Branding cigs with 'R': Bogart, Dietrich, and other cinematic smokers would simply die.

THERE's an old Hollywood story, which may or may not be true, about Humphrey Bogart. He was about to film an "explainer" scene--one of those dialogue-heavy set-pieces, where one character drones on for a page or two of crucial, but eyeglazing, exposition. Explainer scenes are pace-killers, but unavoidable: There's often no other way to let the audience know that the main character is an orphan, say, or how a cluster-bomb works, or that the hero and the mysterious woman had a love affair once, years ago.

But Bogart, like most actors, worried about boring the audience. The story goes that he looks down at the script, with its long column of dialogue, and then tells the director that the only way he'll do the scene, the only way the scene won't bore the audience, is if they place two camels in the background, and get them to copulate.

In the story, of course, he doesn't use the word "copulate."

Though his solution was extreme, Bogart's instincts were correct. In the end, he didn't get his two camels. What he got was a Camel Unfiltered.

They shot the scene as written, but the director gave Bogart a simple piece of onscreen business. All he had to do to inject the scene with some interesting drama was to say some lines while taking out a cigarette, tap it lightly to compact the tobacco, say some more lines, light the cigarette with a match, wave the match out and toss it contemptuously aside, say some more lines, take a big drag, and finish the speech. Cut. Print. Instant drama.

Smoking in movies has a long, glorious history of effectively solving the Explainer Scene problem. So it's alarming, if you're in the film business, to hear that the Motion Picture Association of America, the lobbying arm of the movie industry, is planning to crack down on on-screen smoking by adjusting its rating system to account for the (supposedly encouraging) effect that watching movie stars smoke has on young people. According to the MPAA's initial proposal, if characters in a picture smoke in a non-contextual, nonperiod-specific way--if, say, two contemporary cowboys who are not homosexual lovers light up, as opposed to the early-1960s gay-cowboy lovers in Brokeback Mountain--then the movie may find itself with an "R" rating, which severely restricts its box-office take. The idea here is that if kids stop seeing cool role-model movie stars light up, then they'll stop thinking that smoking is cool.

But smoking isn't cool because people do it in movies. People do it in movies because it's cool. Smoking is a lot more than just puffing away, as Bogart knew. Smoking is a collection of hand movements, lip actions, match striking, and heavy breathing, all to a measured, controlled tempo. Smoking slows things down--it's almost impossible to light a cigarette quickly--and it's irresistible to actors for the same reason it's irresistible to teenagers: It draws attention inexorably to the smoker and away from whatever mediocre dialogue he or she is forced to say, either because of a lazy screenwriter (in the case of the actor) or because of a lack of imagination caused by listening to simplistic dance music and watching too many episodes of MTV's Pimp My Ride (in the case of the screenwriter). Smoking is the answer to the question that adolescents and movie stars ask themselves all the time: What can I do with my hands so that I don't look like a boring, flighty spaz?

With the dialogue in most movies reduced to either one star screaming at the other star as the car they're driving goes out of control, or one character sitting in front of a computer terminal, and after tapping a few keys, turning to the other characters and saying, "I'm into the system," a little smoke-'em-if-you-got-'em goes a long way. The ponderous, wooden dialogue of the recent Star Wars movies would have seemed zesty and sharp if only Yoda had dangled a Marlboro from his greenish lips. "Begun," he says, taking a long, slow, last drag, "the clone war has." And then he tosses the butt to the ground and grinds it out with his tiny little foot.

And don't get me started on An Inconvenient Truth! Imagine Al Gore in front of that big screen. He shrugs. "We are all," he says, touching a match to the Kool in his lips, "going to die." Puff. Exhale. Pause. He stares at us. Takes another puff. And then moves on. Now that's entertainment.

Bogart's Law is effective in pretty much every sphere of conversation. I often wish that more people smoked, if only to enliven the soul-crushing tedium of most interaction. I'd love to light up at Starbucks. When they asked me what I'd like, I'd tap a cigarette on the counter. "What would I like?" I'd ask, thoughtfully. I'd put the cigarette in my mouth. Light the match. And as the match burned, getting closer to my fingers--Will he burn himself? The flame is getting closer to his thumb! Oh! The tension!--I'd study the menu board. Then, just at the right moment, I'd light the cigarette, take a drag, blow out the smoke in a long, melancholy sigh and say, "I'll have a Venti Soy Latte, please. Decaf." Smoking can make even a soy latte cool.

Imagine Bogart's Law at the Post Office: "I'll have a booklet of first-class stamps, please." Puff. Blow. Look away. Look back. "Do you have the ones with the kittens on them?" Puff. Blow.

Like all regulations, the new MPAA smoking guidelines are too late to be effective. The pack of Marlboros and the Bic lighter that teenagers used to tote around have long been replaced by the cellphone and the iPod, and even when cargo pants were in style that's a "too much equipment, too few pockets" situation. For most of us, it's impossible to imagine that tapping idiotically on a BlackBerry or Sidekick will ever be as cool as squinting into the distance while pinching a Camel between thumb and forefinger, but it does give the kids something to do with their hands. Besides, today's youth culture has dispensed with the need to act soulful and slow. The dramatic allure of smoking is lost on a generation whose idea of seductive behavior is texting "u r hot want 2 hook up?" You really do need to keep your hands free for that kind of thing. And until they discover that Bluetooth headsets cause cancer, that's what we're stuck with, in life and on screen.