Quarter Life Crisis
The world according to Sven-S. Porst
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Thank You for Smoking¶
496 words on Films
Thank You for Smoking
When I ran across the opening titles for Thank You for Smoking [HD Trailer] in spring, I was thrilled. While I generally think that the film industry often does a good job making good looking titles and credits for their films, these titles just completely kicked ass. So much fun, nice typography and at the same time design and history in a few minutes are just a perfect job.
Also - having grown up in a household where my father started complaining about the emerging no-smoking policies around the mid 1980s and actually finding a ‘Thank you for smoking’ sign for his office door at some stage - I found the film’s title amusingly familiar. I just had to see the film which unfortunately took many more months to make it over to Germany.
And it was great to go there as the film was good after the opening titles as well. The story revolves around tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor, who by his training, charm and evil genius manages to talk people into the ground. While he’s doing his job for the mortgage
and tells his little son - who’s living with his ex-wife in his ex-house he pays the mortgage for - that you need a certain moral flexibility
to do it, he just completely rocks doing it. Get into his way and he’ll find points to make you look like the dangerous fool.
And he manages to teach his son the important lesson that above all it’s important to have a good argument. Not an argument on the topic you started with, necessarily, but an argument with which nobody can deny that you are right. - Don’t negotiate, argue!
- And this concept looks familiar from all the PR bullshitting where people keep talking and talking but never actually answer any of the questions you had. It’s as successful as it is despicable. (It might be a good idea to allow torture for people who argue instead of shutting up or giving answers - that could save us a lot of time with politicians and businesspeople.)
There are countless fun scenes in the film. Nick meeting with his friends from similar jobs in the alcohol and weapons industries where they share experiences and boast whose industry kills the most people. Nick starting an affair with journalist Heather who doesn’t fail to take note of every single thing he tells her and writing an article from it - and then, being the only one to master Nick’s coolness, telling him that nobody claimed what he said in bed was off the record and that she would have been perfectly happy to interview him in a restaurant or on a plane instead.
A wonderful film. And the nice graphics extend into it as well. To Heather’s newspaper office, for example, or to Nick’s office at the end of the film. Nice… now I want a screensaver in the style of those titles.
