My Favorite Onscreen Smokers: The Studs

Unites Artist Films

The other day, I ranted about the MPAA's dunderheaded move to consider cigarette-smoking scenes when rating movies. I included a list of some of my fave tobacco-toking takes involving women and how they just wouldn't have been the same without the ciggies.

Well, today I'm back with the boys. I could practically have stated my case about the power of cigarettes with just one flick alone: Midnight Cowboy. The way Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso Rizzo quivers with every puff, the way Jon Voight makes like a sad, lost mock-up of the Marlboro Man...Oh, I could go on forever about that movie. But there are plenty of other big-screen boys who’ve made something of smoke rings. Herewith: 

William H. Macy in Magnolia:  It’s all about the scene in the bar in the Valley.  Macy sits at a table, alone, coveting Brad the Bartender. Director Paul Thomas Anderson, such a visionary, lets the camera follow Macy’s smoke up, up, up to the ceiling and across the claustrophobic, timeless bar as Supertramp’s “Goodbye Stranger” starts to play. If that isn’t poetry on film, then I don’t know what is.

Without Cigs:  Macy coulda been sitting at that bar with a bottle of bubbles, blowing them into the air. Am fighting the urge to say not! right now so badly, you don’t even want to know.

Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites:  Don't say you never wished that you were cool college grad Winona Ryder and that chain-smoking Ethan was your roommate. I know I did. So, yeah, here I am feeding right into the antismoking coalition’s argument. I know. But guess what? Girls are always going to admire deadly hot guys like Hawke, who puff in protest of showers, day jobs, adulthood and intimacy. Again, Ethan’s Troy is a smoker. The movie wouldn’t be as good if he wasn’t. And the dialogue...oh, we all remember this great little speech: “See, Laney, this is all we need—a couple of smokes, a cup of coffee and a little bit of conversation. You and me and five bucks.” Ultimate slacker sentimental statement much?

Without Cigs:  He could, you know, do, um...magic tricks! Yeah, he could have this really bad habit of doing magic tricks all the time. Because magic tricks, well, I don’t know a slacker who was into them, but I’m sure there was at least one guy. And think of the product tie-ins!

John Hawkes in The Perfect Storm:  As a Masshole who has done her time working by the docks, I have a special place in my heart for this gem. I cry every time the big wave comes, and I think Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney never looked better. Storm also lets Hawkes shine as the movie’s best smoker. What he does so brilliantly is called “hands-free smoking.” You know what it is—when a guy is double tasking, heavy lifting and perhaps talking and puffing away, holding that cigarette with his mouth. Hawkes is absolutely pro in Storm, a movie so rife with smoke you can almost smell it mingling with the salt air. And here’s the thing: Fishermen smoke. Okay, not every single one of them, but a lot of them, for sure. So, it’s just another case of a movie being true to life, and being better for it.

Without Cigs:  Instead of lighting up, the tough guys whip out the dental floss and go at their gums. Maybe they even use fishing line between their chompers. Think of the money they save on dental bills!

Ray Liotta in Goodfellas:  Oh, Henry Hill. The sheer energy in that performance could run all the hybrids in Beverly Hills for a solid week. And the energy he puts into smoking, it’s Liotta’s best work ever. When he’s young, the smoking is fun. He’s hanging with Joe Pesci. It’s all a big joke. And the time passes. And along come the drugs, the stress, the big day. Stir that sauce! Hill is still smoking in the end, but gone is the joy. He sucks with anger. He practically hisses with each puff, as if someone’s holding a gun to his head and forcing him to light up. The affair is over, and the addiction has won. And oh, is it a great part of this great story.

Without Cigs:  Henry Hill: Jawbreaker addict. Not beating people up. The little red candies.

Paramount Pictures

Robert Downey Jr. in Zodiac:  So, it wasn’t a perfect movie. So what? I’ll tell you what was perfect. The scene where Downey and Jake Gyllenhaal hit a bar, get wasted on bright blue girly drinks and talk up a storm. Downey is the one man who should be immune from the MPAA ruling. He smokes, and those cigarettes, they become an extension of his body. He’s compulsive, he’s got a brain that never quits, and his hands need to be doing something. In ‘70s San Francisco, there is nothing a guy like that—an obsessed editor in pursuit of the truth—could have been doing but smoking. Unless...

Without Cigs:  He was compulsively jerking off. Ha.