No Smoking: THe Movies of Nicole Holofcener by Dave Jaffe. Part Three.

   The Movies of Nicole Holofcener versus 'Mad Men' by Dave Jaffe.




     Despite the politics she displayed in the film she directed called 'Please Give' I still like the films of Nicole Holofcener.There's no smoking in her flicks which I think is wonderful.
     Now let's compare her films to the very popular t.v. series 'Mad Men. It ran on t.v. from 2007 to 2015. Millions of viewers watched 'Mad Men' in the U.S. and Canada. 'Mad Men' said the Los Angeles Times created " a strange and lovey space between nostalgia and political correctness." This maybe true but from the series' first scene to its last take, people smoked and smoked and smoked.
     'Mad Men ' is about an advertising agency named Sterling Cooper based in New York City of the 1960's. The program unfolds in upscale offices and many bedrooms. At the start of the series, the lead man, Don Draper played by Jon Hamm sits in a crowded bar and smokes 'Lucky Strike' cigarettes. He questions an African American waiter who prefers another brand of smokes why he prefers his type of cigarettes.
     Nearly everybody in the bar is smoking. To be fair, in the 1960's over 70 per cent of Americans did smoke. Here, the series does reflect reality. The mysterious Draper's main job is to keep Sterling Cooper's biggest client which is a big cigarette company in good shape. This looks like a tough task since a recent article in 'Reader's Digest' has revealed that cigarette smoking endangers lives.
     The actors in the series weren't smoking real tobacco. They smoked herbal cigarettes. "You don't want actors smoking real cigarettes," Mad Men's main writer Matthew Weiner told 'The New York Times'. "They get agitated and nervous." I felt good to hear this, but I wondered whether many young people watching the series started smoking after tuning into 'Mad Men'. For make no mistake about it: smoking tobacco endangers lives. Sources I've tracked down say somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 Canadians die every year from smoking.
     "100 Canadians die every day from smoking," said an even more alarmist web site. This puts the yearly total of deaths from smoking in Canada to about 35,000. Yet whatever the true figure of Canadian smokers is, many Canadians will die prematurely from heart attacks, lung cancer and strokes because they smoke tobacco every day. 
    Nicole Holofcener has complained that not many people know about the films she's scripted and directed. She goes to parties and tells people, "I direct movies." Yet most people, she says, have never heard of her films. This is too bad. The popularity of her films may never match that of 'Mad Men'. Yet so what? In her films, unlike the "Mad Men" series, nobody smokes. And that right now makes her my favourite film director.