Friday, January 2, 2009
#176: Thank You For Smoking
Thank You For Smoking (2005)
Directed and Written by Jason Reitman
Based on the novel by Christopher Buckley
Starring Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, David Koechner, Cameron Bright, William H. Macy, J.K. Simmons, Rob Lowe, Katie Holmes, Sam Elliott, Adam Brody and Robert Duvall.
It has been four weeks since my last cigarette. My quitting expedition has so far been a resounding success. Does that mean I no longer want the taste and feeling only a death-dart can achieve? Not at all...in fact I want one every day and most hours and minutes of those days.
You can call it addiction if you want, though I would never label it as such. Smokers don't only smoke because of an inherent need to fill their lungs with tar and a darkness that eats at the very core of their beings. No, smokers tend to enjoy smoking...believe it or not.
Why?
Cigarettes are murderers. They are in no way good for you and can be of no conceivable benefit in the health and well-being of your person. It's easy for non-smokers or former smokers to spout that rhetoric...and well it's true. Smoking does not improve your lifestyle or your breathing. It eats away at your wallet worse than your lungs and in most public places you turn into an outcast.
Smoking, while unhealthy, gave me an outlet...a common connection with other people of the same ilk. Working at the paper this past summer, whenever a bulk of us needed to get away from the office without leaving the work premises, CC and I would just bolt out the back door, light up a couple nails and commiserate about the day or talk about golfing or poker.
Anyone who says smoking is good for you is an idiot...but no one would say that. Non-smokers though seem to think that smokers have no idea about the risks involved in smoking. Far from it. Most every smoker I have come into contact with has alluded to the fact that he or she needs to quit. It doesn't mean that person will, but to think smokers somehow missed the life lesson that sucking a dark cloud of poison into your lungs is bad for you...well come on. Uppity non-smokers need to pull their heads out of their asses.
What I've discovered is that harrassing smokers to quit will not accomplish a thing. Usually when someone tells a smoker they should quit, it comes across as some kind of sanctimonious sermon. Self-inflicted death may be the price smokers pay, let them do it to themselves peacefully without any further pain. If someone is going to quit, he will likely do it on his own terms...unless money is involved.
Thank You For Smoking has an anti-smoking message but it's clever and not a morally self-righteous lecture on the perils of tobacco. In the end smoking is a choice, one that should be accepted in places where lighting up is still allowed. Like it or hate it, smokers are one dedicated lot because who else would step outside in 30-below temperature by choice for seemingly no good reason?
I like smoking, it's a fact. In August, when Horatio, Veda, Arlo and I travelled to Montreal to see Radiohead, I had been off the cigarettes for a week or so...a pretty big accomplishment. For the trip, I bought a pack of du maurier's and hit the highway smoking one after another until I had finished the pack by the time we hit the city. I bought another and I stayed with a friend who smoked like a chimney. It was fun. Smoking while driving takes the edge off and if you're driving an automatic transmission it makes the drive a little less boring and gives you something to multi-task with. Somehow I've never caused an accident.
But I do feel better since I've quit. Come May, when the bet is through and I've proven to myself and others that it can be done I may spitefully buy a pack of some cheap cigs and smoke all night. That or I may never smoke again...or maybe from time to time...who knows really? It's a habit, but unlike some people would have you believe it's not evil and it's not the end of the world if your 16-year old has a smoke. Most likely, we know the risks just as much. Does that make smokers stupid? Maybe...or maybe we're just stubborn.
* Sorry for no embedded links today...lazy and kind of busy...no just lazy
**Juno was weak. This was a better film from Reitman
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2 comments:
Can you drive 5200 kilometres without smoking?
I hope not...but I am not yet prepared to test it.
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