Smoke Screen

My father taught me how to drink, gamble, cheat, and tell a lie. There’s not many dads out there who realize the value of good vice.

Dad’s drinks are so strong, I learned not to like liquor. I found I was safe to stick with beer and wine, alcohol that isn’t made stronger than it already comes.

Dad dealt me hands of black jack and lectured me not to take a hit on seventeen. He taught me that the house always wins, and to scream “PAY THE TABLE” when I caught him dealing off the bottom of the deck.

He also taught me how to hide food, how you could flick a morsel of something off a toothpick into a shrubbery, and how much unwanted cuisine you could slip inside a potato skin, then to smile at the host, and say it was all delicious.

THANK YOU FOR SMOKING is a great Father's Day movie, about a dad who doesn't necessarily lie, but he reweights the truth, with his son as a constant witness. The spin cycle runs strongly through the issues he's washing, from ice cream to cigarettes. He is a completely honest character, despite his skills in debate and logic. In the end, he stabs through the whirl of upheaval with pure honesty in a solitary moment that affects himself, his son, and his career. And he becomes more powerful than ever.

This movie is so cleanly put together, you have to believe its makers are deceiving you, but the only deception is the lack of deception, right clean down to the fact that you never see the protagonist smoke. He is reputed to be such a great smoker, that his enormous nicotine tolerance is what saves him when he is captured and overdosed with nicotine patches. The lobbyist for alcohol takes a drink for every second of screen time when she isn't speaking, and the firearms advocate is packing, most definitely packing, but true to tobacco advertising restrictions, we never actually see the protagonist take a puff. Most certainly this film takes heavy swings at political correctness at all levels of social and private habits, but despite its title, it's actually a promotion to do the right thing.

My dad never taught me how to smoke. He quit when I was little, so little, I don’t even remember him ever smoking. He hasn’t smoked in nearly forty years. Me neither.