A cigarette in hand onscreen is just a gun aimed at a kid (give me a break alert)

Mpls (red)Star Tribune / NY Times ^ | 8/12/02 | Joe Eszterhas

[Valin]

CLEVELAND -- I've written 14 movies. My characters smoke in many of them, and they look cool and glamorous doing it.

Smoking was an integral part of many of my screenplays because I was a militant smoker. It was part of a bad-boy image I'd cultivated for a long time -- smoking, drinking, partying: rock 'n' roll.

[Valin]

I/I'm/I'd 36 times, me/my 15 times
ME me me it's all about me
No ego problems here.

[MotherSpector]

What about glorifying marijuana and cocaine in film?

[Wolfie]

Sharon Stone had a cigarette in that scene? Funny, I didn't notice.

[mewzilla]

I have a sneaking suspicion that if smoking stops looking cool to kids, or starts looking very dumb, many won't take it up. I don't know anyone who started smoking after he/she was an adult.

[realpatriot71]

Sharon Stone had a cigarette in that scene? Funny, I didn't notice.

Bwaaaahahahahaha! You must be a libertarian!

[realpatriot71]

This cracks me up. People around here get all indignant when Hollywood puts sex and other illegal drugs into movies, but when someone suggestz that maybe cigarettes are bad in movies too? Katie bar the door 'cause we're pi$$ed now! As we all know cigarettes are GREAT for ya, right after brocolli, on the chart . . . see?

[leadpenny]

We in Hollywood . . . .

Could he be any more elitist?

[Publius6961]

I/I'm/I'd 36 times, me/my 15 times
ME me me it's all about me
No ego problems here.

The one applicable line he forgot:

There is no living thing more righteous than a reformed prostitute.

[Publius6961]

I don't know anyone who started smoking after he/she was an adult.

I do.
But so what?
Anecdotal evidence is so... 70s

[weegee]

So Joe gives up smoking and drinking but only rails against the legality of smoking.

Joe writes an assortment of lurid films from Basic Instinct to Showgirls and yet he goes to church on Sunday and thinks that he only needs to recant his stance on tobacco to be a changed man.

Clearly the man is delirious. He should not be the object of scorn, however. Maybe he'll live long enough to understand all of his errors and even make ammends for some of them.

[Batrachian]

"A cigarette in hand onscreen is just a gun aimed at a kid"

I'm going to confess something here: I hate kids. The very sound of their high-pitched, whining, demanding voices is enough to infuriate me. I don't give a rat's rear-end if they smoke, drink, kill each, or anything else, as long as they stay the hell away from me. I'm so sick and tired of having to hear about the children, and worse yet, having to care, that if I have to hear any more about, I'm going to vomit.

They say that the problem with kittens is that they grow up to be cats. It's the opposite with children. We have to endure the useless little SOBs for twenty years (or more) until they become the slightest bit useful.

Let their parents police them. I don't want to hear about it.

[marron]

Joe writes an assortment of lurid films from Basic Instinct to Showgirls and yet he goes to church on Sunday and thinks that he only needs to recant his stance on tobacco to be a changed man.

God finds them where he finds them. And starts reeling them in from there.

[lavaroise]

And what is a AIDS mardi gras gay parade???

[robertpaulsen]

"He's not exactly your average Joe. Eszterhas has made a career--and a fortune--scripting tales of scandalous sex and blue-collar babes."
--- eonline

Not only Basic Instinct, but also Flashdance and Showgirls. And he's going to lecture to us on the dangers of exposing children to smoking.

[Gabz]

I don't think there is anything I despise more than a sanctimonious reformed whatever.

Please save us from these busy-body do-gooders.

[weegee]

I looked at his list of films and knew some of the bigger "hits". How many of them are even available to kids (many are are R or even NC-17)?

Okay, I know that the American Library Association has a policy of permitting anyone of any age to view movies of any "suggested" rating and that cable doesn't restrict R rated films to nighttime anymore but just how many kids see his films?

He sees two threats, second hand smoke and kids who take up smoking to emmulate onscreen characters. His solution for second hand smoke is to ban all smoking. His solution for emmulation is to stop "glorifying" cigarettes.

[Valin]

I'm going to confess something here: I hate kids.

I love them! They are wonderful with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

[shrinkermd]

American Rhapsodywas a terrifically funny book. It skewered Clinton, the author and men of his generation in respect to their sins and habits. In this book, as I recall, he disussed his drug use as a young person and lectured against it --I believe he had biological and physical consequences of the cocaine at least.

All the criticisms found here have merit, but why not give him a chance to make amends and meet his maker with a changed heart and behavior?

[Valin]

I don't know. And I'm not really sure I want to.

If ignorance is bliss then I a happy man.

[Mr. Thorne]

I wouldn't presume to speak for ALL the people 'around here,' but...

SOME people around here (myself included), find it laughably hypocritical when people like 'ol Joe (who, as someone else pointed out, put out BI and Showgirls), comes to the conclusion that ONLY WHAT HAS HURT HIM is a bad thing to show onscreen.

I didn't catch a screed in the text against: violence, fornication, alchohol or drug abuse. Nothing about the consequences, say, of the gay rights agenda they all so heartily endorse, or the 'right to choose' that no Hollywood leftist dare oppose.

So, according to Esterhaus' thinking, my 11 year old stepson will NOT be influenced by such delightful fares as, oh, American Pie, for example, to think that sexual adventures ought to be the be all and end all of his world. He will NOT be influenced by vulgarity or violence in any given movie. But he WILL be influenced when the star picks up a cigarette.

Frankly, I don't know which way to lean on the whole 'influence' issue. By all rights, I ought to be a chain smoker (both parents smoked, grew up before cig prohibition hit ads/tv/movies). I'm not. Tried one at 12, thought it tasted like crap, decided it was too much trouble to bother with the things.

So. What to do? The current rules are, to my mind, ridiculous. Can a cartoon character incite children to cigarettes (joe camel)? Will billboards with a cigarette ad cause, indirectly, cancer? Our idiotic legislators seem to think so. Why not, then, ban the alchohol (dui, cirrhosis) billboards and the strip club (STDs) billboards?

Will Sharon Stone's smoking cause children to pick up a cig, cause it looks cool? Well, then, how will her lewd behavior in various films affect them (if nothing else, I would think Good Filmmakers would at least insist on a condom)? How will various rapper's vulgar mysoginism affect the yoots of America?

It's either fantasy, and not an influence, or it's advertisement, intentional or not, and thus an influence. I simply don't think there ought to be a double standard.

And for anyone who doesn't think HOLLYWOOD thinks they're having an influence, run through the Lethal Weapon sequels. Check out the posters on the police station walls (anti-fur, gun control), the slogans taped on Murtaugh's refrigerator (pro-abortion, anti-apartheid), the shirt worn by his daughter (pro-choice).

An anti-fur poster in a police station? Please.

(BTW, rp, this isn't a shot at you, old chap, I'm just trying to put forth why it is that some of us think this is laughable.)