Aaron Johnson Gallery: Smoking on the silver screen, harder to find

Still of Bradley Cooper and Abbie Cornish in "Limitless" (2011)

If the health unit has developed a standard for what constitutes “necessary” tobacco use in Hollywood productions, it’s not clear. The obvious objection is that tobacco use, necessary or not, hasn’t been much of a factor on the silver screen lately.

In March and so far in April, five films have topped the North American box office — Hop, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Limitless, Battle: Los Angeles and Rango. Of these, only one has been flagged by the Ontario Film Review Board as containing tobacco use. And it was Limitless: If you blinked and missed the film, it stars Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper — performers who do not have any sort of pull with younger movie fans.

“They’re at the age where they’re trying to define themselves,” Yateman says of the teens who report that they began smoking after seeing a character light up in a feature film.

If there are any teens in this province who are idolizing Robert De Niro’s work in Limitless, I have yet to meet them. The truth is that, as in society at large, smoking on the silver screen is getting harder and harder to find.

Robert DeNiro in "Casino" directed by Martin Scorsese (1995)

Putting pressure on the film-review board — which also has no standard of “necessary” tobacco use, nor necessary violence nor necessary sexual content — is, at best, an indirect way for the health bureaucracy to achieve its goal. That the health unit would target the big screen in the age of the Internet is also puzzling". Source: www.lfpress.com