There is a lot of smoking in films that are set back in the days before smoking became well known as a serious health hazard. For example, in the film Maestro that I reviewed a few days ago, Bradly Cooper who plays Leonard Bernstein has a cigarette in his mouth pretty much all the time. This caused me to wonder if those were real cigarettes, because it did not seem right to have actors risk their lives with cigarette smoke just to play a role. Films now routinely carry a disclaimer that no animals were harmed in the making of the film, which is a welcome development, but why do we not carry that over to the actors?
This article explains that film makers often use prop cigarettes instead of tobacco-based ones.
Entertainment and tobacco: what a drag. Smoking is often used in acting performances to flesh out a character or setting, particularly to signify a sense of sophistication, historical authenticity, or rebelliousness. In theatrical performances, actors have long used fake or herbal cigarettes in smoking scenes due to public health concerns. Throughout most of Hollywood cinematic history, however, actors smoked real tobacco products on set. Humphrey Bogart, John Travolta, Rita Hayworth, James Dean, and Marlene Dietrich are just some of the big-name stars known to have performed with a real cigarette in hand.
…Today, actors usually approximate smoking onscreen with prop movie cigarettes, or cigarettes that don’t contain tobacco or nicotine. These herbal cigarettes usually contain marshmallow root, passion flower, cloves, or jasmine. Actors who have never smoked before may need to use their acting chops to make their herbal cigarette smoking look like they’re old hands at puffing. They also may need to learn to hide a grimace; following his extensive use of prop cigarettes while filming “Mad Men,” Jon Hamm said that the burning herbal concoction tastes “like a mix of pot and soap.”
…While prop cigarettes do not contain active substances tobacco and nicotine, they still emit carcinogens and toxins. According to Federal Trade Commission staff attorney Matthew Gold, “Any kind of cigarette you smoke has tar and carbon monoxide, which have very real health hazards associated with them.” In fact, studies indicate that the risk of serious health effects of herbal cigarettes may be no lower than those caused by real cigarettes.
While prop cigarettes without tobacco or nicotine may partially solve the issue of actors putting their lives in danger by smoking, the article says that they still pose some risks.
I wondered why it was necessary to show any smoking at all. While it is undoubtedly true that there was a lot of smoking back in those days, would cutting out the smoking entirely negatively impact a film? The above link says that “Smoking is often used in acting performances to flesh out a character or setting, particularly to signify a sense of sophistication, historical authenticity, or rebelliousness.” On the issue of historical authenticity, it is true that people who knew that Bernstein was a heavy smoker may observe its absence but is that a serious problem? After all, film depictions of real people and lives often take great liberties with their portrayals. Actual events are modified. Events that did not happen are added. Timelines are changed. Characters are eliminated and others added who are totally made up or are composites of several people. All manner of other changes are made that undercut historical accuracy. So why is showing smoking so important, since it very rarely by itself plays an important role in a film? Surely sophistication and rebelliousness can be shown in other ways?
Even though we know that people smoked a lot more in those days, would people now watching a film that was set in the period of heavy smoking but in which no one smoked even register the absence in their consciousness? Since not seeing people smoke is now the norm, it may not even be noticed, except by those who are sticklers for historical detail. Conversely, it is seeing people smoke in films that is jarring and draws my attention to it and away from the story by making me think, “Wow, they smoked a lot in those days!”
Sadly, they did smoke a lot in those days. And a popular Easter gift for children was a pack of candy cigarettes in the Easter basket. I have memories from the 1960s of riding in the car with my parents who would flick their cigarettes out of the window…and they would blow back into the backseat, sometimes burning the children if we weren’t quick enough to dodge. Usually we managed because there were no seat belts in the car to slow us down. This was just a fact of life for children in the 1960s.
As for movies, I also find it jarring in current (since the 2000s) movies when people smoke. In black-and-white movies, I wonder how badly the lead characters stunk, since they always seemed to have a cigarette in their mouths. I suspect, as you did, that if a movie was made with zero smoking--even if the characters smoked in real life--nobody today would really notice the lack of smoking.
SailorStar@1- I have memories of someone flicking a cigarette out through the window of their car last night while driving through rural upstate New York. In some places, time stands still.
I’m sure many here will remember The Dude’s failed attempt to flick his joint stub out the window of his car.
I’m put in mind of the Deep Space Nine episode “Little Green Men”, in which a bunch of Ferengi and a shapeshifter (Odo) are inadvertently thrown back in time and accidentally crash land in Roswell NM in 1947, with hilarious consequences. Specifically, that it was an (IIRC) unspoken joke that basically everyone in the cast (apart from the aliens) spent the entire episode constantly smoking -- practically the only time you ever see anyone smoking in Trek.
@3 Hmm, Star Trek was more progressive than the German Perry Rhodan dime novel series. Not only were the heroes smoking back in the 60s episodes, the FTL space battleship’s bridge chairs came with ash trays build into the arm rests.
Allready hillarious when I read that stuff in the 90s.
Why would it evoke that reaction more than once, or at all for someone who lived through those smoke-friendly days? I guess one could also be ‘jarred’ by the weird clothes, hairstyles, cars, speech patterns, etc.
OT, sort of. Any other sci-fi fans notice how often Roger Zelazny wrote the sentence “He lit a cigarette”?
SailorStar: I’m almost always amazed when I remember how downright stupid, inconsiderate and just plain dangerous so many smokers’ habits were back then. It’s like millions of people got hooked on cigarettes and never bothered to learn any sort of common-sense practices regarding what to do with the ashes or where to blow the smoke. And when called out for it, a lot of them got an attitude of both helplessness and entitlement — “I’m a smoker, I gotta blow it somewhere, it’s so rude of you to tell me how to act!”
Inaction, whether literary or thespian, soon gets tedious. Just dialogue rarely lasts long, seldom more than a single page or dramatic equivalent. Smoking gives the character something to do to break from the dialogue. I’m surprised that the quoted bit didn’t include that reason, as it is likely the most prevalent one.
With smoking down to 20% or less of the population, and almost universally prohibited indoors, writers need to find other tools to keep their characters dynamic. I agree with Mano that it has run its course.
Smoking still has its place. A biopic of George Burns without his cigar could not possibly capture the persona. Portraying a drug addict as a non-smoker would be like casting a young woman to play General Patton.
My mother was almost a chain smoker, and I grew up in a cloud of secondhand smoke in the 1960s and 70s. I developed asthma as a young adult, though I recall one asthmatic episode in late elementary school. (Adults brushed it off.) The asthma got progressively worse and worse, and impacts my daily life, even with strong drugs. I can’t help but note the studies that show a relationship between growing up in a house with heavy smokers and the development of asthma, though of course those studies didn’t exist when I was growing up…and my mother would have ignored them anyhow.
I married at age 20. When my mother discovered that her son-in-law disliked cigarette smoke, she invested in an air cleaner that was dutifully run in the living room whenever we visited. She would’ve blown off making that kind of accommodation for me, even though by that time I was starting to suffer from asthma. The idea that something so intrinsic to her life could be a problem for her daughter was not something she could face, though she loved me dearly.
So when I see characters smoking in a movie or other video, it brings back a host of unpleasant memories. I truly wish the film makers would do away with it.
One of the problems is that we’ve never normalized that smokers are drug addicts. Heck, I’m pretty sure there are a LOT of nicotine addicts that start getting their fix as soon as they wake up in the morning look down on meth or opioid addicts.
I can’t help but note the studies that show a relationship between growing up in a house with heavy smokers and the development of asthma, though of course those studies didn’t exist when I was growing up…and my mother would have ignored them anyhow.
The sheer amount of willful ignorance about this was absolutely appalling. Smokers knew damn well that inhaling smoke was bad for you, long before any of those systematic studies put all the anecdotes together. They all admitted — and laughed about — coughing their lungs out when they first started smoking (normally as teenagers). And many smokers tried to discourage their own kids from smoking, even as they laughed about their own rites of passage.
I remember an anti-smoking TV ad from the late ’60s or early ’70s, where a boy is trying his first cigarette in front of a mirror, and of course each drag he takes makes him cough. And the gentle voice-over says “Remember that first cigarette? Maybe your body was trying to tell you something.” Ya think?!
That’s like asking why we still have drinking in films. People smoke. Or vape. Deal with it.
We also have murders and wars in film. In fact, without alcohol, violence, sex, and drugs, there wouldn’t be movies at all.
@RagingBee and @Rockwhisperer: In the 1980s I was in college, and one of my roommates invited a friend from their hometown for the weekend. She asked, “You mind if I smoke?” in the (tiny) shared dorm room and I said, “Yes.” She was utterly shocked and appalled at *my* rudeness. I wasn’t the one trying to stink up and poison the air the room. So I sang her the “You mind very much if they smoke” jingle from the 1960s that we all grew up with.
Also, I just finished watching Miss Fisher’s Modern Mysteries on PBS. It’s set in Australia in (I’m guessing by the clothes, cars, decor of the homes) 1960s. There’s a whole lot of smoking in that show.
With *Maestro* getting some ridicule for the prosthetic nose, then the response from the makeup artist about how much time and work went into all of the makeup for the hyper-realistic age progression of Bernstein, the smoking adds to the question, where does the acting take place in a movie so thoroughly covered in veneer? Wouldn’t an actor be praised more for the portrayal by nailing the roll with rudimentary makeup, no prosthetic, and no smoking?
But the studios have decided that more is better and to get more is begging them to go wholly into AI for verisimilitude. Somewhere there are hours of recordings of Bernstein’s voice, and they could have been digitized, fed into a specific AI to create all the spoken Bernstein parts of the script, and have Cooper lip-synch his way through the movie with even less acting. With that said, it would behoove studios to start collecting high-definition digital recordings of all spoken parts of movies in their control not yet captured, along with getting copies of all available public domain recordings of famous people. There are so many bio films (AIo flicks?) yet to be made, what with so many recent deaths, and it takes way too much time for traditional methods to get them done. AI voices will actually increase the population of potential actors by including those with horrible speaking voices and good lip-synching skills.
roll=role
Stuntpeople (even actors now and then) sometimes get killed making films. Should we put a stop to that too?
Smoking was ubiquitous in the 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s, so anything set in those periods would look fake without it being depicted.
Sure was when I was growing up in Spain. Every single public place was crowded with smokers, cinemas had ashtrays in every seat, and the streets were full of butts. I remember, back in the mid 60s, street vendors who would sell single cigarettes from their barrow for a pittance, for when people ran out and needed an emergency smoke. And I remember the elevator doors opening with great clouds of smoke billowing out.
So, when historical accuracy and setting matters, at least pretend.
—
For ref:
https://www.usdish.com/news/blog/which-actors-smoke-the-most-on-screen/
Amusingly, Clint Eastwood is the top of that list, and he is a non-smoker outside his roles.
Actually hated the cigars he smoked in the movies, and that famous squint is the smoke getting in his eyes.
(https://www.slashfilm.com/1213742/clint-eastwood-choked-down-vile-cigars-for-the-sake-of-a-fistful-of-dollars/)
The key question for me (and the main point of my post right up in the first paragraph) is whether the smoking (or anything else for that matter) that creates risks for the actors and crew is necessary for the purpose of the story. Bernstein was a heavy smoker. But showing it did not contribute anything to the story. If Bernstein had been a non-smoker, you could have made the same film. But if (say) smoking was believed to have led to his death due to cancer or otherwise incapacitated him, that would be different.
WMD Kitty @#11,
Drinking is not at all the same. Actors are drinking some non-alcoholic liquid.
At work in the 1980s, there were ashtrays sticking out of the walls down the hallways, so smokers wouldn’t just throw their cigarettes on the floor (this was only partially successful). There were ashtrays in offices. There were ashtrays in the bathrooms. There were ashtrays in the technical library.
In the mid-1990s, The Powers That Be announced that smoking in the buildings would be phased out…and the screams of the smokers made it clear that they were indeed addicts, no different from heroin addicts.
And, in fact, when smoking could only be done outside, it became completely fine to take smoke breaks 3 -- 4 times an hour, for 8 hours. Need to visit the bathroom? Why, no, that was ridiculous--that’s what lunch break was for. Want to feed your addiction, go right ahead!
I also remember when restaurants had a smoking section and a non-smoking section. Often they would be side-by-side down the length of the restaurant, because of course cigarette smoke knows to stay at the smokers’ tables, right? There was equal wailing and gnashing of teeth when restaurants slowly went non-smoking starting in the mid-1990s. The addicts insisted they could not possibly abstain from their addiction for 30 -- 45 minutes to eat.
@18 Mano — Yes it absolutely contributes to the story. JR Oppenheimer was a veritable chimney of a smoker. Any depiction of him, or Albert Einstein without his pipe, would make everything else in the story suspect (at least for me). Smoking in period pieces, when everyone smoked, requires the nasty habit part too, it if authenticity matters at all.
I’m not sure how much “danger” these actors put themselves into when filming a few 10-minute scenes that include taking a couple drags off an herbal cigarette. If your role calls for James Dean, do James Dean.
@ardepithecus, 7:
“Portraying a drug addict as a non-smoker would be like casting a young woman to play General Patton.”
So.. like most of the casting decisions taken in the last six or seven years then.
(seriously -- if they announced a Patton biopic with Brie Larson in the title role, the only thing that would surprise me about that would be that they’d found some other actors willing to work with her)
@12 Marcus:
I don’t see that the world has need of more than one film. It will be called “Fluffy Bunnies and Kittens”.
On the other hand, perhaps the constant reminder of the mortality of all things would be too much of a downer.
Dennis K. @#20,
I was very familiar with Oppenheimer and his work. I worked for a couple of years at Los Alamos National Laboratory that he founded but was not aware that he was a heavy smoker or a smoker at all. I knew Einstein smoked a pipe but you can show him holding a pipe without him having to smoke it. Filming even short scenes involve days of shooting with multiple takes so the risk is not trivial, since we now know (and the quoted passage says) that exposure to cigarette smoke, even from herbal cigarettes, can be harmful.
Authenticity matters but (to me) not to the extent that I would risk the health of cast and crew unless it was absolutely necessary. The absence of some historical detail is not as noticeable as the addition of an anachronism.
@24 Mano — Then several historians have gotten this wrong, for example the fact checkers in “Fat Man and Little Boy” who have him puffing on cigarettes near constantly, and the authors of his wikipedia page (“A chain smoker, Oppenheimer was diagnosed with throat cancer in late 1965.”). I did not know him personally so I only have the internet to draw on. I’m glad to hear the perhaps he wasn’t such a heavy smoker, yet sad to see the possible revisionism regarding his personal life.
Dennis K @#25,
I can well believe that he was a heavy smoker and will take the word of historians that he was. All I am saying is that I was not aware of it even though I was familiar with his work and historical legacy, so seeing a film with him not smoking would not have been disorienting for me.
A different slant — this is framed as a safety issue for actors, but: if an actor actually is a smoker in real life, why should they not smoke in films on that basis?
(Smokers get grumpy when denied their smoke, and grumpy actors are probably not a good thing in general)
@26 Mano:
Though you might not be disoriented by the lack of smoking, others might take umbrage that omitting it would constitute whitewashing of a significant character flaw.
(I bit of googling earlier found an apparently defunct website offering reviews of smoking within films. It described its own rating system which assigned points -- more is worse -- for the amount of smoking, the significance of the smoker, the risk presented to those around etc. On the whole taking a dim view of the whole matter. But one part of the rating system that struck me was that it allowed for, by offering a discount on points already earned, smoking that “accurately represents the smoking behavior of an actual (as opposed to fictional) historical figure”.)
You don’t have to actually show the smoking to get the point across that someone was a smoker or smoking was prevalent. Several scenes with filled ashtrays, dropped butts, and CGI smoke-filled rooms will do the trick. If you need filler scenes, especially for Einstein and Oppenheimer types, daydreams of moving trains or chalk boards and erasers can provide plenty of clouds for sunlight to shine through and get some meaningful bit of knowledge across. too.
@5: ISTR reading that whenever Zelazny was stuck for what his hero would do next, he’d smoke a cigarette to help him think—and then a lightbulb would go off over his head, and he’d write, “He lit a cigarette”!
Some of the responses to this seem downright angry.
Found the incel still pissed about that interview Brie Larson did. I know I’ve not heard anything about Larson being such a pain to work with that actors aren’t willing to work with her. Why not whine about “wokeness” and get it out of your system.
Why is smoking still portrayed in movies? Product placement.
AI voices will actually increase the population of potential actors by including those with horrible speaking voices and good lip-synching skills.
Ehm, no, AI-generated faces and images will rather sharply DECREASE the population of potential actors by making them unnecessary, while tailoring every character’s visible features to whatever they can know about viewers’ tastes and expectations. Want a much younger Harrison Ford paired up with present-day Scarlett Johansson? AI can get you that, without having to pay any real people a real wage or deal with any of them uppity commie unions.
Tabby: Is Larson really that much “harder to work with” than other big-name actors? Seems to me at least some difficulty is an inevitable part of a profession where each actor is hired for their specific look, persona, previous demonstrated talent, and maybe eye-catching famous name; and once those casting decisions are made, everyone has to work with everyone else whether they like each other or not. And of course the most famous actors, playing the most central characters, will almost always get to inflict their particular demands or quirks on their less-indispensable colleagues without fear of getting written up or fired.
Case in point: James Caviezel. After hearing about him, I find it very hard to get upset about Brie Larson, or anyone else not sexually harassing others, being “hard to work with.”
I recall the normality of sitting in the movies with the stark projection beam overhead being highlighted by the haze of cigarette smoke filling the theatre. Now, I’m reminded of artist Anthony McCall’s 1973 film: ‘Line Describing a Cone’ (which doesn’t necessarily pertain to smokers or your main point.)
😉
@Tabby, 31:
Unclear where you’re seeing anger. You didn’t see any in my responses.
Fixed it for you.
Fixed it for you.
Fixed it for you. Really wildly disingenuous to imply that it was ONE interview. Ah, but now the explanation:
Ah, well, if YOU’VE not heard anything then there can’t be anything to hear. How easy it must be to be you, where nothing you’ve not heard about is real.
Facetious answer to a facetious question: because I’m in favour of “woke” on principle. I was 100% there for the female Doctor Who (JW had been really good in Attack the Block -- if you’ve not seen it, do)… until she was badly served by the (male) showrunner and his absolutely diabolically shit writing and politics (most egregious example: the one where the Doctor shows up to space Amazon where there’s a workers’ revolt in progress… and sides with space Amazon. Words fucking fail.) I’m 100% there for the new Doctor, based on the one and a bit episodes so far that gay black man Ncuti Gatwa has been playing him.
My point was simply that Hollywood in general, and Disney in particular, has been on a clearly-identifiable run just lately of rebooting and/or recasting established, well-loved male characters with female alternatives. Not just one or two, either. All these do come from comics, but in the comics these characters tend to parallel rather than outright permanently replace the characters they’re derived from, because comic characters (unlike actors) don’t age or get sick of wearing spandex. Just since Infinity War we’ve had the following:
-- Captain Marvel, originally male in the comics, made female (personally I think she’s one of my favourite villains*, right up there with Killmonger)
-- Black Widow -- I know, originally female, but the point being they killed the well-loved original character who had been developed as a rounded character for over a decade over multiple movies and rapidly replaced her with another we’re supposed to care just as much about… except the thing we’re supposed to care about her IN isn’t coming out for AGES
-- Hawkeye, mature family man replaced with impulsive female teenager
-- Thor, male character replaced with female insert
-- She-Hulk, male character replaced with female insert
-- Black Panther, male character replaced with female insert and IN THE SAME MOVIE…
-- Iron Man, mature, flawed male character replaced with teenage perfect female insert
In that context, well, recasting Patton as a young woman doesn’t seem ridiculous. I’m not angry about it, but equally you’d have to be really quite stultifyingly ignorant to not even have noticed that it’s happening. Y’know, like Tabby Lavalamp.
Add to that the whole stuff going on in the Star Wars universe (people poncing around in t-shirts announcing “The Force Is Female”… uh… ok) -- it’s a stated policy, to the point that South Park have parodied it with the “Panderverse” episode, where Cartman-as-Kathleen-Kennedy established what I’m sure will become a common catchphrase until Disney stop doing it -- “put a chick in it, make it gay and lame”. The recent “The Marvels” movie was very specifically marketed to make it absolutely clear that it was NOT made for me, a cishet white male, and I have taken note of that and not only didn’t go out to buy a ticket, I haven’t even bothered watching it at home -- my MCU collection stops at 32 films. We’ll see whether it continues. (Note: my wife and I watched and both really enjoyed the TV show “Ms. Marvel” -- newcomer Iman Vellani is incredibly likeable in her lead role and the story, set partly in Pakistan during partition, was suprisingly affecting (we both cried). I feel sorry for her having that initial success marred by involvement in such an egregious flop immediately afterwards).
The reviews in all the mainstream media seem to validate my decision and the performance of the film -- the single worst performing film in MCU history -- seems to suggest that the approach was… sub-optimal, IF the intention was, as it is usually assumed to be, to make as much money as possible. However, that assumption does seem to be misplaced, as Marvel/Disney is placing a much higher priority on making points, even at the cost of millions of dollars. Good for them, I say. Get the message out, regardless of cost. Keep on saying, over and over and over again, that these characters are now WOMEN, and that the movies they are in are for WOMEN, and they only want the money of WOMEN who want to go see those movies in the exclusive company of WOMEN. It’s very important that representation is out there -- far more important than making billions of dollars, and Disney is, so far, absolutely sticking with it, for which I applaud them. I mean -- I’m not paying to watch their stuff any more, or buying their merch, or subscribing to their services, but they’re VERY clear that that’s what they want -- the marketing of the Marvels particularly could not have been clearer. I’m interested to see whether this policy has the societal effect I assume it’s going for. Heaven knows the US and Europe need something pushing back against the rising tide of the right, and replacing all those male superheroes and other characters with female alternatives can only help, right?
Right?
*Yes, Carol Danvers is a villain. She’s shallow, cruel, arrogant, smug, vengeful, narcissistic, patronising and belittles even the people on her own side -- Nick Fury in particular. She physically assaults, badly injures and further threatens and robs a man who offers her help because it’s conditional on her smiling, which while it IS douche behaviour doesn’t deserve broken bones and robbery. She literally mimics a Terminator in that scene and she’s supposed to be a positive character?. No -- that’s villain behaviour. She bitches about being a victim when she’s literally one of the most powerful beings in the MCU, powers she attains through no positive act of her own (cf Iron Man, who (unlike his female replacement) had to work really hard in extreme conditions to begin to become what he becomes), powers she has no reason to conceal (cf Spiderman, whose powers end up ruining his life), powers she uses to massacre people she has every reason to believe are, like her, innocent victims of brainwashing. She’s an incredible villain, and I look forward to Disney realising this, making her the Big Bad in the next phase, and having all the rest of the girls team up to reduce her to her component atoms.
[meta]
Gotta love the indignance and the personal plea to virtue.
<snicker>
That right there is true Wokeness to the max!
(Time Lords are like the funky-foreheaded aliens in Star Trek, but more Woke, that much is true)
What does rebooting and/or recasting established, well-loved male characters with female alternatives matter in regards to smoking in movies?
And why isn’t the Wokedom rebooting and/or recasting established, well-loved female characters with male alternatives? Even Woker!
(I call dibs on the royalties when that happens. Can’t wait for the bearish, bearded Cleopatra to seduce pert-tittied Antonia)
]PS the original Doctor smoked a pipe on screen[
You might at least want to drop that one from your list. She-Hulk goes back to the 80s.
Is the incel whining about Disney movies? Yes, it’s a travesty they cast the lead in Barbie with Margot Robbie. Everyone knows Barbie is a man! It was such a travesty that it made $1 billion. Also, the live remake of the Little Mermaid--everyone knows that was a man’s role! Woke!!! Eleventy!!!11!!
Indiana Jones in the final movie was recast as a woman…no, wait, he wasn’t. And Starlord in Guardians of the Galaxy 57 (or whatever it is now) remained a man. All the dozens of Batman and Spiderman movies…all sausage-fests. The animated Luca, Dr. Strange, Shang-Chi, Toy Story 4….all men. And on and on and on.
Answer: because smoking is a thing people do.
@LykeX, 39:
THAT is the one you had a problem with? Hulk goes back to 1962. Your point?
Also, did you just not read where I said “All these do come from comics,”, or did you just not understand what I meant?
I’m more than aware that the She-Hulk series is in keeping with her fourth-wall-breaking persona in the comics. But we’re talking about films/TV and in the context of the MCU it’s a perfect example, almost the best example (with the exception of Riri Williams/Ironheart).
That was a friggin’ novel. Sorry, but I lost interest when Hollywood (and Disney in particular) started to get blamed for using characters right out of the comics, some of whom have been around for decades. Especially in live action where actors age and it makes sense to replace them with the younger versions from the comics.
For the interview Larson did, I’m referring to the one that got the hate train started when she basically stated that Captain Marvel wasn’t made for manly men who want to watch manly men doing manly things.
And sorry, “Ah, well, if YOU’VE not heard anything then there can’t be anything to hear. How easy it must be to be you, where nothing you’ve not heard about is real.” You made the claim that actors don’t want to work with her. It’s up to you to provide the sources, not us to do homework.
@43:
Ah, the curse of the short attention span.
I repeated her widely reported reputation for being brittle and difficult (even by the standards of a profession where such behaviour is practically expected), merely as an aside. If you choose not to believe it, it makes no difference to my point, which was that I personally at this point wouldn’t be surprised if they cast her (or some other woman) as Patton, given current trends in Hollywood. You don’t seem to be disagreeing with that, my main point.
Or are you? It’s so very difficult to tell what you mean, if you indeed mean anything at all.
I must say I don’t think I’m familiar with that one. I was thinking of three or four others I’ve seen where she trashed the character’s history, got snippy about whether Marvel even wanted her to play the character again, and in one case publicly in front of a camera snapped at and belittled some of her co-stars from Endgame, leading to some choice facial expressions from the actors forced to share a press tour with her.
Samuel L Jackson on Brie Larson: “As history now reflects, taking on Captain Marvel only required additional strength from Larson, who faced serious trolling—a vast majority of it sexist—from an especially virulent corner of the Marvel fanbase. But Jackson says that Larson is “not going to let any of that stuff destroy her.”
“These incel dudes who hate strong women, or the fact that she’s a feminist who has an opinion and expressed it? Everybody wants people to be who they want them to be,” Jackson says of Larson’s naysayers. “She is who she is, and she’s genuinely that.” If her burgeoning career as a YouTuber has anything to say about that, Jackson is spot on. ”
https://www.avclub.com/samuel-l-jackson-brie-larson-incel-dudes-1850559831
Raging Bee @ 33
I specifically used ‘voices’ for a reason. AIs will *not* replace actors any time soon in moving parts. I’ve yet to see animals that we are all familiar with or people doing any kind of action that looks realistic. Trying to AI a Bruce Lee’s body in an action sequence with Reagan’s face? Not ready yet, but using people’s voices can already be done. Generating whole scripts is probably not far off.
sonofrojblake @36:
(Note: my wife and I watched and both really enjoyed the TV show “Ms. Marvel” — newcomer Iman Vellani is incredibly likeable in her lead role and the story, set partly in Pakistan during partition, was suprisingly affecting (we both cried). I feel sorry for her having that initial success marred by involvement in such an egregious flop immediately afterwards).
OMFG I totally agree with you on this. (“Marred?” Methinks you misspelled “pissed on.”) The “Ms. Marvel” TV show was telling a serious, original and relatively believable story of a teenage girl growing up in a Muslim community, dealing with family history and possible family feuding connected to the Partition, right along with all the usual high-school-girl issues, then finding, in the middle of that, some junky-looking bracelets that suddenly turn out to have unexpected superpowers, and having to navigate her new superhero status with her parents, siblings, friends, imam, school, and maybe also agents of SHIELD — a US covert-action agency not very trusting of Muslim-Americans like…her and her entire community. This was an incredibly interesting, fraught, gripping story — on a very believable and relatable human scale — right up to the end of the season finale, when Ms. Marvel disappears and is literally swapped out for the original White Captain Marvel.
God’s Death was I pissed. And whenever I mentioned this to other Marvel movie fans, they all said “It’s okay, that’s all explained in the movie.” And yes, it was explained — and it only made everything worse. The whole premise of the movie was that somehow all three Marvels got swapped about whenever they used their powers simultaneously. In other words, they all became LITERALLY as interchangeable as Fox News “personalities,” if not more so — at least Rupert Murdock didn’t swap his stoogelets about in the middle of their shows!
And not only did a very unique and interesting character suddenly become fungible, but she got totally funged in a movie that took her story several orders of magnitude lower in seriousness. The only way Ms. Marvel has any chance of recovering the serious treatment she deserves, is to forget that crap movie altogether, forget Carol Danvers ever appeared in the first season, and pick up the original story where they dropped it. I’m sure I’m not the only American who finds a Muslim girl’s experiences in
America more gripping than yet another “OMG we gotta save the entire Universe from another ridiculous cobbled-up threat to the existence of everything!” story.
Perhaps I didn’t. I just read the part where you said:
And I assumed that it was therefore relevant to point out that if She-Hulk is to be understood as a female character replacing a male character, then the switch happened long before any part of the Marvel movie franchise.
Beyond that, wasn’t really trying to make any kind of point, although now that I think about it, it does rather illustrate how changes in characters is a long-standing tradition and maybe not anything to get upset about.
Raging Bee, so, does Ms Marvel smoke onscreen?
Does the actor smoke offscreen?
If not, what’s the relevance of your claimed preference in comic book shows for muslim girls?
(Topic is about smoking in films, not whether someone likes women in films)
[I do find it most amusing how ‘woke’ has mutated from its original sense and is now used unironically by self-professed ‘woke’ people in the very same corrupted sense that the authoritarian regressive culture warriors employ it. Rather ironic, actually]
John Morales, ain’t it though.
@This Again, 45: thank you. That’s certainly one data point in her favour, and SLJ’s opinion is one to be respected.
@Raging Bee 47: this Marvel movie fan agrees with you.
@LykeX 48:
Bear in mind this started in post 21, where I referenced “most of the casting decisions taken in the last six or seven years then” when pointing out that casting a woman as Patton wouldn’t be that incongruous in the current climate.
You obviously assumed wrong, but I think I see your problem now. You pointed your eyes at this:
” Hollywood in general, and Disney in particular, has been on a clearly-identifiable run just lately of rebooting and/or recasting established, well-loved male characters with female alternatives”
And then you presumably just didn’t even bother reading post 42, where I said:
…and you STILL thought that was talking about characters in comics, not the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I mean, it’s baffling how any even basically literate person could come to such a conclusion, but OK, I get it. I apologise for confusing you, I guess.
If She-Hulk is to be understood as a female character replacing a male character IN THE MCU, WHICH IS WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT WHEN REFERENCING CASTING DECISIONS TAKEN IN THE LAST SIX OR SEVEN YEARS, then the switch happened … y’know, when they made She Hulk. For TV. Not a comic book.
Good grief.
You’re confused and bitter over nonsense. Are you trying to imply that a tv show about a female hulk went back in time and erased the two recent movies about the Hulk? Or are you so furious in a sea of dozens of superhero movies featuring men, there’s one (She-Hulk) or two (The Marvels) with women? It really seems like you have major issues with women and get irrational and hysterical when your particular prejudices aren’t catered to.
And also, what does that have to do with smoking in the movies?
@This Again, 53 -- is that comment directed at me? Because I’m not confused (although LykeX certainly seems to be), and I’m certainly not bitter. We live in a golden age of audiovisual content -- I certainly have no expectation that it’s all intended specifically for me and my tastes. That would be a ludicrous thing to think. I admit I am confused how you came to the conclusion about time travel and erasure -- that’s not how “recasting” works. It’s a far more causally straightforward case of character is played by man, time passes, character is played by other man, time passes, character continues to be played by man but is narratively replaced by other character played by woman. I mean, it’s really very simple.
You did see the list of SEVEN that I made post 36, right? And the bit, right after the list, where I explicitly stated that I’m NOT angry about it? Apparently not. I forgive you, it was a long, long post and clearly attention spans here are very, very limited. I blame Tiktok.
And your evidence for this is that I notice casting decisions? Charitably, you’re reaching hard to see misogyny where there simply isn’t any.
Holy shit you really aren’t paying ANY attention at all, are you?
OK, once again for the hard of fucking thinking:
Post 7, ardepithecus said:
“Portraying a drug addict as a non-smoker would be like casting a young woman to play General Patton.”
And I responded with:
“like most of the casting decisions taken in the last six or seven years then.”
and
” if they announced a Patton biopic with Brie Larson in the title role, the only thing that would surprise me about that would be that they’d found some other actors willing to work with her”
I didn’t say casting women in male roles was bad or annoying to me or anything like that -- just that it’s HAPPENING, and that in that context ardepithecus’s example wasn’t perhaps the best one -- because casting a young woman to play General Patton is something that, nowadays, I wouldn’t put past a Hollywood casting director with a point to make.
THAT is how it’s relevant to the conversation. Do try to keep up.
Fuck off to bed, John; you know I’m not the only commenter here talking about subjects other than smoking. Seriously, why are you getting sniffy with me and not the other commenter to whom I was explicitly responding? Get a life, dude, and let Mano police his own blog, if he so chooses.
No, I get that you’re talking about the MCU. It’s just that the MCU obviously didn’t come out of nowhere. The movies were based on the comics. As such, including She-Hulk in the movies/shows is not an example of a male character being replaced by a female character. It’s just making a show/movie about a pre-existing female character. I certainly don’t see any connection to your “Brie Larson as Patton” example.
She-Hulk and Hulk always existed side-by-side as individual, distinct characters within the same universe. Even if She-Hulk was inspired by Hulk, she never replaced him nor were intended to be him. She’s a separate character and has been for 40+ years. Seems strange to complain about her now.
RB:
Heh. You, of course, would never police this blog.
Other than smoking in movies, you mean. It’s not smoking in general, is it?
And sure, you’re not the only one.
(You’re not even the only one signalling your virtue bona fides!)
—
Anyway. Here’s an essay on the actual topic:
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/from-the-ashes-smoking-s-curious-comeback-on-the-silver-screen-20220120-p59py5.html
No, you really don’t. As you demonstrate with the rest of what you say.
Well, obviously. If you understood the point, you wouldn’t be blathering on with irrelevancies about comics from decades back when the entire point is a pattern of TV and movie casting that started within the last five years or so.
Fingers firmly in the ears, eyes squeezed tight shut, saying “lalalalala” loud enough to drown out the seventeen years between the debut of the Hulk and the first appearance of She-Hulk.
Not in the comics, no. (We’re not talking about comics, dumbass). She’s very much her own thing. Apart from anything else, in comics, as has been already pointed out, there’s simply no NEED to replace characters -- quite apart from anything else, even if you did replace e.g. Batman with e.g. someone called Terry McGinnis (no, really, this is a thing that happened), no comics reader with any experience is going to believe it’s going to stick for a second. Bruce Wayne is Batman. He will always be Batman. Others will be too, for bit, possibly -- but Batman is Bruce Wayne. Except in live action, actors don’t want to get typecast, or get a better offer, or get injured, or just old. So characters in live action have to be cued up with replacements. In the old days, you’d just recast and hey, it’s Val Kilmer, I mean, George Clooney, whatever. But now we have cinematic universes, with at least some semblance of continuity (do NOT look at Rhody, look over here, shiny thing*), so characters “have to” stay dead, apart from anything because getting RDJ back would cost more money than Disney has (especially after what they lost on the The Marvels…). (That being said, don’t rule it out -- this comment might not age well…).
And she’s had a human live-action face in the MCU for (counts on fingers) ONE. Sixteen months, as of right now. Which is all that matters to the point you didn’t understand.
Do, please, point out where I complained about her. I generally quite liked the She-Hulk show, apart from the massive disrespect it showed to the original Hulk character and the cheapness of some of the effects (looking at you, Scar). It wasn’t the dumpster fire the usual suspects on the internet screamed it was, at least in my opinion. I mean, it wasn’t good -- if you want an actually good MCU TV show, you can’t do much better than Wandavision (female lead, innovative structure, the single best cliffhanger ending to a TV episode I think I’ve ever see (even if they didn’t stick the landing) and a genuinely rivetting examination of grief, only slightly ruined by the inevitable CGI battle they seem contractually obliged to include at the end of every bloody thing) or Ms. Marvel (female lead again, and incredibly they bet the farm on someone doing their first TV show and won BIG (in quality, not viewing figures, sadly) and as I’ve said, made me cry -- do see it. The CGI is still a bit shit though.).
Once again for those persisting in not getting it -- I’m NOT complaining about the recent trends in casting in Disney properties. Someone said “that’d be like casting Patton as a woman”, and I just observed that that isn’t the zinger it should be because right now Hollywood would probably do that. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that if they did do it, Brie Larson would actually be one of the best choices for the role. Think about it.
Re: the recasting of James Rhodes. One of the best and funniest ideas for recasting I’ve heard in years was this: Disney currently have a problem. They went in hard on the Multiverse saga as the followup to the Infinity Saga. They had a years-long plan in place to build and build to another massive, Infinity War/Endgame scale showdown. And ALL of that was contingent on, indeed contractually bound to, Jonathan Majors as Kang. He literally had a clause in his contract saying nobody else could play Kang or any variant thereof -- it ALL had to be just him. And then he had some… legal difficulties. And now he’s officially gone, and those plans are in tatters. Fans are speculating what comes next -- Mephisto? Galactus? Dr. Doom?. And someone suggested this: just recast Kang, and get Terrence Howard to play him. And don’t say ANYTHING, not diegetically and not in real life. Just welcome him to the MCU like he’s a new hire, and carry on as they would have with Majors.
Now… this isn’t going to happen. The last couple of episodes of Loki season 2 were very clearly rewritten at a late stage to massively reduce and cheapen the role of Kang to the status of minor annoyance, rather than multiverse-threatening Big Bad, and going forward it’s going to be like all those Kang plans never were. But I do think the idea of getting Howard back would have been hilarious, and it’s just a shame it didn’t occur to anyone with the power to make it happen. I comfort myself that somewhere in the multiverse Terrence Howard is giving press conferences where he acts baffled at the mention of James Rhodes.
You’re not even the only one signalling your virtue bona fides!
Is ANYONE here “signalling their virtue bona fides?” WTF does that even mean? Seriously, go to bed and come back when you can talk coherently.
sonofrojblake @59: I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I really hope any attempt by anyone to “build and build to another massive, Infinity War/Endgame scale showdown” ends in utter failure, preferably before too much resources are wasted on something that’s already been done more times than I care to count already. Christ on a crutch, all these massive, Infinity War/Endgame scale showdowns are getting boring…
RB, you really don’t know how to leave well enough alone, do ya? 😉
Here’s an example: “I’m in favour of “woke” on principle. I was 100% there for the female Doctor Who”
Or even something about how very interested someone is in a serious story about Muslim teenage girl protagonist with magical bracelets.
(Does she smoke in the show? Probably not relevant, after all, it’s only the post topic)
Muslim teenage girls with magical bracelets, now that’s serious.
Me going to bed in the middle of the day, that’s serious.
In short, I’m getting a good idea about what you consider serious, and clearly depictions and acts of smoking in movies is not such an issue. Meh.
—
On-topic, some movies just would not work without the smoking:
RB, you really don’t know how to leave well enough alone, do ya?
As the first line of an obviously triggered rant, that’s absolutely hilarious.
Heh. “Rant”, eh? “Triggered”.
(What, not hysterical?)
—
On topic:
https://dailytitan.com/lifestyle/smoking-as-portrayed-by-hollywood-the-most-iconic-smoking-scenes-from-movies/article_1e08883a-bcf7-5a56-b90a-96537246c5f0.html
@Raging Bee, 61:
” I have no idea what you’re talking about” -- simply that Marvel planned phases 1-3 of the MCU to build slowly and carefully. Stakes started low, characters were introduced, developed, appeared in each others films, given sequels quickly to increase audience engagement and attachment but they drip-fed a movie about every six months or so and put teasers in their credits that paid off in the next movie. They earned their success with (mostly) good writing and attention to character, plot and structure. And I think you’re being uncharitable saying you’ve seen it before and it’s boring -- nobody has seen anything like the first three phases of the MCU and its epic conclusion before, because nothing like it has been done before.
Then after Infinity War/Endgame, they shat all over it. They made more content in phase 4 than in the first three phases combined, a lot of which felt like homework, they introduced new intriguing and diverse characters and then just… abandoned them (looking at you, Shang Chi -- where’s your sequel? I want to see more of this guy’s world), they made bore-fests like “Eternals”, they made end-credits scenes that went nowhere or set things up that weren’t even planned to be paid off for five years, they just kept on and on and on adding characters with no connection to anything (seriously -- watch “Moon Knight” and tell me how you can even *tell* that it’s in the MCU. There’s almost nothing in it that connects to anything or anyone.) and they made a decision to actively alienate half their potential audience. I also defy anyone not deeply into the MCU to tell me which film was supposed to be the one that ended Phase 4 -- the equivalent of the original Avengers, Age of Ultron or Endgame. (Answer: the Black Panther sequel, Wakanda Forever. I had to look that up. There’s no sense in the film of it being the conclusion to anything.)
No need to worry -- it has already utterly failed, and it hasn’t even reached its conclusion. Fans have been complaining about the bad writing, lack of direction, lack of cohesion and overwhelming firehose of homework/content for years since No Way Home, and all they’ve had back from the studio is a patronisingly disapproving wagging finger and accusations of misogyny/racism/ableism/whatever.
No, you fuckwits, we don’t hate women/Black people/gays etc. We’ve become accustomed to a level of quality in the writing and plotting and interconnection, and you’ve flushed that down the toilet. Two of my three favourite Marvel products post-No Way Home were TV shows led by female characters. You failed to stick the landing on either of the follow-ups to those shows. One of the objectively best films in phase 4 featured your first Asian lead, and it was great… but that was in 2021, and we’ve had diddly squat about him since -- not even a cameo in a post-credit scene, let alone a sequel -- Iron Man had both less than two years after his first film.
I know, I know, I sound like I care too much.
@65, good grief, man, get a hold of yourself. You’re gibbering in hysteria about people casting a female actress as Patton--has ANYONE even spoken about that? You’re obsessed with this fact and have repeated it several times, but it seems like you’re just pulling that out of thin air. Why so hysterical over something that’s completely imaginary?
Speaking of imaginary, you also seem to have tied your entire personality to movies made about comic strips. So much so that you’re threatened by the very notion that someone might make a movie about a fictional comic strip character that you personally are not interested in. Are you 12 years old or did your social/emotional development just stop there?
Also, @ John Morales; Up in Smoke came out in 1978, which is 46 years ago. Nearly half a century. And the movie’s entire point is how stupid people are when they’re permanently stoned. Not cigarettes.
And I think you’re being uncharitable saying you’ve seen it before and it’s boring — nobody has seen anything like the first three phases of the MCU and its epic conclusion before, because nothing like it has been done before.
I’m not complaining about ALL the phases, just the repetitive “massive, Infinity War/Endgame scale showdown” rubbish that takes all those really interesting and well-developed characters and makes ’em all just cannon-fodder in one contrived spectacular save-the-entire-universe battle after another. And yes, that particular bit HAS been done before. Too many times.
Marvel has ready access to good writers and producers. I know they can make gripping high-quality movies with interesting and varied characters in understandable, realistic, human-scale conflicts, from local to global, without having to make everything galactic-scale to get people interested. The success of what you call their “phase 1” movies proves that. All they need to do is get out of that rut of mindlessly assuming everything has to lead to a “massive, Infinity War/Endgame scale showdown.” (That may be one reason they let Shang Chi drop: maybe his particular set of powers weren’t TOTALLY AWESOME enough to play a role in a late-stage-superhero-showdown?)
@65, good grief, man, get a hold of yourself. You’re gibbering in hysteria about people casting a female actress as Patton…
You’re kidding, right? Agree or disagree, #65 wasn’t “gibberish,” and didn’t mention “casting a female actress as Patton.”
PS: WTF happened to the “Captain America/Winter Soldier” cable series? That was getting interesting…
Refer back to posts 21, 22, 36, 41, 52, 54, 58…it appears to be a real idea fixee in virtually every endless screed that because a tv mini-series was made about a character from a 40-year-old comic book series, therefore now directors are replacing every male role in every movie with a female character--particularly one he’s decided to get his panties in a wad about because the slymepit took a dislike to her. This obessession does not seem like the signs of a healthy, mature mind.
@This Again, 66:
Bizarrely, you refer in post #69 to my post #21. Did you even read that? Here’s how that post starts:
I gave the name of the person who spoke about it, referenced the post in which they spoke about it, and quoted what they said. Was that not enough of a clue for you that yes, someone had spoken about it, and that I hadn’t simply made it up? Are you actively trying to come across as an idiot? If yes -- crack on, it’s working and you’re doing a fine job.
@Raging Bee:
I don’t think that’s a rut as such. Building tension to a crescendo is a perfectly valid structure. Phase 1 built to Avengers, Phase 2 built to Ultron, and Phase 3 built to Endgame. It took a lot of time. I think the problem in the content since has been a combination of
(1) the firehose approach, just too fucking much content and too many characters
(2) expecting audiences to care about characters who haven’t been properly introduced and to keep track of a massively widening roster
(3) throwing legacy characters under a bus
(4) introducing characters who have no arc (Ironheart being the most egregious example)
Fewer movies. Less money. Better storytelling. Someone get Jerry Maguire in here people!
Well, I see certain people think this is a forum about the MCU movie franchise.
I shall spare readers my opinion as to the supposed merits of the stupidly ridiculous silly fantasy transliterations into audiovisual media of the comic book literature, unlike they.
But still, since apparently that’s what this thread is about, I suppose I’ll join in the debouchment and note this:
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Tobacco_Smokers
(That’s a shitload of puffers in the canon, no?)
—
This Again @66, the topic is “Why do we still have smoking in films?”, not ‘Why do we still have cigarette smoking in films?’ 🙂
Datum:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10550887.2022.2063639
I’ve pretty much read all of Charteris’ Saint books and I know damn well he was a super-heavy smoker.
LOL, John Morales. A huge point of the Cheech & Chong films was “ooooh, smoking pot is illegal, and we’re breaking the law!”
Yeah, I’ve started just ignoring the wall of tantrum-throwing screeds. They add nothing to the discussion.
You live in Australia, right? Are you aware of the Australian series, Miss Fisher’s Modern, set in the (I think) 1960s? It’s shown on public television in the USA and one aspect of the series is just how much everyone smokes. At one point, the main character wants to get information from a suspect, so she bums a cigarette from him and they chat while they smoke together. The spouse watches the series, and every time I walk in the room, someone’s smoking and it’s jarring.
[OT]
This Again, I hadn’t even heard of Miss Fisher’s Modern, and so I’ve just looked it up.
From what you wrote, they’re getting the period pretty right in terms of smoking.
I am Australian, but haven’t watched any free-to air for around 15 years now, so I missed it entirely.
Incidentally, sounds to me like it would appeal to Mano, he quite likes murder mysteries.
From Wikipedia: