Smoke Gets In Their Eyes
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)
Transcript
[CLIP]:
BETTE DAVIS:
He allowed this visit as a test. If I can't stand such tests, I'll lose Tina and we’ll will lose each other. Jerry, please help me.
PAUL HENREID:
Shall we just have a cigarette on it?
BETTE DAVIS:
Yes.
[END OF CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD:
That was Bette Davis in the 1942 cinema classic, Now, Voyager. It's likely that Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and member of the Screen Out Coalition, would not be moved by the use of a prop so round, so firm, so fully packed. According to that group of scientists and public health experts, smoking in the movies lures 390,000 kids every year to take up the deadly habit.
We spoke with Glantz this past March. He told us that the health risks of second-hand cinema smoke are no longer debatable.
STANTON GLANTZ:
There's about 100 scientific studies of the effect of smoking in the movies on kids. And what all of this evidence says when you put it together is that kids who see a lot of smoking in the movies are about three times more likely to actually start smoking than kids that don't see a lot of smoking in the movies.
BOB GARFIELD:
And your group is suggesting a four-part solution.
STANTON GLANTZ:
One is that new movies with smoking in them get an R rating. We think that the simple action of treating smoking in the movies the same way that Hollywood treats abusive language would prevent about 200,000 kids a year from starting to smoke.
The second thing we'd like to see is an antismoking ad shown before any movie or on any DVD with any movie that has smoking in it, because there's evidence that that ad actually tends to neutralize the pro-smoking effect in the movies without affecting whether or not kids would recommend the movie to their friends.
The third thing is an end to all brand identification. There's really no need for - I mean, one of the directors that I've talked to said that there's actually a person who sits next to him when they're making a film who's in charge of clearances, and he's told not to put any branded merchandise in the film without either a release or a product placement deal. Cigarettes are the only thing where the insurance companies don't require either a release or a product placement deal.
And the tobacco companies get out there and they're just shocked, shocked that their brands are being displayed in these movies so prominently. And Philip Morris is now even running ads in the trade press urging Hollywood not to display its brands.
But if Philip Morris was serious about keeping their products out of the movies, they would just sue a couple of producers for trademark infringement.
The fourth thing we're asking for is what I call a certification of no payoffs. You know how at the end of the movies, when they have an animal in the movie they have a certification that no animals were harmed in the making of the film? Well, we'd like a certification that nobody got paid off for putting smoking in that movie.
BOB GARFIELD:
You have provided for a couple of exceptions to the list of rules. One would be for a film which is portraying a historical figure, you know, known to smoke heavily, like Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck, or maybe Winston Churchill.
Another, in the spirit of the old Hays Code, which allowed you to show someone committing homicide as long as he got his comeuppance in the end, allows you to show smoking if it also shows the negative health effects.
STANTON GLANTZ:
Yes. The reason that we included those two exceptions was, frankly, I got tired of hearing about Winston Churchill's cigar. And the fact is that there are very, very few movies, especially the kind of movies that we're concerned about, that are mass marketed to teenagers, where, you know, Winston Churchill – [BOB LAUGHS]- stomping around and chomping his cigar was a big issue. [BOB LAUGHS]
The exception for actual portrayal of the negative effects of smoking was put in there for similar reasons. We heard objections out of Hollywood. Oh, what if we wanted to make a movie showing, you know, that smoking is horrible and kills people? And that would deprive us of the opportunity to educate kids. So we said, okay.
So these couple of exceptions that we've allowed were really put in there to just get rid of a couple of fallacious arguments that were being used against us.
BOB GARFIELD:
There are all sort of unhealthy behaviors depicted in PG-rated movies, from eating pizza to jumping out of windows onto awnings to fist fights to car chases. I mean, shall we have movies rated R for reckless driving?
STANTON GLANTZ:
Well, the thing which makes tobacco use different from these other things that you're talking about is we have this tremendous science base. And in those other areas that you're talking about, we just don't have scientific evidence that car chases are causing 400,000 kids a year to go out and drive recklessly and get killed eventually.
BOB GARFIELD:
What's the reaction been from Hollywood?
STANTON GLANTZ:
For the first couple of years, we were completely ignored by Hollywood, and then they were mad and saying all kinds of mean things about us. But there's been a couple of areas where there's been some meaningful progress. The Weinstein brothers have now started putting antismoking ads on their DVDs. That's something that the Motion Picture Association told me years ago Hell would freeze over before that happened.
Theaters are now willing to allow state and city health programs to run antismoking ads in theaters before movies with smoking in them. That's something else the Motion Picture Association had told me would never happen.
BOB GARFIELD:
Stanton Glantz is a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
Since we spoke to him in March, there have been a number of developments in this story. In May, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that it would add smoking as a criterion - alongside violence, sexual situations and language - in rating movies. So Stan joins us now for an update. Stan, total and absolute victory. Congratulations.
STANTON GLANTZ:
Well, we don't have total and absolute victory, but the thing that we do have is a little bit of forward motion. After five years of stonewalling on the part of the studios and the MPAA, they're now recognizing publicly that smoking in the movies encourages kids to smoke and they're pretending to solve the problem. Now we have to get them to just actually solve the problem.
BOB GARFIELD:
Well, let's talk first about what the Walt Disney Company has done. They seem to be the most aggressive among the studios.
STANTON GLANTZ:
Well, that's actually not true. What Disney did was announced a policy they adopted three years ago, in 2004, of, quote, "discouraging smoking" in their films and said they would get it out of their Disney-branded films.
Since they adopted the policy three years ago, we've actually been able to look at the movies they've released since then, and there's been essentially no change in the amount of smoking in the Disney films.
The most thorough policy so far was actually adopted by General Electric's Universal, which put in place a fairly systematic review, all the way from script approval through production, of smoking that's in their movies. That was adopted last April.
It's too early to tell how much difference that's going to make, but it still doesn't do the - none of the studios have done the simple thing of just saying, we're not going to make or distribute any films to kids that have smoking in them.
BOB GARFIELD:
What about the MPAA itself? It has at least paid lip service to changes. Is it just lip service or are they really being attentive here?
STANTON GLANTZ:
I think so far the MPAA is paying lip service. On May 10th they announced they would, quote, "consider," close quotes, smoking in movies when assigning ratings. The first movie that they've rated under the new policy was Hairspray, which they gave a PG, which is a youth rating.
And so what we want is an R rating for smoking so it's left out of films that are marketed to kids, and so far there's just been no effect of the MPAA's policy.
Another interesting sideline on the MPAA is they have issued statistics several times claiming there's a lot less smoking in movies than we're saying. And the 30-some-odd Attorneys General have written the MPAA asking them for the backup study that supports the statistics they've been quoting, and so far the MPAA has simply refused to produce any kind of backup for the claims that they're making.
BOB GARFIELD:
Of course, I was being ironic when I, you know, declared total victory. But, you know, I do have to say that it took decades for environmentalists to, you know, have a whole lot of influence on government or industry, and you seem to have achieved a fair amount in a relatively short time. Are you not encouraged by some of the preliminary actions that Hollywood's making?
STANTON GLANTZ:
Oh, yeah, I'm very encouraged, and I think that within a year or so we will have gotten them where they need to be, which is to get an R rating for smoking in the movies so that it's not in movies that are being promoted to kids.
And also one of the other things, and another place that Disney may have moved forward in a substantive way, is they've agreed to put antismoking public service announcements on the DVDs that they're distributing for films that have smoking in them, which is another thing we've been asking for.
The big question that is remaining for Disney is where are they going to get the PSAs? Are they going to get them from someplace like the American Legacy Foundation Truth Campaign, which have been shown to actually reduce smoking, or are they going to go to Philip Morris or some other source and get ads that actually subtly encourage smoking?
BOB GARFIELD:
Hey, I want to ask you one more thing. Now with digital technology it's actually possible to retroactively remove cigarettes, at least cigarette brands, from films. Have you got a position on that? Do you think we should be doing some revisionist cinematic history on, I don't know, Casablanca¸ for example?
STANTON GLANTZ:
We actually think doing that could actually cause harm. We're trying to solve the problem moving forward. You know, we know that there were a lot of, a history of payoffs between the tobacco companies and Hollywood going back decades. They did product placement, all this other stuff. We're trying to move beyond that.
BOB GARFIELD:
Well, Stan, once again, thanks very much for joining us.
STANTON GLANTZ:
Thank you, and goodbye.
BOB GARFIELD:
Stanton Glantz is a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Coming up, the Olympic Torch draws reporters like moths. Is Beijing ready? And, the scent of an anchor.
BOB GARFIELD:
This is On the Media from NPR.
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BETTE DAVIS:
He allowed this visit as a test. If I can't stand such tests, I'll lose Tina and we’ll will lose each other. Jerry, please help me.
PAUL HENREID:
Shall we just have a cigarette on it?
BETTE DAVIS:
Yes.
[END OF CLIP]
BOB GARFIELD:
That was Bette Davis in the 1942 cinema classic, Now, Voyager. It's likely that Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco and member of the Screen Out Coalition, would not be moved by the use of a prop so round, so firm, so fully packed. According to that group of scientists and public health experts, smoking in the movies lures 390,000 kids every year to take up the deadly habit.
We spoke with Glantz this past March. He told us that the health risks of second-hand cinema smoke are no longer debatable.
STANTON GLANTZ:
There's about 100 scientific studies of the effect of smoking in the movies on kids. And what all of this evidence says when you put it together is that kids who see a lot of smoking in the movies are about three times more likely to actually start smoking than kids that don't see a lot of smoking in the movies.
BOB GARFIELD:
And your group is suggesting a four-part solution.
STANTON GLANTZ:
One is that new movies with smoking in them get an R rating. We think that the simple action of treating smoking in the movies the same way that Hollywood treats abusive language would prevent about 200,000 kids a year from starting to smoke.
The second thing we'd like to see is an antismoking ad shown before any movie or on any DVD with any movie that has smoking in it, because there's evidence that that ad actually tends to neutralize the pro-smoking effect in the movies without affecting whether or not kids would recommend the movie to their friends.
The third thing is an end to all brand identification. There's really no need for - I mean, one of the directors that I've talked to said that there's actually a person who sits next to him when they're making a film who's in charge of clearances, and he's told not to put any branded merchandise in the film without either a release or a product placement deal. Cigarettes are the only thing where the insurance companies don't require either a release or a product placement deal.
And the tobacco companies get out there and they're just shocked, shocked that their brands are being displayed in these movies so prominently. And Philip Morris is now even running ads in the trade press urging Hollywood not to display its brands.
But if Philip Morris was serious about keeping their products out of the movies, they would just sue a couple of producers for trademark infringement.
The fourth thing we're asking for is what I call a certification of no payoffs. You know how at the end of the movies, when they have an animal in the movie they have a certification that no animals were harmed in the making of the film? Well, we'd like a certification that nobody got paid off for putting smoking in that movie.
BOB GARFIELD:
You have provided for a couple of exceptions to the list of rules. One would be for a film which is portraying a historical figure, you know, known to smoke heavily, like Edward R. Murrow in Good Night and Good Luck, or maybe Winston Churchill.
Another, in the spirit of the old Hays Code, which allowed you to show someone committing homicide as long as he got his comeuppance in the end, allows you to show smoking if it also shows the negative health effects.
STANTON GLANTZ:
Yes. The reason that we included those two exceptions was, frankly, I got tired of hearing about Winston Churchill's cigar. And the fact is that there are very, very few movies, especially the kind of movies that we're concerned about, that are mass marketed to teenagers, where, you know, Winston Churchill – [BOB LAUGHS]- stomping around and chomping his cigar was a big issue. [BOB LAUGHS]
The exception for actual portrayal of the negative effects of smoking was put in there for similar reasons. We heard objections out of Hollywood. Oh, what if we wanted to make a movie showing, you know, that smoking is horrible and kills people? And that would deprive us of the opportunity to educate kids. So we said, okay.
So these couple of exceptions that we've allowed were really put in there to just get rid of a couple of fallacious arguments that were being used against us.
BOB GARFIELD:
There are all sort of unhealthy behaviors depicted in PG-rated movies, from eating pizza to jumping out of windows onto awnings to fist fights to car chases. I mean, shall we have movies rated R for reckless driving?
STANTON GLANTZ:
Well, the thing which makes tobacco use different from these other things that you're talking about is we have this tremendous science base. And in those other areas that you're talking about, we just don't have scientific evidence that car chases are causing 400,000 kids a year to go out and drive recklessly and get killed eventually.
BOB GARFIELD:
What's the reaction been from Hollywood?
STANTON GLANTZ:
For the first couple of years, we were completely ignored by Hollywood, and then they were mad and saying all kinds of mean things about us. But there's been a couple of areas where there's been some meaningful progress. The Weinstein brothers have now started putting antismoking ads on their DVDs. That's something that the Motion Picture Association told me years ago Hell would freeze over before that happened.
Theaters are now willing to allow state and city health programs to run antismoking ads in theaters before movies with smoking in them. That's something else the Motion Picture Association had told me would never happen.
BOB GARFIELD:
Stanton Glantz is a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
Since we spoke to him in March, there have been a number of developments in this story. In May, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that it would add smoking as a criterion - alongside violence, sexual situations and language - in rating movies. So Stan joins us now for an update. Stan, total and absolute victory. Congratulations.
STANTON GLANTZ:
Well, we don't have total and absolute victory, but the thing that we do have is a little bit of forward motion. After five years of stonewalling on the part of the studios and the MPAA, they're now recognizing publicly that smoking in the movies encourages kids to smoke and they're pretending to solve the problem. Now we have to get them to just actually solve the problem.
BOB GARFIELD:
Well, let's talk first about what the Walt Disney Company has done. They seem to be the most aggressive among the studios.
STANTON GLANTZ:
Well, that's actually not true. What Disney did was announced a policy they adopted three years ago, in 2004, of, quote, "discouraging smoking" in their films and said they would get it out of their Disney-branded films.
Since they adopted the policy three years ago, we've actually been able to look at the movies they've released since then, and there's been essentially no change in the amount of smoking in the Disney films.
The most thorough policy so far was actually adopted by General Electric's Universal, which put in place a fairly systematic review, all the way from script approval through production, of smoking that's in their movies. That was adopted last April.
It's too early to tell how much difference that's going to make, but it still doesn't do the - none of the studios have done the simple thing of just saying, we're not going to make or distribute any films to kids that have smoking in them.
BOB GARFIELD:
What about the MPAA itself? It has at least paid lip service to changes. Is it just lip service or are they really being attentive here?
STANTON GLANTZ:
I think so far the MPAA is paying lip service. On May 10th they announced they would, quote, "consider," close quotes, smoking in movies when assigning ratings. The first movie that they've rated under the new policy was Hairspray, which they gave a PG, which is a youth rating.
And so what we want is an R rating for smoking so it's left out of films that are marketed to kids, and so far there's just been no effect of the MPAA's policy.
Another interesting sideline on the MPAA is they have issued statistics several times claiming there's a lot less smoking in movies than we're saying. And the 30-some-odd Attorneys General have written the MPAA asking them for the backup study that supports the statistics they've been quoting, and so far the MPAA has simply refused to produce any kind of backup for the claims that they're making.
BOB GARFIELD:
Of course, I was being ironic when I, you know, declared total victory. But, you know, I do have to say that it took decades for environmentalists to, you know, have a whole lot of influence on government or industry, and you seem to have achieved a fair amount in a relatively short time. Are you not encouraged by some of the preliminary actions that Hollywood's making?
STANTON GLANTZ:
Oh, yeah, I'm very encouraged, and I think that within a year or so we will have gotten them where they need to be, which is to get an R rating for smoking in the movies so that it's not in movies that are being promoted to kids.
And also one of the other things, and another place that Disney may have moved forward in a substantive way, is they've agreed to put antismoking public service announcements on the DVDs that they're distributing for films that have smoking in them, which is another thing we've been asking for.
The big question that is remaining for Disney is where are they going to get the PSAs? Are they going to get them from someplace like the American Legacy Foundation Truth Campaign, which have been shown to actually reduce smoking, or are they going to go to Philip Morris or some other source and get ads that actually subtly encourage smoking?
BOB GARFIELD:
Hey, I want to ask you one more thing. Now with digital technology it's actually possible to retroactively remove cigarettes, at least cigarette brands, from films. Have you got a position on that? Do you think we should be doing some revisionist cinematic history on, I don't know, Casablanca¸ for example?
STANTON GLANTZ:
We actually think doing that could actually cause harm. We're trying to solve the problem moving forward. You know, we know that there were a lot of, a history of payoffs between the tobacco companies and Hollywood going back decades. They did product placement, all this other stuff. We're trying to move beyond that.
BOB GARFIELD:
Well, Stan, once again, thanks very much for joining us.
STANTON GLANTZ:
Thank you, and goodbye.
BOB GARFIELD:
Stanton Glantz is a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco.
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Coming up, the Olympic Torch draws reporters like moths. Is Beijing ready? And, the scent of an anchor.
BOB GARFIELD:
This is On the Media from NPR.
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
Produced by WNYC Studios