Confessions, multiple: I have never been a smoker, I've been thrilled and proud of my friends whenever they've kicked the habit, I have never once missed the days when bars / restaurants allowed smoking...
... but I miss smoking in the movies.
Rock Hudson blowing smoke rings
Fifty years ago this very day the Surgeon General first deemed it hazardous to your health and over the next fifty years it's slowly faded from the movies. Nowadays when you see smoking onscreen, it's nearly always to signify "rebellious character" or "villain" or is shot through some sharp retro-commentary filters: see everything about everyone in Mad Men or David Straitharn's whole act in Goodnight, and Good Luck.
I know smoking is wrong. I know it kills. I hate the way it smells. But those tendrils of smoke on screen or a movie star's lips around a cigarette look so damn sexy. Here's proof...
Bogie & Bacall shared more than cigarettes
Even without the cig, you'd know Angelina Jolie was a bad girl
Good girl gone bad: Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club
Carole Lombard, such an original
Gary Cooper knew how to work the camera
smoking as accessory to sadness, via miserable Kiki
Seductive smoking in A Single Man - rare in movies now
Kathleen Turner
Hollywood's Greatest Chain Smoker
Brando
Angela Bassett knows how to kick bad habits in Waiting to Exhale
None of this ever made me want to take up the habit but apparently that isn't true for others so for the greater good of all we have to be okay with the No Smoking zone that is modern cinema. movies. But that doesn't mean I don't sometimes gaze rapt when I catch it onscreen in an old movie or appreciate it when a modern filmmaker fetishizes it like Wong Kar Wai or Ang Lee when they catch Tony Leung Chiu Wai smoldering. Smolder on, Tony, smolder on.
I'm only human.