Thank You For Smoking

Nick Naylor has a way with words like no one else. He would have to, as lobbyist, Big Tobacco's chief spokesman, and VP of the Academy of Tobacco Studies.

Nick Naylor: Few people on this planet knows what it is to be truly despised. Can you blame them? I earn a living fronting an organization that kills 1200 people a day. Twelve hundred people. We're talking two jumbo jet plane loads of men, women and children. I mean, there's Attila, Genghis... and me, Nick Naylor. The face of cigarettes, the Colonel Sanders of nicotine.

Together, he and his two friends form the MOD a.k.a. Merchants Of Death.

Nick Naylor: After watching the footage of the Kent State shootings, Bobby Jay, then seventeen, signed up for the National Guard so that he, too, could shoot college students.

Nick Naylor: Polly works for the Moderation Council. A casual drinker by the age of 14, Polly quickly developed a tolerance usually reserved for Irish dockworkers. In our world, she's the woman that got the pope to endorse red wine.

Nick is so fantastically eloquent that while sitting on a stage with four or five people vehemently opposed to cigarettes (including "cancer boy") he can convince you that the are, in fact, not bad for you. The movie has a great cast including Rob Lowe who makes an appearance playing the part of a big Hollywood executive of some sort with very bizarre behaviors, Katie Holmes who plays the sassy Washington Post reporter with "glorious" assets, and Sam Elliot who plays the part of the original Marlboro Man. This obviously tongue-in-cheek movie is hilarious, but also has it's touching moments between Nick Naylor and his son, Joey.

Joey Naylor: Mom, why can't I go to California?
Jill Naylor: Because, California's just not a safe place. And besides, I'm not sure it's appropriate for your father to bring you on a business trip.
Joey Naylor: Appropriate for who?
Jill Naylor: What?
Joey Naylor: Mom, is it possible that you're taking the frustration of your failed marriage out on me?
Jill Naylor: Excuse me?
Joey Naylor: This California trip seems like a great learning opportunity and a chance for me to get to know my father. But if you think it's more important to use me to channel your frustration against the man you no longer love I'll understand.