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Good luck swirls around 'Smoking'

Director-screenwriter Jason Reitman was never a smoker.

"Nah, I tried that when I was 15 and it hurt too much," he says. "I just never really got it."

Fox Searchlight Pictures (enlarge photo) 'Thank You For Smoking' writer/director Jason Reitman has signed a two-year deal with Fox Searchlight Pictures. Reviews of "Thank You For Smoking"

Still, once his feature debut film Thank You for Smoking opens on Friday, he will be forever linked with the tobacco industry and its masterful, amoral spokesmen. The movie, based on Christopher Buckley's 1994 satirical novel, turns the spotlight on spin doctor Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), apologist for cigarettes and booster of free speech, personal freedoms and the American way.

How can anyone be against those?

Reitman was given a copy of Buckley's book back in the late '90s and quickly knew he had to make the movie version. "I read the first sentence and I like to call it love at first sight. I fell in love with this character," he recalls. "The book was saying a lot of things that I'd always felt but never put into words. It had this kind of unique take on the libertarian argument.

"Chris and I probably share a similar problem with authority. It's 'Just let me live my life. Let me make decisions for myself and I'll take responsibility for my actions.' "

Significantly, perhaps, both men are the sons of hugely famous fathers. Chris is the son of veteran conservative author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr., while Jason, 28, is the son of producer-director Ivan Reitman, the name behind such comedy blockbusters as National Lampoon's Animal House and Ghostbusters, among many others.

"I spent my childhood on movie sets and in movie theaters. Yeah, it's the family business. I think my children will not have a choice," says the younger Reitman drily.

Asked about his father's effect on his work, Reitman acknowledges, "He's the most successful comedy director of all time, so obviously that's an influence on me. (But) we just have different sensibilities. I grew up on the comedies of the '80s and '90s, and I thought there was only one way to make comedies — broad comedies."

Then Reitman saw three independent films that altered his attitudes on comedy. "I saw Slacker (directed by Richard Linklater), I saw Clerks (Kevin Smith), I saw Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson) and that changed my life," he says. "Those films were comedies on their own terms.

"Up until that point, I thought an independent film was a French black-and-white movie. I realized that a comedy can be an independent film, and it actually frees you up to do anything you want," says Reitman. "That was the first time I ever thought about playing Sundance and it kind of quietly became my dream."

Having a celebrated father in your chosen field has definite drawbacks, Reitman readily concedes. "When your father's a famous filmmaker, people just think the worst of you. They presume you're untalented, that you're a spoiled brat and you've got a drug problem."

But is any of that true, Jason? "Well, I mean, I've had a very privileged life," he says sheepishly.

Nevertheless, he is not worried about being compared to his father. "Again, he's the Spielberg of comedy. What is there to compare? I've made one film," he notes. "Maybe at the end of my career, perhaps, people will try to do that, but even then, what would be the point? I'll never have success like him, but I'm fine with that."

Reitman has been taking Thank You for Smoking on a promotional tour of colleges and found one universal reaction. "That we're being spun to from both sides. Everyone wants to tell these young adults how to live, " he says. "I think Chris Buckley coined it best when he said, 'This is the generation that's been spun to since the cradle.' And I think they're fed up."

In researching the film, Reitman went to hear a real-life Nick Naylor speaking at a symposium on the pros and cons of smoking. "The guy from Big Tobacco, he was from Philip Morris. The crowd was there to crucify him and he didn't exactly turn them around, but he was attractive, charismatic, unhateable. Everything he said, he just didn't give you anything to jump on. That was his job that day and he did it. He was amazing."

Although Naylor is labeled a "lobbyist" in the film, Reitman emphasizes that he is more accurately a spokesman. "He goes out on TV, goes in front of audiences when tobacco needs him most."

Still, Reitman agrees that the recent conviction of lobbyist Jack Abramoff is a real box office plus for Thank You for Smoking. "And you know what the trickiest part was?" he quips. "Getting his arraignment moved up to line up with the film. I've got to say, those Fox Searchlight guys are incredible."

Then there is the film's infamous screening at Sundance this year, where a sex scene between Eckhart and Katie Holmes, playing a less-than-ethical Washington newspaper reporter, was mysteriously omitted. "It wasn't the result of a call from Tom Cruise to me, it was a projection error," says Reitman wearily. The director begs off taking any credit for the much-reported snafu. "I'd love to be that intelligent and have that much forethought to engineer the whole thing. The problem with projection error, it sounds like wardrobe malfunction," the notorious excuse for Janet Jackson's Super Bowl halftime notoriety.

Reitman may or may not be spinning us, but he does concede that the Sundance incident has been a plus for his movie. "If I walked out on the street right now and said to a complete stranger, 'Have you heard about the movie Thank You for Smoking?,' they'd say, 'Yeah, it's the movie with the Katie Holmes sex scene.' Y'know people aren't often aware of political comedies and this is an accessible comedy that people seem to enjoy no matter what their background is," says Reitman. "Hopefully, that will get people to see it and talk about it."