think that none of it is necessary. I think Cissy Spacek's acting in the film is so strong that to say that she needs a cigarette to show that there's a lot of tension is just poppycock. I mean her acting - I mean you could - the tension that she transmits you could cut with a knife before you ever saw the Marlboros. But you know, if Todd Field and Cissy Spacek felt that they absolutely had to have cigarettes in the movie they could have done what's done most of the time which is just have a generic pack of cigarettes, like was in "The Royal Tannenbaums" or something. The presence of brand identification is another very very strong cue to encourage smoking. And I just don't - I never can think of a time where you need to have the brand shown.
WO: Stan Glantz at the University of California, San Francisco. Todd Field, the longtime actor who was in "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Walking and Talking". He co-wrote and directed "In The Bedroom" which received five nominations for the Oscar including the best picture and best screenplay. Todd Field, welcome to you.
TF: Hi, how are you.
WO: What do you say to the specific mentions of Marlboro?
TF: Oh, I find it somewhat comic that Mr. Glantz makes the absurd allegation of an attempt on my part to create a specific brand name awareness. I mean the brand name in question is specified twice in my film, yet in the ad, you know, Mr. Glantz has created, and is running in national papers, he specifies the same brand name nine times and shows the very still image of the 53 year old grieving mother Ruth Valley smoking a cigarette that he claims glamorizes the brand name in my film.
WO: I take it that you didn't intend to glamorize Marlboros. Why did you have to mention them by name?
TF: Well, you know, first of all, if it was a period film and it was taking place in WWII would you want them to order a pack of generic cigarettes or a green pack of Why We Fight Lucky Strikes? I mean, where the film takes place is in a very specific part of the country and my neighbors smoke, and this is the brand that they smoke, and I suppose I could have named two or three brands, if that would make him happier, but it's silly, and really ridiculous to think that somebody's going to order a pack of generic cigarettes. I mean that's just asinine.
WO: So let me ask you a couple of personal questions as well. It's my understanding that you in fact talked your father out of smoking?
TF: Yes I did. My father was a heavy smoker, and part of the, you know, part of what I imagined in the story is textbook, which is, you know, when people experience a tremendous loss or in this case, loss of a child, -- that kind of grief -- they tend to either pick up, or more generally fall back on old habits and they are generally oral, often smoking, eating, alcohol consumption. I mean, Matt Fowler, in this film, takes more drinks after his son dies than Cissy lights cigarettes. You know, she smokes four cigarettes over the course of, story wise, three months. So, you know, she'd have to - you know, she's a fairly light smoker. But it's - you know that's something that typically people fall back on. I remember there was an article in the New York Times right after September 11th and the reporter had gone around and was interviewing people on the steps of public places who were lighting up and saying, you know "Have you been a continual smoker, or are you a new smoker", you know "Has this triggered anything?" and you know, 60% of the people said "I quit smoking and haven't smoked in years and for some reason I feel like I have to do it again." I mean it's textbook. It's not - this is not imagined, this is not made up.
WO: So Stan Glantz, what about that, the need for verisimilitude, the fact that people don't order generic brands, they do order brands by name - doesn't that add to the film?
SG: Well first - no. I mean, first of all you could have made the film and I think the film would have been better without the cigarettes, and again, I want to be very clear. I think it's a very fine film and I hope it does well. But the fact that it was such a fine film made the Marlboro appearances all the more jarring. I mean, the woman portrays a 53 year old high school choir teacher married to a doctor. And I have a lot of friends like that. I teach in a medical school, and they just don't smoke, and they certainly don't smoke Marlboros. Marlboros is a brand smoked mostly by teenage boys. But I have - I was talking about this with a friend of mine who said, you know - actually a former smoker, and her brother was murdered actually, and she dealt with it - and it is a horrible thing - and she dealt with it by jogging, and there are many other ways that could have been chosen to have depicted the things that Mr. Field is talking about and in fact I think if you watch the film before Marlboro first appears that the kind of tension and the kind of grief and the kind of emotional content that he's talking about was already there absolutely in spades, I mean, that's what makes it such a good film. And the reason that we're running this campaign is to say to Hollywood "This is a very serious problem, this is greatly effecting kids worldwide and people need to take the problem seriously." The tobacco industry kills 4,000,000 people a year worldwide. Hollywood is very often concerned with various social issues, and this is one in the many many discussions I have had over the years with people in Hollywood that people just blow off. And what I'm saying to them is you need to take it seriously. I'm not advocating censorship, I'm not going to Congress and trying to get them to pass a law. I'm just saying that you need to deal with this problem with the same level of seriousness as you do worrying about whether animals are harmed. We're talking about people here.
WO: Back to Todd Field. Rob Reiner at Castle Rock reportedly has a policy where if anybody wants to have smoking, whether it's the director, the writer, or the actor they have to have a serious talk with Rob Reiner, the implication being that he's not going to allow it if it isn't absolutely necessary to characterization. What about Hollywood in general and yourself as a filmmaker. How seriously do you take this question?
TF: I take it very seriously. It's a choice, you know? You know, storytelling, the only reason it's ever effective is because by its very nature it's subjective. It's not intended to be idealized, politically correct or David and Goliath animated morality. It's a choice and it comes from an impulse and it sounds like Mr. Glantz is actually a frustrated filmmaker to me. I mean I applaud his efforts in one sense, but you know his ad raises some questions, and there are elements within the ad that amount to little more than shabby insinuation and he appears resolved to fabricate some kind of shield for these fallacies under the mantle of pretended movie know how. You know, it reeks to me of cultural McCarthyism. It seems much ado about nothing. I wouldn't condone anyone smoking, but this is pretend. And I can't imagine any underage person going out and picking up smoking and by the way, the people that I know that are older they do smoke Marlboros. Because they see a 53 year old grieving mother who has lost a child light four cigarettes. I think it's insane.
WO: Back to Stan Glantz. Jack Valenti is opposed to the ratings idea that you have come up with. He says the minute the rating system starts with smoking then it's going to be a movie where some chicken head is knocked off and it will become about cruelty to animals. Everybody will want a piece of the action. But what about drinking and sex and reckless driving, should all of those things be subject to movie ratings as well?
SG: Well, some of them actually are. But you know that's just poppycock. I mean, the amount of smoking in movies today is about twice what it was ten years ago, and it is way more than twice what it was in the 1970s and 1980s. What we've seen, and we've gone back and looked at a random sample of films from the last 40 years, the amount of smoking in movies dropped steadily beginning from the 60s through 1990, and to say that somehow the movies made in the 80s weren't as good as the movies being made today because they didn't have as much smoking in them is just silly. And I'd like to take issue with one of the points that Mr. Field made and to say that to think that a little bit of smoking in the movies makes a kid smoke is poppycock -- is just not true. There's a whole body of well done scientific literature where people have shown that the more smoking kids see in movies, after you adjust for things like whether their parents smoke and their friends smoke and all of that, increases the likelihood that a kid will start to smoke by about three times, and that's something when you talk about other things people complain about we just don't have that same level of scientific evidence.
WO: Todd Field, back to you. With regard to smoking and the way it is depicted in your film "In The Bedroom" and others as well, is it different from what it was back in the days when cigarette makers were in fact placing cigarettes, paying people to put them in and it was really a glamorized activity.
TF: I'm sure it is. I mean, you know, you can't clear a cigarette name with a company. They won't do it. They will not give you permission to use cigarettes. Any company, Philip Morris, whoever. They won't do it. And I would agree that there is less smoking going on in the world, which is a great thing. But, again, this is story, and it's about a woman who, you know, go back 30 years, who could have smoked. And Cissy did, she smoked Marlboros, and we talked about this together, which is what would happen if you lost a child. Is it something you might pick up again? Yes, was the answer. It's that simple. She smokes four cigarettes. The first time is after her son is dead. The second time is after she finds out that the person that killed her son has been let off. The third time is the first time that someone has ever tried to console her and it's not working, and the fourth time is at the end after she's taken an action that will change her life forever. It's not arbitrary, it's very specific, it's thought out and this is, again, it's subjective, it's storytelling. I'm not interested in making public service announcements although if Professor Glantz wants to talk about it later after the program I'd be happy to try to do something constructive in that regard, but that's not the point of the film. It's a story.
WO: What would you do constructively in that regard?
TF: Oh gosh, there's all kinds of things. I mean, the other thing you know, that's not being discussed here is you know, also makes this argument sort of less charged for me is you know, this is an American story, and this story couldn't happen in Denmark or Canada or someplace else. We have easy access to guns, you know. The number one cause of childhood death in this country is guns. Handguns. They're easily obtainable here. 10,000 children a year die of them. If they, you know, if that was a medical issue and not a social issue we'd be throwing everything that we had money wise and our government behind it to stop it, and yet it's a completely political social issue and it shouldn't be and I've talked to PACS, you know, which is an organization trying to do something about that and I would be willing to create any kind of commercial to take it out of it's social context and I would do the same thing for smoking or anything else that would harm young people in this country, but I would be damned if I would ever do it in a motion picture. It's fiction. Just like I wouldn't - it's as crazy as going through and editing a book.
WO: Very quickly, because we're almost out of time, I assume no payoffs, no compensation of any kind from the company for using Marlboros in "In The Bedroom"?
TF: We didn't get - you know, the other thing that Professor Glantz alludes to in one of his ads is that you know, we've got product placement from a candy company and a car company and all these other things. It's just crazy. No, we didn't get any of that money. If we did I wouldn't be in debt right now.
WO: Stan Glantz, very quickly, because as I say we're almost out of time, what about working out with Todd Field, putting together some kind of promotion?
SG: I'd love to work with anyone in Hollywood that wants to work to raise consciousness on this issue. Again I think he made a fine film and I think it's unfortunate in a way that it was the first really good example of some of the points I was trying to make that came along after I tried to make them. But I think that given that there is widespread concern that people are getting paid off, and I'm not saying they were in this case, one of the things I am recommending is that there be a certification at the end of any film that includes smoking from all the people made in the film, sort of like is done for animals -
WO: Okay.
SG: -- to simply certify that no one was paid off, because there is a long well documented history of such payoffs.
WO: Stan Glantz, Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco thanks for being with us. Todd Field, Director of "In The Bedroom" thanks to you. I think everyone wishes you well during the Academy Awards as well. Thanks for being with us.
No one should talk with food in their mouth. Or eat unhealthy junk food.
No more rudeness, no hitting, no improper touching. No character should make any other character feel bad.
What a screaming hypocrite or, better, what a cultural McCarthyite!
(And yes I know that McCarthy was actually correct in his assertions that the State Department was riddled with Communist spies and subversives).
I enjoyed Todd Field's assessment of Glantz ("cultural McCarthyism," and "frustrated filmmaker") until far down in the article where he goes off on handguns. (The number one cause of childhood death in this country"..."10,000 children a year die of them...) Everybody has a cause; the ones with a bully pulpit are the ones dangerous to our way of life.
WO: Dr. Stan Glantz is an anti-smoking advocate at UC San Francisco and he helped turn up the inside documents that forced the tobacco industry into its multi-billion dollar settlements with states and the Federal Government. Now he has his sites set on Hollywood. He wants movies in which actors smoked to be given "R" ratings starting with the Oscar nominated film "In The Bedroom"The doc needs a hobby and/or a life.
-Eric
If you don't smoke, it has no effect at all on you.. well it might help add 'color' to a charactor on screen, but that's about it.
Bottom line: If you smoke already it has an ifluence. If you don't, it means almost nothing. All a pack of Marlboro's will do is bring up images of the ole' Marlboro Man.
"Yes, indeedy. I'm also a great foe of private property rights and fully in favor of demonizing people whose behavior I don't approve of."
"Did I mention that I'm also an asshole?"
It is spelled HYPOCRITES
Let's take this to the next step.
If new movies with smoking are rated "R," what about movies from the past that show characters smoking?
TV doesn't show R rated movies without editing out the offending portions. So, what would they do with movies that depict smoking? How much of some movies would even be left given Hollywood's historical love affair with the cigarette?
When smoking is shown in a film the niconazis jump up and scream that children seeing this are going to be influenced to smoke. But when someone suggests that the violence and sex in movies could have an impact on children they are just religious right wing extremists trying to impose their morality on society.
is spelled HYPOCRITES
Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!
Can it be long, before the issue will be Hollywood movies that show people eating? Think it is time that people wake up to the real disease here and it is a disease that threatens everyone, not just smokers, or those who enjoy food; we know this virulence as Liberalism.
I know for a fact, it is making me sick. . .and should they do a case study; it will be noted that it is infecting far too many Americans and with consequences worse than death.
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