The trailer for Thank You for Smoking is one of the funniest I’ve seen in a while, so I was looking forward to this movie even before I saw this profile of director Jason Reitman in today’s National Post. It’s a fascinating read. The film — a satire of the tobacco lobby starring Aaron Eckhart, Robert Duvall, Maria Bello, William H. Macy, Sam Elliott, J.K. Simmons and others — is directed by the son of a famous director (Ivan Reitman) and based on a novel by the son (Christopher Buckley) of a famous conservative pundit (William F. Buckley, Jr.), and it was produced with a bit of help from Mel Gibson. Most interestingly, it sounds like tobacco lobbyists actually like this film, even though it casts their job in a negative light — kind of like the way mafia dons reportedly love mafia movies, I guess. Hope this one lives up to the hype!
MAR 23 UPDATE: Saw the film tonight. Loved it. Almost every character is sleazy or repugnant in some way, and yet almost every character gives voice to a piece of the truth. The satire is, if anything, a little more restrained than I expected, and a couple of plot elements are considerably underdeveloped, but I like the way the film juggles notions of personal, corporate, social and familial responsibility. It opened in limited release last Friday and is slowly expanding across the continent, so catch it if you can.
MAR 24 UPDATE: The Globe and Mail posted its own interview with Reitman today, e.g.: “I have a slight authority problem. Not in a skinhead kind of way, but I don’t want to be told what to do. I loved that this book said, ‘If you want to smoke, smoke; if you don’t, don’t.’ The book is not about tobacco, but about the mania for telling people how to live. . . . My film was not beautiful, not earnest, not one-sided and it’s not liberal. It’s completely un-Hollywood. My film is about good parenting, which is training young people to think for themselves. Hollywood is about bad parenting, which is telling young people what they should think.”
MAY 1 UPDATE: My review is now up at BC Christian News.
MAY 2 UPDATE: My review is now also up at ChristianWeek.
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