Where there's smoke, some see an 'R' rating

There was drama. There was passion. There was talk of heroes and villains. And in true Hollywood fashion, the Motion Picture Association of America found itself yesterday facing mixed reviews for changing movie ratings to include smoking but providing no detailed guidelines on how films will be graded.

The film industry said the move underscores its growing commitment to reducing teenage smoking. If Lois Lane lights up, for example, a movie that previously would have earned a PG-13 rating, based on its levels of sex, violence, and vulgarity, might now get an R -- and a warning to parents that the film glamorizes smoking.

But anti smoking activists expressed dismay yesterday that the guidelines did not go further. Despite four years of discussion, there was no promise that a certain amount of smoking would warrant an immediate grade of R, which can be the kiss of box office death because -- in theory, any way -- it means younger adolescents can't see it without parental consent.

"You hate to use the phrase, but the proposed change to the ratings is a smoke screen instead of a concrete, measurable change," said Matthew Myers , president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids , which had argued that any film depicting smoking should be branded with an R. "It will allow Hollywood to say that it has done something while not actually forcing a change in the smoking our children see."

Cigarette advertising was banished decades ago from TV and the landmark legal settlement in the 1990s between states and the tobacco industry led to the dismantling of tobacco billboards.

But movie stars have continued to puff away on the big screen, sometimes smoking dozens of cigarettes in a film -- and public-health specialists, as well as more than 30 attorneys general, increasingly turned their attention to curtailing smoking in the movies.

"Any portrayal of tobacco in a glamorous or a positive way or as an adult-thing-to-do puts adolescents at much greater risk of using tobacco," said Dr. Matthew McKenna , director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , who said that teens who are repeatedly exposed to smoking in movies are 1 1/2 to 2 times more likely to start the habit than teens who see less movie smoking.

New England has featured prominently in the long running battle over smoking in films. Researchers at Dartmouth College have produced some of the strongest scientific evidence linking smoking in movies with adolescents' decision on whether to begin smoking. A study by Dartmouth researchers published this week in the journal Pediatrics , for example, found that 74 percent of 534 films of all ratings reviewed by the scientists contained smoking.

And Barry Bloom , dean of the Harvard School of Public Health , and other specialists from the school traveled to Tinsel Town in February to try to persuade the motion picture industry to respond to the harm done by depictions of smoking.

Bloom described the new ratings plan as "an important first step. My hope is this isn't window dressing but that this is something that will get the industry to reduce and then eliminate smoking in child-accessible movies."

Harvard professor Jay Winsten , who was instrumental in getting TV entertainment shows to embrace the "buckle-up" mantra of the 1980s and '90s, said critics of the new rating system are demanding too much at once.

"Critics who say that the new policy does not go far enough are forgetting this: You can't hit a grand slam without bases loaded," Winsten said. "This week's decision was a clean single to center field. Game on!"

The father of the movie-rating system, Jack Valenti , resisted entreaties to include smoking in the ratings calculus, writing in 2003 that "I am awfully reluctant to offer counsel to creative filmmakers about how they shape their story, what to put in and what to leave out."

But Valenti's successor, Dan Glickman , signaled his willingness to consider the pleas of public-health authorities and state attorneys general when he invited the Harvard specialists to make the presentation in February.

The announcement Thursday from the Motion Picture Association, a trade group representing major entertainment companies, outlined three paramount factors as reviewers consider the impact of smoking in films: Is smoking pervasive in the movie? Is it glamorized? Is there a historical reason or other factors that make inclusion of smoking relevant?

In an interview yesterday, Joan Graves , chairwoman of the association's ratings board, described the new ratings system as "an art, not a science. We don't have rules like if you see incidences of smoking three times it's this rating, if you see incidences of smoking four times it's this rating."

To illustrate the complexity of their task, Graves pointed to the 2005 drama "Good Night, and Good Luck," the cinematic portrayal of the battle between the chain-smoking Edward R. Murrow and red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy .

Even though smoke clouded nearly every frame of the film, because it reflected a period of rampant smoking, it still would have kept its PG rating under the new system -- but with a notation that it included heavy smoking.

Dr. James D. Sargent , an author of the Pediatrics study, said that the new rating system represented a "sea change -- people want the movie industry to rate stuff all the time." Until now, he said, the industry has clung to violence, sex, and vulgarity as the only standards worth measuring.

But it remains unclear how much impact the smoking rating will have.

"They might change the rating of two movies a year, they might change the rating of 50 movies a year," Sargent said. "The devil will be in the details."

Stephen Smith can be reached at stsmith@globe.com.

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a Page One story Saturday about smoking being factored into movie ratings incorrectly said Harvard professor Jay Winsten championed the "buckle up" public health campaign in the 1980s and '90s. It was the designated driver campaign.)