Warning: First-Time Directors Often Bring To Set A Fresh Perspective And Unbridled Enthusiasm
After completing the exhaustive process of securing the full rights to make THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, Sacks initiated an aggressive six-month push to production. THANK YOU FOR SMOKING stayed true to this schedule by commencing principal photography in January 2005.
In order to accurately portray the bizarre world of politics, Reitman traveled to Washington, D.C. with Sacks, who had previously worked as a legislative aide to a Congressman. There, the two met with Congressmen, lobbyists, and Hill staffers, and toured the Senate offices, hearing rooms and lobbyist hotspots that would be recreated in the film. Reitman also sought out professionals at the Center for Disease Control, and even Jeffrey Wigand, the whistle-blowing hero portrayed by Russell Crowe in THE INSIDER.
Set in Washington, D.C. and Southern California, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING was shot on a tight 35-day schedule with only a week in the nation's capitol. One of the rainiest L.A. winters on record worked to the production's advantage, making the weather appear authentic to many of its manufactured D.C. locations.
Reitman developed the look of THANK YOU FOR SMOKING in tandem with Director of Photography James Whitaker, whose work on THE COOLER he admired immensely. "I loved how THE COOLER was shot and I was a fan of Jim's. I asked William and Maria what they thought of him. They both adored him and that was very important to me. I've done a lot of commercials, but this is my first feature. I wanted someone who would add to the warm environment of the set."
"Jason and I had an extremely open collaboration," Whitaker says. "Nothing was to be protected. An outward flow of ideas was what it was all about. He is a really interesting filmmaker with amazing instincts."
Having worked with such directors as Neil LaBute, Steven Soderbergh and Ron Howard, Aaron Eckhart brought a great deal of experience to the production. Although THANK YOU FOR SMOKING was Reitman's first feature-length film, star Aaron Eckhart had great confidence in him from the beginning.
"Jason not only comes from a family of filmmakers, he really had a great idea about how to make the film and, more important, had his own unique take on the material," Eckhart says of his director. "He has a perfect idea of what he wants from the characters, both how he wants them played and how he wants them perceived.
"Jason is coming at this from a very knowledgeable and passionate place. He's been with it for four years. He's an aficionado; he knows everything about lenses and light and cameras. He operates the camera himself. He knows what he's doing, every shot. He doesn't overshoot and he's very much in control of the filmmaking. I felt very secure in his hands."
Macy agrees: "It's not like he's a newcomer to film. He's been around the block many times, and he grew up in the business. He's very self-assured with the camera."
Indeed, Reitman had a very clear vision of how he wanted this long-gestating project to look. He even managed to make a film without the use of a seemingly essential prop: "While the word 'smoking' is in the title, it's not really a movie about cigarettes," Reitman points out. "In fact, you never see a lit cigarette, or anyone smoking, in this movie. It's more about the hysteria surrounding cigarettes."
Cigarettes make an almost imperceptible appearance in the form of the Venetian blind design in Nick's office. The touch comes courtesy of production designer Steve Saklad, who exercised limitless creativity on a very limited budget. In fact, Saklad had to prep the film's 85 locations over a very brief five weeks. Rob Lowe's office at the fictitious talent agency 'E.G.O.' began with just an empty conference room. "We added ribbed glass doors, minimalist Asian furnishings, the Samurai armor, and the vast mural I designed and had a friend paint by hand on silk panels which rose and lowered on the existing motorized shades in the room," Saklad says. "Best of all for me was the shimmering water outside the windows to add LA fantasy to the scene." Saklad circumvented his small budget by borrowing the white Barcelona chairs from Jason, and the office's sculpture from Ivan Reitman.
Saklad employed a color spectrum for the separate locations and characters. "I was looking for an arc from the most nicotine-soaked players to the most "green" health-conscious folks: Robert Duvall's Tobacco Club and the offices of the Academy of Tobacco Studies were awash in browns, and Bill Macy's Senator lived in blue and green environments. The Los Angeles scenes pushed the whites and greens to the max."
Each location represented the personality of its inhabitants: "Lorne Lutch's amber-shaded living room frozen in the 70's, was created in an upscale colonial living room we emptied, paneled in knotty pine, and filled with layer upon layer of an old cowboy's history of magazine covers and oxygen tanks. For Robert Duvall's Tobacco Club in Raleigh-Durham, we filled the lobby of Castle Green in Pasadena with every rentable brown-leather club chair or couch in LA, plus the drapes, portraits and Moroccan lamps of a pasha's harem for added spice."
"My absolute favorite design sequence of the whole movie flies by in less than 30 seconds: when Nick catalogues the actions of planet-destroying archetypes: the clear-cutting lumberjack in a field of stumps, the seal-clubbing arctic hunter, and the Mexican sweatshop foreman and his underage seamstresses. Jason wanted a postcard background for each one like a high school diorama, which is what I designed. We built and painted five giant shoeboxes and dressed them with badly scaled props and cutouts. We threw everything and the kitchen sink into shooting these boxes while the key actors were shot in front of a green screen to paste into the scenes in post."
Saklad is quick to point out that Reitman was the consummate collaborator. "He is a dazzling intellect who comes to the work unbelievably well prepared. He knows exactly what he wants. But if you present him with an idea that's even better -- then he's very generous in working your idea into the fabric of the scene. Senator Finistirre's collection of Vermont Maple Syrup bottles was a case in point."
Reitman, who collaborated with Saklad on many commercials for Reitman's production company, knew that Saklad was acutely aware of the tone of the script and of the movie that Reitman wanted to make. "He understood the sense of humor. Nothing was slapstick but everything was funny."
Reitman also found that his costume designer Danny Glicker had a similar appreciation for finding humor in the details: "The first time I met with him, he presented me these boards establishing the costume design for the characters in the movie. He said 'everyone in this movie wears a tie and the tie is the window to their soul.' If you look at this movie, every tie is perfectly chosen and hilarious. Finistirre's ties have mallards and maple trees on them. Bobby Jay's ties have great American themes, like eagles and guns. There are unbelievable details to the costume design."
The attention to neckwear also extended to Nick and the Captain. Glicker comments: "I had a great deal of fun with Nick's ties, never once repeating them and often finding secret playful ways for Nick to express himself. In the opening scene on Joan Lunden's talk show, Nick is wearing a deep red tie decorated with tiny silver antique cigarette cases, which is gorgeous, but also alludes to one of the more glamorous aspects of tobacco culture; and when Nick visits the Captain, he's wearing another very special tie, this one a beautiful brown pattern featuring little dusky swirls of smoke rings."
"It was an excellent collaboration," Glicker continues. "From our first meeting together, it was clear to me that we speak a very similar language, and both had great affection for the characters. We both wanted to see every aspect of the different worlds of THANK YOU FOR SMOKING realized as vividly as possible. Due to the fact that Nick travels to so many different worlds throughout the film, Jason and I worked very closely together to develop a language and color for each world that would immediately connect with the audience and let them know where they were in the story. Jason's attention to detail and understanding of the importance of costume design made it possible to present the story of THANK YOU FOR SMOKING in the most visually exciting way possible."
Glicker had a very specific look in mind for Nick Naylor: "Nick had to always look perfectly dressed by virtue of his work and outlook. Nick is the face of tobacco, and every good lobbyist knows how to present themselves and their client in a perfect light. The key is to find the correct tone without going too slick or too casual. I spent a great deal of time with Aaron in the beginning building a closet of suits and sports wear for Nick, focusing on colors that reflected the world of tobacco, namely warm tones, browns and burgundy. I kept his shirts bright white as a nod to early cigarette advertising, which often featured doctors, nurses, and other professionals in clean, healthy looking whites to play up the medical benefits of cigarettes."
Glicker also had fun creating Senator Finistirre, who "was a joy to design -- we went all out on the Vermont kitsch, and his outfits are filled with little Vermont jokes. His nubby tweed blazers were matched with ties that featured themes of ducks, golden retrievers, and often vivid tones of green. Perhaps my
favorite part of his costumes was his shoes -- when he was in suits, I had him in sensible Swedish orthopedic dress shoes, but when he was in the privacy of his own office, he wore Birkenstocks with thick socks: a classic of Vermont attire."
For Reitman, the DC portion of the shoot was "a thrill. We toured the capital and got a chance to ride on the underground train that connects the congressional buildings. In general, we were welcomed with open arms. Except for the day I stopped our location scout in front of the wrong building and started to take lots of photos. Within a couple of minutes, our scout was surrounded by men in flak jackets and overcoats. It took a little bit of explanation. Our location manager later told us that we'd come very close to being arrested."
"One afternoon," Reitman continues, "we did a shot on the roof of the DC Hilton, looking towards the Capitol Dome. I was strapped by a harness to the building, as I did a handheld shot looking over the edge of the roof as if from the POV of a man committing suicide. The scene never made the film. However, a local reporter took a shot of me hanging over the building and that made the cover of Roll Call the following day. My wife was not pleased."

Jason Reitman was born in Montreal on October 19, 1977. He was on his first film set (ANIMAL HOUSE) 11 days later. The son of director Ivan Reitman, he spent most of his childhood on or around film sets, surrounded by the funniest human beings on Earth. He even appeared in cameos in many of his father's films (TWINS, GHOSTBUSTERS II, KINDERGARTEN COP, DAVE, and FATHER'S DAY).
By 10, he was making the typical short films with his dad's home video camera. At 13, he got his first job on a film crew, as production assistant on KINDERGARTEN COP. At 15, Reitman made an AIDS public service announcement with actors from his high school that went on to win many awards and play on network television. Reitman graduated high school in 1995 and went on to USC to study English. There, he became a member of the comedy troupe Commedus Interuptus and held a short stint as co-host of a morning radio show.
During his sophomore year in college, Reitman created a small collegiate desk calendar company that provided the budget for his first short film, OPERATION. The short comedy about kidney stealing went on to premiere at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. At 19 years old, this made him one of the youngest directors ever to have a film at the festival.
This began a string of short films, including H@ (premiered at South by Southwest 1999), IN GOD WE TRUST (premiered at Sundance 2000, went on to play Toronto, Edinburgh, US Comedy Arts, New Directors/New Films at MoMA and won best short at many festivals including Los Angeles, Aspen, Austin, Seattle, Florida, Athens, the New York Comedy Festival, and Bumbershoot Festival), GULP (premiered at Sundance 2001), and CONSENT (premiered at Aspen Shorts Fest 2004 and won awards at Aspen and Seattle). Reitman's short films have played in over a hundred film festivals worldwide.
In early 2000, Reitman signed with the commercial production company, Tate and Partners. In the five years since he began directing television advertising, he has received honors from the Cannes commercial awards, the Addys, as well as the highly coveted One Show. Selected clients include Heineken, Honda, Nintendo, BMW, Kyocera, Asics, Amstel Light, Baskin Robbins, GM, Burger King, and Dennys.
In beginning his professional career, Reitman fulfilled a life long dream by joining the Directors Guild of America; at that time he was the guild's second youngest member.