Synopsis

Nick Naylor is the chief spokesman for Big Tobacco. Nick makes his living defending the rights of smokers and cigarette makers in today's neo-puritanical culture. Nick has only two friends. Polly Bailey who works for the alcohol industry and Bobby Jay Bliss, who represents the gun industry. Confronted by the opportunistic Senator Ortolan K Finistirre who wants to put poison labels on cigarette packs, Nick goes on a PR offensive, spinning away the dangers of cigarettes on Television talk shows and enlisting a Hollywood super-agent to promote smoking in movies. Nick's newfound notoriety attracts the attention of tobacco's head honcho Doak Boykin and an investigative reporter for an influential Washington daily who uses sex to expose the dark side of Nick.

What The Critics Say

"An acerbically funny satire, Thank You For Smoking offers no filters as it mercilessly puffs out moral controversy and political incorrectness. It's fast, witty and sharp, as the film lobbies for personal choice, hitting bulls-eyes in the underbellies of of industries under political fire. You may feel guilty for laughing, but it won't spoil your enjoyment of this smouldering film that never cops out for a second." Louise Keller URBAN CINEFILE "Ethics never get in the way of the jokes. Both sides of the political fence will feel royally skewered." Peter Travers ROLLING STONE "A straight-faced dark satire.... Confident, razor-sharp comedy." Eric D Snider ERICDSNIDER.COM "The premise of the satire is to take the worst possible subject that a spin doctor can be hired to work on and show him succeed - even as we wither from the embarrassment of rooting for him against the forces of good. This film does that and more. The film sustains its pace, its sharp tone and its often subversive humour, along with its underbelly of satirically presented truths. You'll want to see it again." Andrew L Urban URBAN CINEFILE "one of the funniest, most intelligent satires to come out of Hollywood in years, and assaults everyone in its path." Willie Waffle WAFFLEMOVIES.COM

"Aaron Eckhart is so good in his performance. Everybody’s terrific. The writing is funny. And the directing is top-notch." Richard RoeperEBERT & ROEPER "Jason Reitman makes an amazingly confident feature debut. Thank You for Smoking is funny stuff." Steven Rea PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER "That quirky and intelligent rarity that elicits wry smiles and hearty laughs alike." Claudia Puig USA TODAY "A pitch-perfect lampoon not only of the nicotine industry but of a culture in which putting your personal ethics up for sale is the most tempting bad habit of all." Steve Schneider ORLANDO WEEKLY "Warning: This film may cause you to laugh at things you feel you shouldn't, but it's not detrimental to your health in any way, shape, or form (honest)." Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone THEMOVIECHICKS.COM

The Inside Story According to author Christopher Buckley, "Thank You For Smoking" was born one night in 1992 some time between 7 and 8pm. I can pinpoint it this precisely because that’s when the (as it was then called) "MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour" aired. On this particular night, a young lady from the (now defunct) Tobacco Institute was a guest. It fell to her to contradict the other guest, a Ph.D working for a prestigious research institute. The institute had just come up with yet another piece of evidence that smoking was, 'hello', bad for you. The lady from the Tobacco Institute was having none of it. She parried and thrusted, challenged every calm statement the Ph.D made. I was mesmerized. Finally she said, as if intellectually annoyed at having to state the obvious, "All I’m saying is, where is the data? Show us the data." It was love at first sight. I thought, What an interesting job that must be. Get up mornings, brush your teeth, have breakfast, kiss the kids and go off and sell, death. Thus was born Nick Naylor of the Academy of Tobacco Studies." Writer/Director Jason Reitman remembers when he first came accross Christopher Buckley's novel. "I was standing in a friend’s living room. The book was a gift from a six foot woman with a degree from Yale. I opened the book and read the first sentence: "Nick Naylor had been called many things since becoming the chief spokesman for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, but until now no one had actually compared him to Satan." It’s said that when a woman meets her future husband for the first time, she can see their entire life together. Love, marriage, kids, the whole thing. That's the only way I can describe the first time I read that line. I saw Nick spraying out words like a machine gun. I saw him hitting a home run in the middle of the night. I saw him offering a light to the world while draped in the American flag. It was love at first sight." Reitman set about writing a first act and the next thing, he's writing a draft for Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions. How come ? "They had owned the book for almost a decade and had apparently given up on it," Reitman remembers. "I was hired to take a crack at the adaptation. With the blessing and input of novelist Christopher Buckley, I gave him my first and second drafts. I can’t imagine not working with the author when adapting a book for film. You’re working with their baby. When I turned in my draft a few months later, no one had any notes. Everyone seemed to enjoy the screenplay as is." And did he make any major changes to the original storyline? "I wrote more scenes of Nick and Joey bonding because I wanted to see the two of them come together. I thought that Joey humanized Nick, that if this young boy could love his father, then the audience could." And the dialogue in the screenplay? "Much of the dialogue is taken straight out of the book." Then out of the blue, he receives a phone call. "It’s Mel, calling from his plane" says Reitman. "He tells me how much he enjoyed my draft. He then goes on for about twenty minutes on the virtues of digital film making. He tells me how excited he is to make my film. I never speak to him again." Nothing much happened after that, until in December 2002, his screenplay landed on the desk of Producer David O Sacks. "My first reaction was: Why has this movie never been made?", Sacks recalls. On the films irreverent stance on spin culture he says, "It occurred to me that in any other movie about cigarettes, even a terrific one like "The Insider", the chief spokesman for Big Tobacco would be the villain, and the crusading senator and intrepid reporter out to expose him would be the heroes. But here, the conventional morality was inverted, and the audience was completely on board for the ride." The former Chief Operating Officer of PayPal committed to making the film, the rights to which were owned by Icon and Warner Bros. And so "began an 18 month long process of wrangling the rights from all of its owners. Sacks and his fellow PayPal creators invested millions of dollars of personal equity to finance the film." Now all they had to do was find the ideal person to play Nick Naylor. "He had to be handsome and all-American, while at the same time capable of delivering morally questionable arguments with a smile that made you love him," Sacks recalls. Early favourite for the role was Aaron Eckhart. Sacks and Reitman flew to Canada to meet him. Signing him up must have been a real relief. "When Aaron signed on to be Nick Naylor, the whole thing became a reality," Reitman remembers. "And then it felt like each day we were signing on another unbelievable cast member." Eckhart says he was fascinated by the character. "I look at Nick Naylor as one of the few remaining soldiers from an almost, bygone era. I look at this role the way I think George C Scott looked at Patton: He never apologized for the stands he takes, and that’s where I think the audience will find the enjoyment in the film. Naylor, Eckhart observes, was more of a philanderer in the book. But Jason pumped up his personality, and that's what made it fun." Cameron Bright, who co-starred with Nicole Kidman in the highly controversial film, "Birth", was cast as Nick's son Joey. "Cameron Bright is a really impressive young man and a great actor. He has a tricky role," says Reitman. After appearing in the dark film "Godsend", Bright felt doing a comedy was a welcome change. "I have played darker roles. I played a kid who got killed and cloned. This is a comedy and I really like that. In this one, I get to play a normal kid," he said. Nicks archenemy in "Thank You For Smoking" is a grandstanding, soapbox-footed politician from Vermont, Senator Finistirre. Finistirre is played by William H Macy. "Truly, anytime you get to play a character named 'Senator Finistirre', you better take it," Macy said. "I think that the Senator’s greatest challenge is that he has to ride the line of impartiality and inclusion when what he wants to do is jump up and scream, 'Everyone who smokes is an idiot and the tobacco companies should be thrown in jail.' That’s what he really thinks, but he’s got to comport himself in that civil servant kind of way." As you would expect, Nick Naylor has very few friends. In fact he only has two friends. Polly Bailey for the alcohol industry and Bobby Jay Bliss, who represents the gun industry. Naylor, Bliss and Bailey are collectively known as "M.O.D", which stands for Merchants of Death. "What I like about those characters is that they say things people never say," Reitman says. "They’re completely politically incorrect. The M.O.D. Squad will talk about anything, and they’ll talk frankly. They talk about murder. They talk about how many people die from their products annually. I love them for that." In casting Polly, Reitman would need to find an actress who could bring intelligence and humor to the often profane and outspoken lobbyist. The role went to Bello who, it turned out, was a fan of the novel "Thank You For Smoking." It was Reitman's script that sold her. "I loved his script. Jason was so passionate about the story that he wanted to tell. I loved that the movie has a real heart in the relationship between Nick and his son." The role of Bobby Jay went to character actor and comedian David Koechner, who many will remember from "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy " and "Yours, Mine and Ours". When he's not making films Koechner work with "Naked Trucker", his band that often opens for Jack Black’s band, "Tenacious D". How does Koechner describe Bobby Jay? Not surprisingly as a, "Good Old Boy, four kids, married, religious gun owner and defender of the second amendment. He would be happy if guns were dispensed from machines like cigarettes and cans and pop." Amongst the many to sign on is one of the all-time greats Robert Duvall. "Who else could play the Captain but Robert Duvall? Everyone was hoping he would do it. He really responded to the script and to the politics of the film," says Reitman. "I took the role because I responded to it immediately," Duvall says. "Some things just come to you intuitively. I felt as if I could give the performance the day I read it." Reitman remembers his first meeting with Duvall in his trailer. "The day finally came and I went to meet him in his trailer. I was a giddy fan,"Reitman remembers. "He was just perfect. I’m not sure I gave him one direction." There are so many glorious characters in "Thank You For Smoking" it would spoil the fun if I exposed them all, so you'll just have to make the effort and go see this wicked film that takes the piss out of a very controversial product. You won't regret it. The Verdict "Reitman's first feature film has comedy so sharp it cuts to the bone. "Thank You For Smoking" is well directed, very funny and highly entertaining. The dialogue is just as you'd imagine and probably have heard before from the tobacco industry. Aaron Eckhart gives a stella performance as Nick Naylor. In fact, it's hard to fault any of the cast. If you're looking for a film that's good value for your money then this is it. Plenty of laugh out loud moments as Nick and THE M.O.D go about their business. Highly recommended. 4 STARS." Cast & Crew Bytes "THANK YOU FOR SMOKING" stars .......
Aaron Eckhart ["Any Given Sunday", "Erin Brockovich", "The Pledge" and "The Missing"]; Screen Actors Guild Award winner Maria Bello ["Auto Focus", "Secret Window", "Assault on Precinct 13" and "A History of Violence"]; Katie Holmes ["Phone Booth", "Pieces of April" and "Batman Begins"]; Two time Screen Actors Guild Award winner and Two time EMMY Award winner William H Macy ["The Cooler", "Seabiscuit", "Cellular" and "Sahara"]; J.K. Simmon ["The Mexican", "Spider-Man", "Spider-Man 2" and "Harsh Times"]; Cameron Bright ["Lone Hero", "The Butterfly Effect", "Godsend" and "Birth"] and Academy Award & Golden Globe winner Robert Duvall ["Deep Impact", "The 6th Day", "Gods and Generals" and "Kicking & Screaming"] as Joey Naylor.
"THANK YOU FOR SMOKING" was .......
directed by Jason Reitman ["Operation", "In God We Trust", "Uncle Sam" and "Consent"]; screenplay by Jason Reitman ["In God We Trust" and "Gulp"]; original story by Christopher Buckley ["Thank You for Smoking"]; cinematography by ["Let The Devil Wear Black", "Sluts & Losers", "Never Never" and "The Cooler"]; original music by Rolfe Kent ["About Schmidt", "Sideways", "Wedding Crashers" and "You, Me and Dupree"] production design by Steve Saklad ["The Mambo Kings", "Mercury Rising", "Red Dragon" and "Shadowboxer"] and costume design by Danny Glicker ["Transamerica" and "The Hills Have Eyes"]. Run Time 92 minutes Rated M [AUST] Copyright ©2006 - Fox Searchlight Films - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2006 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved