Health Nazi's make smoking an R rated event.

MPAA Smokes an R Rating

It's taken decades of work by health activists, but the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) finally agrees: tobacco is harmful to kids' health. The cabal that runs the ratings system announced it'll weigh the presence of smoking when awarding NC-17s, Rs and PG-13s. It might sound proactive, but the MPAA's decision comes after ceaseless foot-dragging and equivicating, and doesn't go as far as most activists hoped. A recent Harvard study recommended all movies featuring smoking receive an automatic R. More context on that at Slate.
Even Hollywood insiders have been lobbying. In 2002, shlock-scriptmeister Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct, Showgirls) acknowledged his own culpability after being diagnosed with throat cancer:

Hollywood films espouse a belief in goodness and redemption. Yet we are the advertising agency and sales force for an industry that kills nearly 10,000 people daily. A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star onscreen is a gun aimed at a 12- or 14-year-old. (I was 12 when I started to smoke, a geeky immigrant kid who wanted so very much to be cool.) The gun will go off when that kid is an adult. We in Hollywood know the gun will go off, yet we hide behind a smoke screen of phrases like ''creative freedom'' and ''artistic expression.'' Those lofty words are lies designed, at best, to obscure laziness. I know. I have told those lies. The truth is that there are 1,000 better and more original ways to reveal a character's personality.

With Jack Valenti in that Hollywood Conference Room in the Sky,the MPAA seems to be caving a bit more to public pressure. First, new chief Dan Glickman opened up the MPAA's ratings process (an eensy bit). Now, he relents to health advocates. It's good news for the world, but one wonders: will studio chiefs, who many suspect are in bed with Big Tobacco, sit still while their fiefdom's walls slowly crumble? Anyway, time will tell whether the MPAA's anti-tobacco actions have any reprecussions onscreen. For now, smoking remains as heavy in the movies as it has anytime in the last 50 years.

Meh, doesn't bother me. It's not like smoking's ever an important part of a movie.




Unless it's a movie about smoking, that is...

a movie about smoking. geeze that'd be one hell of a boring movie. propoganda either way.

There goes the sequel to Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man. Shit.

So they are basically saying smoking a cig is like smoking dope? Lame.

-HECK!

i dont think they are trying to say smoking a cig is like smoking dope.

It's more like ok take brad pit up there, lookin a bad ass with a cig hanngin out of his mouh, it could be a New Port ad. I think they are just trying to make the point that kids are impressionable, and they see all these people they idolize smoking in moves. I dont know, it's stretching it a bit far. Most kida are going to see the movie anyway, if the only reason its r is because there is smoking in it. An r rating doesnt mean you can watch it until you are17 just you cant buy it. and most 12 or 14 year olds dont buy there own shit anyway.

Exactly, Buffy...

They aren't saying that it's a drug in the sense of pot, or something else. But, kids ARE impressionable. That can't be denied. People see celebs smoking... and looking sexy, cool, etc... and they thinking, "I want to be like that... I want to look like that." And therefore, they might pick up smoking.

Yeah that's why camel can't use Joe camel anymore, cause he's sexy cool man

My post is now R-Rated.

Dude, not cool. Kids look at this forum, you know?

Whidden is going to be responsible for causing children to want to become smokers. Man, we must go to Oklahoma, now, and destroy his dinger garden. He's out of hand.

Kids are childs play. I got nuns to smoke.

Dave... you're going to hell. I just know it!

First thing I'm doing, is smoking me a stogie when I get down there.