The best there is at what he does, and what he does is create smokers?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/28/ent.movie.smoking/index.html

The American Medical Association Alliance wants the MPAA to automatically give any movie that depicts smoking an R rating. Apparently, the scenes with the title character chomping a cigar in X-Men Origins: Wolverine set them off.

One inaccuracy in the story. Wolverine does not have a cigar in his mouth in "almost every panel of the comic book series." First of all, there is more than one Wolverine comic book series at this time. Secondly, readers will very rarely, if ever, see him with a cigar because Marvel Comics banned smoking from its all ages books a while back. They do depict smoking in books marketed to older readers, such as their MAX titles.

I love that Marvel made that choice. Comic book readership doesn't rely as heavily on kids as you might think, but the books are still geared to young readers. But it was the company's choice, as it should be.

I wish Hugh Jackman, who was a producer on the film as well as the star, and the others behind the Wolverine movie had made the same choice. I get that there was at least one anti-smoking comment in the movie, but young people still saw the tough-guy hero with a cigar in his mouth. The movie was definitely marketed to kids as well as adults.

But it should still be a creative choice. Given some of what we see in movies, an automatic R for smoking seens seems ridiculous even to me, and I'm as anti-smoking as anybody around here. I usually like the anti-smoking crazies, but is it getting completely out of hand?

 

I don't think the cigar was lit when Wolverine was chomping on it during the movie.

 

I don't think so, either, which is part of why I described him as chomping on it rather than smoking it.

 

There is so much nicotine in a cigar, you're still absorbing it even if it's not lit. If it's in your mouth a carcinogen is leaking into your body.

 

I wish the money companies paid for product placement was made public. I could see the tobacco industry paying $10 million plus, for placement like that, maybe more if it was a specific brand.

 

Really? Learn something new every day. I remember my father always going on about how he was taking better care of himself by chewing on cigars rather than smoking cigarettes.

 

It's like putting chew in your mouth. Cigar smokers overall are more at risk for oral cancers. I'm sure you've seen the end of cigar when he was done with it. A pulpy mess? Yuck.

 

Yeah, those things were nasty when he was done with them.

It didn't work, anyway. He kept going back to the cigarettes and died of lung cancer almost 10 years ago.

 

Personally, I like to swish it around my mouth with a little port, maybe some cognac, then wash it down and call it a night.

 

Well, at least you're keeping the carcinogen to yourself rather than lighting up and spreading it around.

 

Dumb.