Cigarettes that weren’t there. What do you smoke at the movies?
I will continue the series of articles about the “dream world” and the fantasies of film directors. But with a twist appropriate to CigsSpot Blog.) So, what exactly do movie characters smoke?
Nails. This brand was featured in many of Kevin Smith’s movies: Clerks in 1994, Dogma in 1999, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in 2001. That’s because all of these movies feature characters like “Jay” and “Silent Bob,” the latter, by the way, played by Kevin Smith himself, and the constant smoking of Nails cigarettes is one of Silent Bob’s attributes. In the movies, the brand is represented by Nails Unfiltered, Nails Light and Nails Menthol, but in reality, of course, there are no such cigarettes.
American Spirit. This is the brand smoked by Snake Pliskin, played by Kurt Russell, in John Carpenter’s film, Escape from Los Angeles. American Spirit were created by the set designers specifically for this film and are unlikely to be related to the American brand from Santa Fe Natural Tobacco. Although there is some suspicion.) In fact, the film’s script was prepared back in 1985, when the first batches of “Natural American Spirit” cigarettes were also released.
Brunswick. These cigarettes were smoked in the movie “Flight” directed by Robert Zemeckis, released in 2012. It’s funny, but the movie “spotlights” a bunch of brands of alcohol that actually exist, but the brand of cigarettes is just the imagination of the set designers. Or is it?
The Brunswick pack looks a lot like the Winston pack. Yes, by the time the movie came out, the Winston design was different, but still a very similar brand.
Drome. This brand was featured in the film “Lolita” by the famous director Stanley Kubrick, filmed back in 1962. How did it appear? There were some episodes, when in the room of the main character, French literature professor Humbert, the poster on the wall with the advertisement of Drome cigarettes got in the frame. And that’s pretty much it. But the supporters of the “conspiracy theory” consider it a hidden reference to the Camel cigarettes.) Like Drome is from the word dromedar, i.e. camel, and hence the cigarettes are only Camel. To me, that’s an overly convoluted connection.
Capitol Ligts. These cigarettes were smoked by the heroine Arlene, played by Vanessa Ferlito, in Quentin Tarantino’s 2007 film, Death Proof. In this case, it’s hard to see anything other than the work of the set designers.
Deutscher Geist. This is a parody and never existed in reality as if German cigarettes “lit up” in the movie “Inglourious Basterds” by Quentin Tarantino, which was released in 2009. But most likely you won’t see their images in the publicly available versions of the film. The thing is that in the movie for the European theaters many scenes with smoking were cut. Including those where there are close-ups of a pack. And not only this one, by the way. So that’s the battle “for souls” – smoking is bad, but bloody torture scenes are normal…
Another amusing fact from the same film. At the very beginning, in the first chapter, the French farmer Pierre Lapidit and the SS Standartenführer Hans Landa meet at the same table. Both are smoking pipes in this scene. But here’s an interesting peculiarity: Pierre Lapidit smokes none other than an American corncob pipe, which is unusual for a French backwater. What about traditional clay? Or a briar, for that matter? After all, France is justifiably famous as the “pipe cradle.
Hans’s pipe is also unusual-it is a pumpkin calabash, bulky to be worn in a cloak pocket, and it is more English than German. Though there are far fewer oddities here, for Landa reported that he came to France from Austria, and it was Austrian craftsmen who were famous for their impeccable work with meerschaum.
