Thank You For Smoking - Preview
Preview by Jack Foley
YES, you read it right. The titles does read Thank You For Smoking.
The name is every bit as emotive as this satire intends, particularly given it provides a sly look at the notion of spin that’s centred around the tobacco industry.
The film is based on the book of the same name by Christopher Buckley and stars Aaron Eckhart as tobacco industry lobbyist Nick Naylor, an ambitious businessman given the task of raising the profile of cigarettes.
He does this by seeking to get more smoking into films, enlisting the help of Rob Lowe’s talent agent, while antagonising the hell out of an opportunistic senator (William H Macy) who has recently launched a crusade to get a poison label on each pack.
In between all of the spinning, Naylor must also contend with a manipulative reporter (Katie Holmes) and finds time to hang out with his own MOD squad – or merchants of death – from the liquor and firearms industries.
But before audiences jump on their high horses and criticise the film for preaching the virtues of cigarettes, it’s worth noting that the film is a satire and that it gets things largely spot-on.
Says Eckhart of his character: “He’s not really for cigarettes. He’s for the idea of having the right to say what he wants.”
Hence, his life doctrine that ‘you’re never wrong if you argue correctly’.
Directing proceedings is Jason Reitman, son of Ivan, who fell in love with Buckley’s novel as soon as he read it.
“I had never read narration that was so densely packed with intelligent humour,” he explained.
“I immediately identified with both Christopher Buckley’s voice and that of Nick Naylor. It had this wonderful libertarian point of view that made light of rough things but not in a nasty way.
“It had a way of saying things that could normally be cruel but were instead hilarious. Every moment in the book appeared to me as a filmic, visual scene. I saw the whole thing coming together in my mind and immediately wanted to make a movie out of it.”
Audiences will probably be glad that he did. The result is as sharp, insightful and funny as Reitman suggests.