Saratoga News

Smoking gun thickens the plot

By Dale Bryant

A cigarette can say a lot about a person. And I don't mean all that "smoking's bad for you; it can ruin your health" stuff. I mean interesting stuff. Like, for instance, if a guy casually blows smoke rings while taunting some poor slob he's about to blow away, you know he's really bad. Probably a sociopath. A more ordinary sort of a killer would hold the cigarette between his thumb and index finger, drag deeply, and drop his arm to his side, hiding the cigarette, but leaving a small telltale ribbon of smoke rising from the back of his hand.

Cigarettes can offer a big clue about how sexy someone is, too. How much more glamorous an actress appears if she can French inhale--that is, if she can blow smoke out her mouth while simultaneously inhaling it back through her nose and out again through her mouth. This is very sexy stuff.

Back when I was warming up to write the Great American Novel, I wrote a lot of short stories. Most of my characters smoked. Why? Because a writer can reveal a lot about a character by describing how he or she smokes. There are also endless possibilities for meaningful eye contact when a handsome stranger lights the heroine's cigarette.

There are perfectly good reasons why writers and movie directors used to inject cigarettes into dramatic situations. It's a nice little crutch. Characters can light cigarettes and exchange meaningful glances without ever having to utter a word of dialogue. Then cigarettes got a bad reputation. And characters in movies had to get along without them.

Movie characters could no longer light cigarettes across a table in an intimate little restaurant; they stopped puffing nervously while trying to meet deadlines; they even had to stop smoking in bed, which, of course, meant they no longer engaged in moody conversations, which probably is why sex on the screen has become such a dreadful bore.

For a while there, it looked as if a whole generation of Americans might grow up without ever knowing what French inhaling was. With smokers in real life pitifully lined up outside office buildings, dodging raindrops to grab an illicit drag on a cigarette, and smoking banned in restaurants and just about every other place where anyone who wanted to light up used to be able to, it seemed as if the pleasures of smoking might soon be relegated to the oral tradition. And I'm not talking here about anything Freudian. I simply mean that cigarettes had such a bad reputation that it looked as if the only way young people could learn about the tradition of smoking cigarettes was at the knees of their elders.

But that's all changing because of a trend I've been observing. Smoking is back on the silver screen. Big time. I know this because I watch a lot of movies. And I can tell you without fear of contradiction that I have not seen a movie in at least a year where people weren't smoking cigarettes as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

To watch movies these days, one would think that it's still OK to smoke in restaurants and offices; one might even think people still smoke after sex.

I'm not the only one who's noticed this phenomenon. A while back, an intrepid TV reporter asked a movie producer why so many people were smoking in movies these days. The reporter was so brazen as to suggest a little money might be passing under the table. Why a reporter could think such a thing is beyond me. Just because Coca Cola pays big bucks to ensure that a character in a movie pulls a Classic Coke from the refrigerator instead of a Pepsi? Or a car manufacturer pays to put a movie character in one make of car instead of another? I'm sure the reason is simply that it's easier for the writer to have the actors take meaningful drags on cigarettes rather than engage in dialogue.

I started smoking when I was in college, and I quit, under intense spousal pressure, when I was 25. I haven't longed for a cigarette in many years, but I have to tell you that watching all these people enjoying cigarettes in movies is making me remember all the things I liked about smoking. Like, for instance, when I lived in the college dormitory and I returned from the library just under the wire for the 10:45 p. m. lockout, and I climbed the stairs and wandered down the hall to Myrn Smith's room where all my friends were gathering to discuss the day and to light up a cigarette and pass it around so everyone could enjoy a drag or two. Eventually, we all smoked our own cigarettes, whole ones. God. It was so decadent. It was so good.

Do I remember waking up with a mouth that tasted like a herd of buffalo had stampeded through it? Not unless I force myself to. Do I remember those frantic early-morning searches for a cigarette butt? Only if I really concentrate.

I'm a fairly intelligent person, and I know all the reasons why people shouldn't smoke. I've known my share of people who've died from lung cancer or who suffer from emphysema. Many of them populated my early career as a journalist. We all worked under a haze of smoke, typewriters clicking furiously. After work, we'd gather in the hotel bar next to the newspaper and smoke more cigarettes while we enjoyed a drink. That was good, too.

At least it seemed good at the time. But of course that was back when I was young and consequences could be ignored or, at the very least, delayed. Sort of like in the movies.

Dale Bryant is the editor of the Saratoga News.

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