FMP- Puffing on Hot Air

Lets talk about cigarettes. Particularly cigarettes in film. Since the beginning of Hollywood, actors and actresses have been seen puffing away on tobacco. From pipes to smoking sticks to cigars these have formed a key part of film history. In fact movie stars were often sponsored  by tobacco companies to smoke their product in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Hell some of the most famous pictures in cinema are of stars smoking. For example Audrey Hepburn in every single promotional piece for the two time Oscar winning film "Breakfast at Tiffany's". 

However, there is something that has always puzzled me about this smoking Hollywood culture. And that is "What are they really smoking". No, I don't mean are they puffing away of illegal substances (although I am sure when stars do behind closed doors) rather is what you see on screen real or fake? For example what If you have an actor who doesn't smoke or an actress who was given up the habit and doesn't what to relapse?

Well for a long time it was industry standard to simply use real tobacco! In fact Clint Eastwood famously hated smoking, however for almost all his classic western roles he had to puff on a cigar, giving him that tough guy look. However, the taste of the slow burning, unfiltered tobacco often made him feel very ill, sometimes causing him to gag between takes. 

After it started to come out that smoking wasn't fantastic for your health, the industry realised that having an actor smoke 50 or more cigarettes a day wasn't doing great things for their health. This is also around the point where some celebs were trying to kick the habit. So in the place of tobacco cigarettes they began using herbal ones. These are free from both tobacco and nicotine. 

From a look point of view the two are Identical and would be impossible to tell apart both on and off screen. The TV show Mad men uses them on a regular bases for actors who don't smoke tobacco. John Hamm, in particular, was quoted as saying that he smoked 74 herbal cigarettes during the shooting of the pilot of Mad Men.

Following the genre of noir and the general attitude of 1950s America, all the characters in my film smoke. If they do not smoke tobacco we will either have to get herbal cigarettes, or come up with an alternative. For example, there are many only tutorials for making fake cigarettes for films. One example is using parsley to replace the tobacco. Tastes a little strange and burns faster than your average cigarette but looks the part. I will be trying a few methods to create the smoking look, I will either share my results in a follow up blogpost or in some kind of video format.