Smoking in films and TV programmes .

Last week I watched a bit of telly and a couple of films . There was a pretty good Agatha Christie two part thing on and while I am aware that it was portraying events that happened in an age when most people smoked do they really need to have people smoking in every scene ? I’m pretty sure if nobody was smoking then that wouldn’t have detracted from the story line , I mean everybody has a shit now and then but they don’t show that in the interest of realism . I think it’s a bad image to put out and certainly nothing glamorous or sophisticated about it . Happy New Year everybody . 😀

different times..

Choices innit.

Some like it, some don’t.

Why ostracise a portion of the population because you don’t like it ?

I’m not ostracising anybody , people can and will smoke but I don’t think it’s necessary to show it in films unless it forms part of the storyline .

Have you two got nothing better to do . 😆

Nope

I watched an old Thunderbirds episode recently and Scott Tracy had a fag on, come to think of it Lady Penelope always had a cig holder in her hands.

FYI I’ve never smoked so it didn’t affect me when I was a kid. Still can’t see it happening now though! 😀

Top marks to anyone able to find a scene of someone smoking on the crapper – drawing a blank here…

Superb work, there, Revs…!

8)

I see Binners has refreshed the look of the dunny in the cellar.

People used to smoke all the time up until the public places smoking ban came in; to make period films without referencing the fact is just being revisionist and trying to pretend it never happened, like the stupidity which saw I K Brunel’s trademark cigar being removed from historical photos.
I’m pretty sure very, very few kids took up smoking because they saw it on telly, they do it because their peer-group do, and they don’t want to appear ‘uncool’.
Peer-pressure can lead to an awful lot of bad behaviour.
My dad smoked, and my best mate up the street nicked some of his dad’s fags and we went up the woods and lit up.
They tasted disgusting, I didn’t take more than a few puffs and never touched one again, because I was under no pressure to fit in with the local ‘cool kids’.
There weren’t any.

Theres a couple of reasons for it:

1) The tobacco industry had pretty big stakes in the early days of cinema and TV. Because of the industry’s early involvement heres a whole lot of dramatic shorthand that grew from then that revolves around cigarettes – you can quickly show that someone is relaxed, anxious, rebellious, cool, desperate, relieved, etc by the way they smoke a cigarette. {edit} you could also convey a lot of those emotions by showing them having a shit too I suppose. I think I’d draw the line at a post coital number 2 though {/edit}

2) To light a scene for the camera you need thick air

When the smoking ban came in – banning cigarettes and even fake cigarettes from workplaces including film studios – it gave directors and DOP’s real problem. Without people in the scene smoking…. where is all the smoke coming from?

Just watching the box set of Madmen, no one on the sh!tter yet but a whole lot of smoking going on…

What amazes me is the amount of drink driving that seems to go in in American series.

Mackem – Member
What amazes me is the amount of drink driving that seems to go in in American series.

In Montana, they’ve only relatively recently made drinking and driving illegal. As in, drinking while driving.

Having a few beers and driving home, or back to your hotel*, is still pretty normal out there!

*A friend tells me.

its because tobacco cannot be advertised so the tobacco companies are effectively product placing, thats why there is a rise in films/tv with people smoking. good way to get funding for a production.

The end of the thread commeth..

My mum complained to the BBC about Hanibal in the A team smoking a cigar all the time. The A team is directed towards kids though.

Last week I watched a bit of telly and a couple of films

…there’s your first mistake.

Also, smoking is (speaking as a non-smoker) glamorous and sophisticated. It’s one of those things, like everything being black & white and the men all wearing nice hats, that made the Olden Days so much more exciting. I’m well aware that it causes cancer and all. 🙂

Not only did people smoke in old movies, they were all thin, wore hats and talked in posh BBC English.

On a related note, it always irritates me when a TV programme or film has somebody taking a drug, and then carrying on exactly as they did before the injection/snort/inhale as if nothing is any different for them…

There was a pretty good Agatha Christie two part thing on and while I am aware that it was portraying events that happened in an age when most people smoked do they really need to have people smoking in every scene ?[/I]

Even in the 70’s it felt like most people smoked, and when I started work in the early 80’s I sat next to many colleagues who smoked at their desks – I especially remember Ron as he had a yellow circle above him on the suspended ceiling…

Heres a staggering stat for you. At the end of the second world war, over 90% of the adult male population smoked. I remember working in a drawing office in the 80’s where there was a fog hung in the room, and pretty much everyone had an overflowing ashtray next to them. It was mingin’!

If you were going for accuracy, you now never see anyone smoking, or even vaping, which isn’t an accurate reflection at all

Is the OP talking about old films though? There was a drop off of smoking in films and TV dramas, but I reckon it’s on the increase again, to make protagonists look hard and edgy. Luckily you can’t smell the bastards when they’re on TV.
I do remember the days of practically everyone smokin on telly…

They don’t smoke in soaps no more

There’s a subplot in an Arthur C Clarke novel where a character’s job is digitally removing cigarettes and smoke from classic movies. Didn’t seem that plausible when I first read it…

a bit of cigarette violence…