Hey movie buffs!

[alicebentley]

My 15 year old asked for examples of movies where the "cool" people smoke.
I thought of Casablanca, but it turns out he hasn't seen it.
And Cowboy Bebop, but that was rejected as "too nerdy". I assume too nerdy to admit he used to like it.

What movie is recent enough that he and his classmates would be likely to have seen it, and old enough that they still allowed smoking, and for smoking to be cool?

Comments

[tanac.livejournal.com]

Breakfast Club is apparently popular again, and there's smoking in that. Heck, there's smoking weed in that :)

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

Alice, you're missing the big picture here. You have a fifteen-year-old son. How the heck did that happen!

(I seem to have misplaced a decade somewhere.)

[alicebentley]

He'll be 16 soon. Driving lessons start next week.

Yes, it's been a while since we hung out together.

[brotherguy.livejournal.com]

That was my immediate thought, too. Fifteen? I could have asked, "when did that happen?" though in fact the answer is obvious: over the last fifteen years.

Your question reminds me of an exchange I had years ago with my cousin, who's always been like a little sister to me, at the birth of her first baby. She named her girl Sophie, which I really like as a name (even before reading Howl's Moving Castle) but it's not a name I had ever heard of in our family before. "Janine," I asked, "where did 'Sophie' come from?"

She looked at me very seriously. "Guy," she said, "if you don't know that by now, I'm not sure I am the one to tell you..."

[rathanylakan.livejournal.com]

Boondocks Saints has a few scenes.

[alicebentley]

There's a movie neither of us have seen. Should we?

[rathanylakan.livejournal.com]

Boondock Saints? I usually assume that most geeks have seen this movie. I think it's one of the best films ever, even though it starts a bit slow. A 15 y/o is likely old enough to see it.

Basically, it's about 2 Irish guys who do vigilante killings in Boston and has Willem Dafoe as a wonderfully arrogant FBI agent.

If you watch it, I'd love to hear what you think of it.

[samcallahan.livejournal.com]

Borderline as to whether or not it's recent enough, but Lethal Weapon. I was eighteen when it came out, had a father who smoked (and hated smoking) and it still inspired me to smoke a couple of packs. Luckily, it didn't stick.

[alicebentley]

I know that I've seen lethal Weapon, although just now I can't remember what it was about. The kid hasn't seen it.

James Bond movies were what we finally settled on. The earlier ones had a lot of smoking shown as a positive thing.

I get the impression this was for a paper for school about smoking. The kid has had so little exposure to smoking that he doesn't see how it could be attractive to anyone - which no doubt made that part of his paper challenging to write.

[kobold-8769.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that a quick stroll to Wikipedia will refresh your memory of "Lethal Weapon".

As for Bond movies, an interesting one to highlight is "You Only Live Twice". Bond being allowed to smoke in the crater-base's control room is what allowed the ninjas to infiltrate the facility.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

Up in Smoke??
Didn't Sharon Stone light up in Basic Instinct?

He's 15, he'll like both of those.

[alicebentley]

We will have to make the effort to get more movies into this place. He hasn't heard of any of these. On the other hand, we do get a lot of game playing time in....

[whl.livejournal.com]

It won't help; I have more than 500 movies in this place (thank goodness for the $5 bin), and I still only have about half the ones mentioned in this thread.

I've been trying to think of examples, but I tend to tune out the smoking, I think.

Louise Fletcher was unsuccessfully militant about her right to smoke in the Wildfire facility in The Andromeda Strain, but did that make it cool? And I think she also smoked in Brainstorm, but that at least one character said they wished she wouldn't.

[whl.livejournal.com]

Except, of course, the actress in The Andromeda Strain was Kate Reid, not Louise Fletcher.

Clearly, it's time for bed.

[isherempress.livejournal.com]

Animal House. Certainly one of my all-time faves.

[voiceofisaac.livejournal.com]

An unusual recent one: "Good Night, And Good Luck.", about Edward R. Murrow. Everyone smokes in that movie, and there's even a nod to period cigarette ads. Murrow has some great cigarette-as-body-language prop moments.

Janeane Garofolo's character in "Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion."

I recall "The Warriors" having some smoking scenes. Not a lot, though.

[alicebentley]

Turns out my boy is almost completely ignorant about movies. He hasn't heard of any of these.

James Bond came to the rescue in terms of references for his paper.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I recently realized that my kids hadn't seen a whole lot of cultural touchstone movies. I realized this when we were at a marching band expo and two of the bands had Blues Brothers references in their presentations, and I realized they hadn't seen Blues Brothers.

I pretty much had to FORCE them to sit and watch this movie, they were sure it was another of dad's boring videos (I'm usually watching documentaries). They were both howling with laughter by the end.

I plan to keep working on them.

[blackbirdcd.livejournal.com]

You have two perfect samples. But if those aren't cool enough then try Fight Club

[daddy-guido.livejournal.com]

not a movie, but the TV show "Mad men" (on A&E, I believe) (about ad execs on madison avenue in the 60's) is filled with "cool" smokers.

And it's a damn cool show.

[mbcrui.livejournal.com]

Grease, which also seems to be making the rounds of the "cool kids" in HS's these days.

[dizzydava.livejournal.com]

Pulp Fiction, Thank You for Smoking