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| Don’t
worry, cancer boy: Eckhart (r) in Thank You for Smoking. |
Death
Head, Grinning
By
Laura Leon
Thank
You for Smoking
Directed
by Jason Reitman
Thank
You For Smoking, adapted from the Christopher Buckley
novel, is a ceaselessly funny look at how fictional tobacco
lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) does business. Beyond
that, it just happens to be the most fully realized, consistently
excellent movie of the past, oh, I don’t know how many years.
Screenwriter and director Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman completely
gets the rhythms of Buckley’s humor, which is essential to
the movie’s energy. So, too, is Eckhart’s uncanny ability
to completely embody a total heel and yet make him into a
hero. His Nick is a guy who relishes the fact that he’s one
of the few “truly despised” people in the world. Even in scenes
in which Nick bonds with his son Joey (Cameron Bright), his
essential scoundrelness remains intact. Eckhart is that rare
actor who doesn’t seem to feel the need to reveal a little
likeability or humility in creating the emotional makeup of
a louse—and the movie is the better for it.
Naylor’s utter ease in dismissing public-health advocates
and, especially, a crusading, Birkenstock-wearing U.S. senator
named Ortolan K. Finistirre (William H. Macy), speak to an
underlying theme that Americans hold near and dear—namely
the freedom to choose, even if it’s selecting one’s preferred
poison. With that working in his favor, Naylor is able to
make gullible people believe that Big Tobacco really wants
to educate teens about the dangers of smoking. In this way,
Thank You for Smoking thoroughly slams how easily distracted
our culture is.
Things go south for Naylor, at least temporarily, when paramour
and killer reporter Heather Halloway (Katie Holmes, again
looking way too young to play anything professional) reveals
his many secrets in print. Without a job, and without the
support of his fellow merchants of death (aka lobbyists for
the alcohol and gun lobbies), Nick goes into a tailspin before
Joey talks him out of it. Clearly, the apple doesn’t fall
far from the tree. At times, one wonders how Thank You
for Smoking will end. Will Reitman succumb to doing the
“right” thing by having Naylor see the light, expose the evils
of tobacco, and turn his considerable talents for the forces
of good? Let’s just say that the filmmaker seems perfectly
happy to let the audience enjoy a master of spin, without
resorting to useless moralizations. “Michael Jordan plays
basketball,” reasons Naylor. “Charles Manson kills people.
I talk.” And how.
Novel
Entertainment
Tristram
Shandy: a Cock and Bull Story
Directed
by Michael Winterbottom
It’s tempting to refer to Laurence Sterne’s novel The Life
and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman as one of those
books more talked about than read, like Ulysses, Gravity’s
Rainbow or Infinite Jest. Only no one really talks
about it.
The book, originally published in nine volumes between 1760
and 1770, made its author a celebrity but was not very well-received
by critics. In fact, its unconventional, meandering, achronological
structure and its self-referential archness drew a comment
from Samuel Johnson—“Nothing odd will do long”—that is probably
more widely known than the book itself. You may have heard
the work acknowleged as an early forerunner of both stream-of-concsciousness
writing and of postmodernism, if you run in those circles.
But you’ve probably never heard it described as a story screaming
for a big-screen adaptation. Understandably. So, it’s much
to the credit of director Michael Winterbottom that the thing
isn’t a shambling mess—or, rather, that it is an intentional
and thoroughly entertaining shambling mess.
Rather than attempting an impossible direct adaptation, the
filmmakers take a cue from Sterne’s prescient postmodernism
by making a film about the filming of a movie based on Sterne’s
novel. So, you get Steve Coogan playing Steve Coogan playing
Tristram Shandy, and so on. And you get a fair amount of amusing
period-piece comedy. But the real meat and mirth of the movie
is the “behind the scenes” stuff, the gently scathing glances
at the ego and commerce upon which all films, even quirky
British send-ups, are built. The film feels like a cross between
Truffaut’s Day for Night and This Is Spinal Tap—with
tricorner hats.
Coogan’s unremitting dedication to protecting his role as
the film’s lead against the perceived encroachment of fellow
comedian Rob Brydon is both funny and pathetic, and therefore
rings true. In fact, both actors do a fine job of remaining
likeable even while convincingly portraying themselves as
celebrity (or aspiring celebrity) actors, not the most likeable
lot. The interactions of the great many people required to
get a film to screen and the not-always subtle and not-always
stable hierarchy in which those interactions take place are
the real fun of the flick. Whether or not the film deals properly
with Tristram Shandy may be disputed among even those
responsible for it (the film is credited to the pseudonym
Martin Hardy because screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce demanded
that his name be removed). But as a lighthearted skewering
of the film biz, it’s a hoot. You can always read the novel
when you finish A la recherche du temps perdu.
—John
Rodat
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