smoking | smile

This is an image that has been associated with me or characters I’ve played for the bulk of my career. It’s a still from the first film I produced, Death Fish, which was shot in August, 1997. One of writer/director Carlos Sanchez Lopez‘s influences was Sergio Leone, especially the film A Fistful of Dollars:

Still of Clint Eastwood from A Fistful of Dollars

When I was a kid, A Fistful of Dollars was on television a lot because westerns were still popular and Clint Eastwood was at the height of his superstardom in the 1970‘s. Also, it was only about 100 minutes long without commercials, so it fit perfectly into a two hour prime time TV slot. If Clint had a new movie out in theaters, Fistful of Dollars would be on The Million Dollar Movie all week, so I saw it a lot.
– Carlos Sanchez Lopez, writer/director

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Patty And Selma Smoking — Will more lesbians now be encouraged to take up smoking?

The MPAA recently announced that they would take cigarette smoking into account when deciding on the rating for a movie. Certain anti-smoking groups would like movies depicting smoking to be automatically rated R. During a commercial break on the 400th (!) episode of The Simpsons tonight, an ad for the upcoming Simpsons Movie mentioned that it was unrated. (It also mentioned that it was unfinished, which is the strangest thing I’ve ever heard in a movie promo. Why even mention something like that?) This got me wondering if, given the amount of regular smoking that many of the characters engage in on the series, if The Simpsons Movie could possibly get an Rrating.

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