22 CHICAGO READER | MARCH 24, 2006 | SECTION ONE Reviews

Movies Music Theater Books Recent releases by Thank You Plastic Crimewave Sound, Sita Johnny Ryan’s for Smoking Eef Barzelay, and Scatter Angry Youth a Ram Comix #10 22 AT LOOKINGGLASS

REVIEW BY REVIEWS BY REVIEW BY REVIEW BY J . R . JONES MONICAKENDRICK, BRIAN LAURA MOLZAHN NOAH BERLATSKY MCMANUS, AND MIA LILYCLARKE a 24 a 25 a 26 Movies

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING sss DIRECTED AND WRITTEN BY RATINGS WITH , , CAMERON BRIGHT, , , , ssss MASTERPIECE , , WILLIAM H. MACY, AND J.K. SIMMONS sss A MUST SEE ss WORTH SEEING s HAS REDEEMING FACET • WORTHLESS Freedom Fighter Christopher Buckley and Jason Reitman make an antihero out of a tobacco-industry spokesman.

By J.R. Jones et us now praise the tection from ourselves is at its children of famous most absurd when people file L men. Twelve years ago frivolous lawsuits blaming Christopher Buckley—whose their own drunkenness or father, William F., has become obesity on corporations. As synonymous with postwar most parents can tell you, every conservative philosophy— measure of personal freedom published Thank You for carries with it an equal measure Smoking, a rip-roaring satire of personal responsibility. of Washington spin doctors. Nick Naylor, the wily tobacco- Now Jason Reitman—whose industry spokesman at the cen- liberal father, Ivan, directed ter of Thank You for Smoking, such Hollywood blockbusters as seems like a villain at first, the Stripes and —has kind of guy you love to hate, but made his feature-length direc- he’s surrounded by so many torial debut with an adaptation tongue-clucking federal school- of Buckley’s novel. Given their marms that before long he respective pedigrees, viewers begins to seem more like a clas- are entitled to wonder whether sic antihero—the kind of guy Reitman, who also wrote the you hate to love but love any- screenplay, will have mutilated way. Played with square-jawed Buckley’s book beyond recogni- bonhomie by Aaron Eckhart tion. But as the substantially ( In the Company of Men), faithful movie version demon- Naylor periodically gets togeth- strates, the story of Thank You er for drinks with spin doctors for Smoking resides in that in the liquor industry (Maria libertarian netherworld where Bello) and the gun industry the far left and the far right (David Koechner). They darkly Thank You for Smoking march shoulder to shoulder. refer to themselves as the Libertarianism is still legal, MOD Squad—for “Merchants so generous with his mockery, chant played by Nicolas Cage in Naylor is dispatched by his as far as I know, though like of Death”—but they’re also skewering every political posi- the sadly overlooked Lord of employers at the Academy of smoking it seems to have been dismayed by the government’s tion, and because the primary War , Naylor is so good at what Tobacco Studies to put out a banned from public places. For ever-growing intrusion into subject of Thank You for he does and so happy in his dangerous brush fire: Lorne all the lip service paid to free- people’s lives. When Koechner Smoking is the professional spin craft that you’re forced to give Lutch (Sam Elliott), a cowboy dom, and all the blood being tells Bello that you can beat a doctor. Naylor is a high priest of the devil his due. He doesn’t who spent years posing for cig- spilled to vouchsafe it for the police Breathalyzer test by this black art: invited onto a TV undergo any dark night of the arette ads, has contracted lung Arab world, few Americans sucking on activated charcoal talk show, he’s pitted against a soul or squishy redemption cancer and become a vocal seem interested in fully explor- tablets, and points out that trio of antismoking advocates because there really is a guiding opponent of the tobacco indus- ing the concept. The soggy cen- “there’s no law against charcoal,” and a teenage boy with cancer, principle behind his chicanery: try. (Buckley based his charac- ter is intent on regulating guns, all three of them, in unison, yet by the end of the show he’s grown adults should be expect- ter on Wayne McLaren, a real- gambling, narcotics, pornogra- add: “Yet!” won the kid over to his side and ed to take responsibility for life Marlboro Man who died in phy, prostitution, and over-the- This subtext has a way of isolated the other three pan- their own actions. 1992 at age 51.) Naylor arrives counter antihistamines. This sneaking up on reader and elists, who don’t know what hit The idea emerges in the at Lutch’s ranch with a suitcase misguided impulse to seek pro- viewer alike because Buckley is them. Like the global arms mer- movie’s darkest story line, when full of hush money, and Lutch is CHICAGO READER | MARCH 24, 2006 | SECTION ONE 23

understandably outraged. to every package of Vermont Playing him like a piano, cheddar cheese. Naylor suggests that Lutch Finistirre delivers the ulti- call a press conference to mate low blow when he asks denounce the corporate Naylor if he’ll allow his young payoff and then donate the son Joey, who’s sitting in the money to charity. This stops gallery, to smoke once he the cowboy in his tracks: he’d comes of age. Joey appears rather denounce the companies as a character in Buckley’s and keep the money. “How’s novel, but Reitman has made that going to look?” Naylor Naylor’s warm relationship with asks. “It’s blood money.” When his son (played by ubiquitous Lutch accepts the payoff and child actor Cameron Bright) the quietly discontinues his anti- emotional center of the movie. smoking campaign, he’s only “What your children have to conceding that taking money say about you means something to endorse cigarettes was to you,” Reitman explains in always a personal choice. the press notes. “I wanted to Naylor’s real antagonist is the develop who Nick was in Joey’s progressive Vermont senator eyes.” In both narrative and the- Ortolan Finistirre—a thinly fic- matic terms, this decision turns tionalized Bernie Sanders— out to be a masterstroke: not whose persnickety liberalism is only does it humanize Naylor, nicely exemplified by the ther- whose opponents view him mal socks he wears under his as the Antichrist, but it crystal- sandals. All the movie’s sup- lizes his attitude toward the porting characters are sublime- government when he replies ly cast—Robert Duvall as an to Finistirre, “I’d buy him his aging tobacco lion, Rob Lowe first pack.” That’s the kind of as a vain Hollywood supera- father we could all use—one gent—and as Finistirre, who understands when we William H. Macy is appropri- no longer need him. v ately irritable. Naylor and Finistirre spend most of the movie dimly regarding each other in the media, but they face off at the climax, when the senator calls the spokesman to his subcommittee hearings on regulating tobacco. Finistirre has proposed that every box of smokes carry a skull-and-cross- bones sticker, and he’s none too happy when Naylor, pointing out that the number one killer in America is cholesterol, sug- gests the same label be applied