Big Tobacco, Hotter Than Ever

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Big Tobacco, Hotter Than Ever

Chris Buckley's Novel Lights Up the Screen

 

By William Booth

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, January 23, 2006; Page C01

 

PARK CITY, Utah -- There were no ashtrays stuffed with crushed butts

at the dinner party for the cast of the wicked little comedy " Thank

You for Smoking, " now showing at the Sundance Film Festival. But then

again, smoking isn't really the point of the new film. Spin is.

 

" Actually, it's about freedom, " says its first-time director, Jason

Reitman, who also said, " What this movie is really about is good

parenting. "

 

He says this with a straight face. So as you can see, it is about spin.

 

The film, based on the Washington novel by Christopher Buckley,

follows the adventures of Nick Naylor, chief spokesman for the barely

ficticious Academy of Tobacco Studies, whose job is to defend the

manufacturers of coffin nails from the likes of a goody-two-shoes

senator (William H. Macy), naughty Washington Probe reporter (Katie

Holmes), and Hollywood super-agent (Rob Lowe). It is a twisted take on

" Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, " except there are no innocents here. It

is scheduled to open in Washington on March 17 and could be popular

with the K Street crowd. Or not.

 

" It fits nicely into the current hysteria over lobbyists, " says a

hopeful Reitman, pointing to the Jack Abramoff scandal currently

playing on Capitol Hill. " Which has got to be good for the movie, right? "

 

In the film, Nick (played throughout with a rakish grin by Aaron

Eckhart) is asked by his young son: Dad, what makes America the

greatest country on Earth? Without a beat, he answers, " Our endless

appeals process. "

 

As Nick says, " If you argue correctly, you're never wrong. "

 

On Saturday night, Buckley clutched a glass of chilled white, ignored

the pecan-crusted fowl served in a hulking chalet perched up Summit

View Drive above Park City, and explained that Hollywood moves in

slow, expensive and mysterious ways.

 

His satiric novel was bought by Mel Gibson even before it was

published in 1994. Gibson, Buckley recalled, was particularly

attracted to the vision of himself playing Nick -- and running naked,

covered in dozens of nicotine patches (applied during a kidnapping by

anti-smoking terrorists) down the Mall.

 

Alas, an image not meant to be. The smoking project wheezed on and on

in development purgatory. Gibson and Warner Bros. somehow just

couldn't bring themselves to release a big broad comedy that features

a hairless cancer boy and the MOD Squad, aka the Merchants of Death.

These are the lobbyists for the alcohol, tobacco and firearms

industries, who spend boozy luncheons fighting for bragging rights --

in this case, the most customers killed by their products.

 

Buckley eventually told Gibson and company to send him a postcard on

the day that principal photography would begin. He assumed the film

would never get made. Until, that is, Reitman, the 28-year-old son of

director-producer Ivan Reitman ( " Animal House, " " Ghostbusters, " " Old

School " ), read the Buckley book and decided it would be his first

film. " I loved it from the first line, " Reitman says. " I just had to

make it. "

 

Hubris? Well. Reitman says despite what one may think, being the fruit

of hugely bankable Hollywood loins is not the ultimate calling card.

Most show business spawn, Reitman says, " are assumed to be uneducated

arrogant brats with drug problems. " Reitman does not seem like any of

that. He readily admits he was bombing out of the pre-med program at

Skidmore College, so he transferred to the English department at

University of Southern California. He made some shorts, then

commercials (Burger King, Amstel Light) and had secured the attentions

of an agent by the time he begged for a chance to write the " Thank

You " screenplay. One day, Gibson called him -- from his airplane --

and said he loved the draft.

 

Reitman never heard from Gibson again. Poof, the project disappeared

again like a smoke ring.

 

As it turned out, the movie got made only after Reitman joined forces

with young David Sacks, who had just cashed out of Silicon Valley and

moved to Los Angeles after selling his company PayPal to eBay for $1.5

billion. Even so, Sacks says, it took him 18 months to buy the rights

to " Thank You " from Gibson and Warner Bros. " They wouldn't even return

his calls, " Reitman says. " It's one of the funny things about

Hollywood. Nobody wants to part with things. "

 

The fun wasn't over yet. The film premiered at the Toronto

International Film Festival in September, where it was an audience

favorite. Paramount Classics announced, on what they said was a

handshake deal, that they had bought the movie. Not so fast. Sacks

actually inked a contract with Fox Searchlight, which is now

distributing the film. By the way, Paramount Classics co-presidents

Ruth Vitale and David Dinerstein were relieved of duty in October.

Indie film is a rough playground (though a small one; it's worth

remembering that the movie cost $10 million to make; the McMansion

where the cast party was held was for sale for $9 million).

 

Reitman says he hopes " Thank You " plays well across political lines.

Targets include not only lobbyists but daytime talk show hosts, the

Red Cross, Hill staffers, Washington journalists and Hollywood itself.

Anti-smoking advocates might enjoy the drubbing that Big Tobacco gets.

With sales slipping, the exasperated head of the Academy of Tobacco

Studies lights into his team: " We sell cigarettes. They're cool.

They're available. And they're addictive. Our job is almost done for us. "

 

The movie's point of view is not so much Democrat or Republican as

libertarian, meaning that Nick professes at a Senate hearing that when

his son reaches 18, and if he really wants to smoke, Dad will buy him

his first pack. " It's a comedy, but I think it says freedom is tough,

liberty is tough, which by the way, is something I believe in too, "

Reitman says. " I don't like government making decisions for us. I

don't like authority. "

 

Reitman doesn't smoke; says he never has. Some of the actors confessed

they did when they were young and reckless. Funny, though, none of the

characters smokes in " Thank You for Smoking. " Except Robert Duvall,

who plays the Captain, a North Carolina tobacco baron, who does a

scene in a hospital bed, waving an unlit cigar after having another

heart attack.

 

" The fear was that this would somehow be pro-tobacco, " Reitman says.

" And that just seemed to make people nervous. "