BURNING MAN STORY OF TOBACCO LOBBYIST IN `THANK YOU FOR SMOKING' TACKLES HOT ISSUES AT BOTH ENDS.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

You get the idea that Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley Jr. and onetime speechwriter to President George H.W. Bush, isn't easily impressed or at a loss for words. Eleven books and stints at high-level positions at Forbes and Esquire magazines will do that to you.

But get Buckley talking about the film adaptation of his 1994 novel, ``Thank You for Smoking'' and the 53-year-old author/satirist sounds anything but jaded.

``I sat at the world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, in the last row of a theater that accommodated 1,400 people,'' recalls Buckley, ``and I saw Robert Duvall, who is one of my great heroes, utter words I had written in an attic room 13 years ago.''

``I would say that is an absolute kick in the ass.''

The darkly funny ``Thank You for Smoking,'' about a lovably hateful (or maybe a loathsomely lovable) lobbyist for the tobacco industry, opens in theaters nationwide today. Aaron Eckhart (``Possession,'' ``In the Company of Men'') stars as Nick Naylor, tobacco's spin man par excellence. William H. Macy (``Fargo,'' ``The Wool Cap'') is the Vermont senator looking to bring Big Tobacco and Naylor down. Performers like Duvall, Maria Bello, Rob Lowe, Adam Brody and Katie Holmes round out the cast.

And if you're tallying up the members of the ``Smoking'' team feeling equally, er, booted by the novel actually making it to the screen, don't leave out Jason Reitman, the movie's 28-year-old writer/director.

It was Reitman, barely into his 20s at the time, and with nothing but short films to his resume, who lobbied hard at Mel Gibson's Icon Productions for a chance to ignite his career.

``Smoking,'' originally envisioned as a project for Gibson, had passed through several writers' hands and had basically reached a development dead end at Icon.

The option had languished for some seven years, but Reitman, a Harvard-Westlake graduate who also attended USC, wasn't about to let the opportunity to have a go at one of his favorite books be, well, extinguished.

``I met one woman in TV at Icon, and I just pitched her hard,'' says Reitman. ``I told her why I loved the book, why I thought it needed to be made and why they had made a mistake trying to make it broad. This was a small movie and, if done cheap enough, would never have to apologize for itself.''

He wrote 25 pages on spec, and the script got sent up the ladder. ``Everyone loved the screenplay. They had no notes,'' Reitman says. ``I even got a call from Mel.''

The story doesn't end there, of course. That adulatory call from Gibson was the first and only such communication that Reitman would receive. None of the studios would touch ``Smoking'' unless Reitman agreed to give Nick Naylor a change of heart at the film's conclusion. It took financing from dot-com magnate-turned-film producer David Sacks to get Reitman's novel-faithful adaptation of ``Smoking'' into production.

Once he had the adaptation assignment, Reitman also placed his own call ... to Christopher Buckley. ``I'm the new guy they've hired to (expletive) up your book,'' was his statement of introduction. And Buckley was hooked.

``I wanted him to be proud of this. I wanted him to take ownership of the movie,'' Reitman says of Buckley. ``I knew he felt that all these Hollywood writers had run off with his book and ruined it, and I presumed that would be his perception of me. So I thought, 'Let's be obvious about it,'' and out of it came this wonderful friendship.''

``It's quite something young Jason has pulled off,'' returns Buckley. ``I would keep my eye on this boy. I think you're going to be seeing great things from him.''

Buckley, who reviewed several early drafts of ``Smoking,'' said his notes consisted of remarks like, ``Page 4, great! Page 5, wow!''

``For the seal-clubbing scene, my note was, 'If this makes it into the final movie, I'll buy drinks on opening night,'' says Buckley, laughing. ``I guess I owe him drinks!''

Yes, seal clubbing. As the title and subject suggest, book and film are equally cheerfully nasty. When he's not out bedding morally questionable journalists, our man Nick Naylor is hashing un-PC strategies with his fellow lobbyists from the firearms and alcohol industries: the trio making up the Merchants of Death (M.O.D.) Squad. A centerpiece of the story has Nick kidnapped and nearly assassinated when his attackers tie him up and affix him, head to toe, with nicotine patches.

For all the thematic fire about smoking, however, nobody actually lights up in the film. It's a deliberate choice by Reitman, who shares Buckley's contention that ``Smoking'' is concerned less with the act itself than with spin.

``It's about political correctness. It's about being told what to do,'' says Buckley. ``That was the common strand with the so-called 'sin lobbyists.' They had issues with authority.''

So, for that matter, does the author, who developed the idea for the novel after seeing a tobacco-industry lobbyist being interviewed on the ``MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.'' Buckley's own authority issues date back even further.

``I spent four years in a Benedictine monastery boarding school and I grew up Catholic. I am no stranger to authority issues,'' he says. ``Indeed, I used to spend quite a lot of time smoking cigarettes at that school, which was an expulsion offense. It was certainly the highest stakes in front of me when I was 15 years old. Maybe it seeped into my subconsciousness.''

Reitman, the son of noted comedy director/producer Ivan Reitman, is a self-described ``smart ass'' who studied English at USC and cut his artistic teeth watching indie comedies like ``Bottle Rocket,'' ``Slacker'' and ``Clerks.''

Those movies began to influence Reitman, who had grown up watching much broader comedies and thinking independent cinema was, by necessity, black and white, French and inaccessible.

``Now I'm seeing, oh no, comedy can be whatever it wants to be. That got me excited, and I wanted to be a director again,'' says Reitman. ``I was just starting to write and starting to pick up on satire when a friend gave me a book, saying, 'This was written for you,' and she was absolutely right.''

That book was ``Thank You for Smoking.'' Reitman says it changed his life.

``I felt like I was living in the era of the death of the smart ass. We're just not allowed to say anything anymore,'' he says. ``And here's a guy (Nick Naylor) who was frank and speaking honestly. That, in part, was why it was so hilarious. It got me excited about doing that kind of work and thus changed my life.

``So, when I got the opportunity to direct a movie like a goofy high-school comedy, I was like, 'I'm not (expletive) doing that. I want to make something that has (guts).' ''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

Antihero worship

Nick Naylor: crafty, well-dressed, highly charismatic. Loves the ladies, his tobacco and his high-profile and high-paying job as the spokesman (read lobbyist) for the Academy of Tobacco Studies.

Who doesn't just adore an antihero? A bad-boy hero (or heroine) who everybody just loves to hate.

``I wanted you to be on his side and be sympathetic to him, even while he's in the service of a not-very-noble thing,'' says ``Thank You for Smoking'' author Christopher Buckley, the man who created Nick Naylor. ``It is fun reading about bad boys.''

And watching them. Asked to cite favorite on-screen antiheroes, cast and crew members of the film ``Thank You for Smoking'' were brought up short before breaking out big grins and a few choice examples.

``Anybody from the movie 'Network,' my favorite movie,'' says Rob Lowe, who, in ``Smoking'' plays an agent patterned on Mike Ovitz. ``In TV, they talk about antiheroes a lot, but really you can look at Tony Soprano and that's about it.''

William H. Macy, ``Smoking's'' righteous Sen. Ortolan Finistirre, contends the present climate may not be entirely right for true antiheroes.

``Maybe those films don't get made because the people who sign checks to make the films are afraid because of political correctness,'' says Macy, who got an Oscar nomination for playing a hapless car salesman orchestrating his wife's kidnapping in ``Fargo'' (1996). ``An antihero is someone who lives outside of the law, and, I guess, traditionally he does some noble act in the end to bring redemption. I think maybe in the political climate we're in now, it's hard to make those films.''

Buckley cites Griffin Mill, the studio executive played by Tim Robbins in Robert Altman's ``The Player.'' Writer/director Jason Reitman goes for Matthew Broderick's school-ditching prankster, Ferris Bueller.

``Bill Murray was always a great antihero,'' says Reitman. ``Not that he was villainous. He just said whatever he wanted to say and wasn't interested in charming the pants off you. He just was.''

- E.H.

CAPTION(S):

8 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Christopher Buckley

(2 -- cover -- color) Jason Reitman

(3 -- 4) Aaron Eckhart, top, stars in ``Thank You for Smoking,'' directed by Jason Reitman, left.

(5) William H. Macy's senator fights the tobacco lobby in ``Thank You for Smoking.''

(6) Bill Murray as Carl the groundskeeper in ``Caddyshack.''

(7) Tim Robbins as Griffith Mill in ``The Player''

(8) Matthew Broderick as slacker Ferris Bueller in ``Ferris Bueller's Day Off''

(9) James Gandolfini as Mafia boss Tony Soprano in HBO's ``The Sopranos''

Box:

Antihero worship (see text)