i watched the film “hollywood land” last night. mostly a propos of the terrible superman curse. a man just never really knows how good he’s got it until that final moment. anyway, the film has an excellent smoking scene, in fact it treats the problem of cigarettes in film very well, being partly ABOUT hollywood. like at one point some people tell superman to put his cigarette out because “superman doesn’t smoke.” in a film set in the 50’s, i believe this is an excellent anachronism… in a time when riders in the tour de france would stop at stage passes and smoke because they thought they were expanding their lungs! so the scene of which i spoke is when this p.i. is real down and out (previously having declaimed smoking and demonstrating this throughout the movie by chewing gum), and frantically upturns his apartment we come to find out for… yes, a cigarette. he pulls it out of this little tin container and SMOKES it. his first drag on the thing is painful to watch; like, it’s totally obvious that he’s an addict and the cigarette might as well be a needle. it’s just terrible. so i appreciated hollywood finally making smoking look bad, in action, and in a self reflective way.
otherwise the film is not the most amazing thing. i don’t recommend rushing out and spending your $2.79 at the video store on it.