Guilds Say They'll Filter Smoking

Representatives of the creative guilds renewed their pledge to cut down on smoking in the movies and on TV following a White House meeting Wednesday with Vice President Al Gore (HR 12/3).

Reps from the Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild and Writers Guild -- along with Christy Turlington speaking for supermodels -- pledged to use their own kind of peer pressure to keep colleagues from depicting cigarettes as cool.

"There's a real generational and educational gap here that we'd like to address," SAG president Richard Masur said. "This is about the industry communicating with its own on a peer-to-peer basis saying there's a lot of choices that you make during the course of the creation of a film or a television show, and while you're making those choices, here's some information to help you decide what choices you should make. A lot of the increase in smoking is thoughtless. It's not good, it's not bad. It's thoughtless. We want to put some thought back in that choice."

Even as Gore said movies and TV shows were to blame for increased teen smoking -- "no question about it" -- he demurred when asked for an example. "I don't want to become a movie critic," he said.

The vice president cited a study that found 77% of all movies released last year showed tobacco use -- often in scenes glamorizing smoking. That finding coincides with a recent rise in teen smoking.

"The cause and effect relationship is very, very clear," Gore said. Regrettably, he added, impressionable moviegoers "don't see the victim of lung cancer drowning in the fluid that builds up in their lungs."

Gore and the guild chiefs brushed aside free-speech questions, saying the government is not taking any action other than talking about the issue.

"I don't think there has been any arm-twisting," DGA president Jack Shea said. "We hear these suggestions the vice president is making, and as a leader, I think it's fine that he make those suggestions, because I feel the same way he does. That anything we can do to get rid of the veils of smoking will save a lot of lives everywhere. I would be very upset if someone tried to make it a mandatory rule, because I believe that under the First Amendment, all of us have the right to make our own choices."

Also attending the meeting were "Party of Five" co-creator and executive producer Christopher Keyser; Paula Hart, executive producer of "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch"; Children's Action Network executive director Jennifer Perry; and John Romano, executive producer of "Michael Hayes," who represented the WGA West.