Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking Finishes the Fest

Buzz is gathering among our youth for a film that seems unlikely
to be the Garden State or even Napoleon Dynamite of this year. It’s
titled Thank You for Smoking, a wry phrase coined by the novel’s
author, Christopher Buckley, the satirist son of the man who
invented conservatism for our time, William F. Buckley. It’s
political satire and it opened well in the Toronto Festival to
mostly great reviews. It will close our palmy cinema extravaganza,
and maybe the kids will buy tickets en masse.

Son Buckley writes humor bits for the New Yorker. This novel,
which was a moderate bestseller, is a thriller that pits an
anti-hero flack for the tobacco industry against his conscience and
his son. It famously includes an attempted murder-by-tobacco-patch
scene—delicious in its grisly irony.

And speaking of sons, the filmmaker is first-time big-feature
director Jason Reitman, son of Ghostbusters and Montecito Pictures’
Ivan. Despite his Santa Barbara blood, Jason seemed uninterested in
even phoning in an interview. Of course that’s his privilege, but
we take considerable pride in our own, particularly when they
command a cast that includes Robert Duvall, Maria Bello—who is now
a Jason fan—and Katie Holmes. And, aye, there’s the rub.

Perhaps one reason Jason doesn’t want to return calls is all the
fuss gathering over an allegedly hot sex scene involving Tom
Cruise’s babaloo. The rumor circulated that Tom made a call to
Jason asking firmly that the scene be dropped. Though Reitman
denies complying, the film showed in Toronto without Katie lewd.
Publicly, Reitman has said that a reel was missing in the Toronto
show. But he has been a little less than forthcoming as to whether
said reel will find its way back into the product we see when the
fest closes on a film that, now I get it, the kids all want to see.
(P.S. You can see Holmes naked in Sam Raimi’s The Gift, if that’s
what floats your boat.)

In any case, swirling rumors tend to be good for movie fest
buzz, and by Sunday night, we’ll discover whether the film itself
is worth the innuendo and backstage string-pulling.