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Hewitt on '60 Minutes' finest, darkest moments 

When asked what he considered the finest hour for "60 Minutes," Don Hewitt would mention Morley Safer's award-winning, 1983 report on Lenell Geter. . . .

Hewitt's darkest hour came in 1995 when he failed to resist CBS management's decision to shelve a Mike Wallace interview with whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, the former vice president of research and development at Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. who agreed to go on camera with incriminating charges against his former employer regarding the dangers of its products.

Wigand had signed a confidentiality agreement with the tobacco company that prohibited him from revealing inside information. Any attempt by CBS to induce Wigand to break the contract, the network was advised by its lawyers, could lead to a multibillion-dollar lawsuit that would put the network in jeopardy.

Hewitt, who stated publicly that "we've got a story we think is solid," nevertheless sided with the network's decision not to broadcast the interview -- a stance for which he was criticized by many fellow journalists

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'60 Minutes' creator Don Hewitt dies  

Television pioneer and longtime CBS executive Don Hewitt, the creator of "60 Minutes," has died, the network said Wednesday. He was 86. . . .

Hewitt has publicly said that the lowest point for "60 Minutes" was the Jeffrey Wigand story -- an interview with the highest-ranking tobacco executive to become a whistleblower. The interview was held back by CBS management out of fear of a $10 billion lawsuit that could bankrupt the company, according to the network statement.

"The initial spiking of the interview, in which Wigand revealed tobacco executives knew and covered up the fact that tobacco caused disease, led to an unusual '60 Minutes' segment," CBS' statement said. "A portion of it, with Wigand disguised, was broadcast, followed by an unprecedented rebuke of management read on the air by Mike Wallace." The interview was aired in its entirety a few months later, in February 1997. A movie about the incident, "The Insider" was made the following year.

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Laurence Tisch 

Laurence Alan Tisch (born March 5, 1923, died November 15, 2003) was a Jewish American businessman, Wall Street investor and self-made billionaire. He was the CEO of CBS television network from 1986 to 1995. With his brother Bob Tisch, he was part owner of the Loews Corporation.

Tisch was widely criticized for his mismanagement of the CBS network and his involvement in the Brown and Williamson scandal (later portrayed in the film The Insider). Many journalistic veterans at CBS News, including Walter Cronkite, accused Tisch of degrading journalistic standards in pursuit of higher profits. Critics have pointed out that Tisch's efforts to prevent the Brown and Williamson story from appearing on 60 Minutes were likely driven by the financial windfall he stood to receive from the company's 1995 sale to Westinghouse Electric Corporation (and his unwillingness to jeopardize the sale, which ultimately netted him $2 billion), as well as the fact that Tisch's Loews Corporation owned a major tobacco company, Lorillard Tobacco.

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• Don Hewitt: Helping invent the wheel of TV news  

The ticking stopwatch. Hidden cameras. Ambush journalism. In 36 years, "60 Minutes" has reflected and shaped popular pop culture. Its correspondents, from Mike Wallace to Ed Bradley, are instantly recognizable. It inspired a Saturday Night Live parody starring Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd. In the late '90s, two PBS documentaries, "Smoke in the Eye" (1996) and "Inside the Tobacco Deal" (1998), were made about a "60 Minutes" episode that was delayed and ultimately aired in a watered-down way that left no one happy except perhaps the lawyers who were involved. A 1999 feature film called "The Insider" and starring Russell Crowe further popularized the same episode.

That segment, which has become the show's most infamous, got its start in 1994 when Wallace and producer Lowell Bergman proposed featuring a biochemist named Jeffrey Wigand, a former executive at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company. Wigand was willing to say on air that his former employers had deceived the public by ignoring evidence of the health hazards of their cigarettes.

Ultimately, Laurence Tisch, then the chairman of the network, and his lawyers did not allow Wigand's segment to be aired. That decision was made as Tisch was attempting to sell CBS to Westinghouse, and it was feared that an expensive lawsuit brought by the tobacco companies would decrease his company's value. The debate over the decision and Hewitt's role in accepting it will probably never end.

As Hewitt described it to me in 2004, he had no choice. "The only way I could have got that broadcast on the air would have been to go out and hire a bunch of guerrillas and take the transmitter at gunpoint," he says.

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WARNER: Why pretend the past was cigarette-free?  

Send for the Sanity Inspector - quickly. There is work for him among the denizens of Liverpool city council. The council is proposing to use its powers to upgrade to an 18-certificate the classification of films "if they depict images of tobacco smoking", in order to protect the vulnerable youth of Merseyside from exposure to such depravity. . . .

Accepting the axiom that what Liverpool city council proposes today, the world implements tomorrow, we must come to terms with the prospect that this is just the beginning of a new age in cinema. For political correctness is never a static force; it seeks always to break new ground. Assuming young cinema-goers are successfully kept from exposure to smoking, the next logical step would be to extend this protection to over-18s as well.

Tentative moves have already been made towards a more broad-based censorship. In Paris, the cigarette was removed from a picture of Jean-Paul Sartre on a poster from an exhibition. Sartre, when asked what was the most important thing in his life, replied: "I don't know. Everything. Living. Smoking." Posthumously, he has managed to give up the latter. In a more directly Liverpudlian context, Paul McCartney's cigarette was excised on US posters of the cover of Abbey Road.

The really exciting thing about such initiatives is that they represent the first, cautious moves towards rewriting history - towards creating an alternative past that is more palatable to the promoters of political correctness To some extent, things are already moving that way, for example when we hear a powdered 18th-century aristocrat in a television period drama referring to "the under-privileged". Such anachronisms are attributable to the increasing historical illiteracy of scriptwriters; but why not harness ignorance to progress?

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Christina Hendricks Isn't All That Fussy  

ESQ: Do you drink while you cook? Watching Mad Men always makes me want to drink.

CH: I love cocktails. My specialty drink is a gimlet with a little egg white in it so it gets frothy. I really like rose water — sometimes I'll add it to champagne. I was at a bar recently and the manager came up to me and said, "We have a drink named after you!" The Joan Holloway. There was Campari in it. People are throwing these Mad Men — themed parties because, I think, it's an excuse to get dressed up and drink and smoke.

ESQ: What do you smoke on the set?

CH: Herbal cigarettes. They're disgusting.

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ARCHIVE: Smoking Bans Are Wrong 

June 30, 2008

If you choose not to smoke that should be your choice. Not Governments. They pass laws against smoking in public under the "Proof" that second hand smoke kills. ABSOLUTELY FALSE! There is virtually no evidence that second hand smoke causes cancer, and THAT is fact.

Clip is from Penn & Tellers "Bullshit" on Showtime.

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VIDEO: Penn & Teller Second Hand Smoke Correction 

Penn explains there is evidence that second hand smoke does cause cancer. This is from a Q and A session at the Amazing Meeting (January 2005). Southpark did an episode which incorrectly asserts there is no tie as well.

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• Group urges smoking ban in TV, film 

The Chinese Association on Tobacco Control (CATC) Wednesday called for tobacco-free TV and film screens in China, in an attempt to take the glamour out of smoking, especially for impressionable young people.

Currently, due to a lack of legislation and low awareness, many scenes in TV series and films - including those produced in China and those imported - contain smoking scenes, which has a negative impact on viewers, particularly on minors who are not mature and tend to follow and mirror others, said Xu Guihua, deputy director of CATC, a Beijing-based non-governmental organization.

The conclusion is based on studies jointly commissioned by CATC and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Xu told China Daily.

Of 144 box-office hit movies from 2004 to 2009, 66 of which were imported, about 69 percent contain tobacco-related scenes such as people smoking a cigarette or cigar, with ash tray or lighters in the background, the study found. . . .

Red River, another Chinese film, which premiered in April, has the longest smoking scene this year: 7.6 minutes, according to the study.

More than 76 percent of the Chinese films contain smoking scenes, compared with one-third of imported films, Yang noted. . . .

One actor who was forced to smoke in films is now a volunteer for the anti-tobacco cause.

"I became a smoker at 22 because the director wanted my character, a successful detective, to smoke while thinking over complicated crimes in the film," said Beijing-based actor Feng Yuanzheng, one of CATC's anti-tobacco volunteers.

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Television Review - 'J. K. Rowling - A Year in the Life' - A Portrait of Harry Potter's Creator 

She lets the mask slip, though; her need for control is not as thorough-going as that of your average movie star or corporate executive. Visiting the church where she earned money as a child by sweeping up, she squeals at the sight of her name in the guestbook -- "Oh look, it's me! There I am" -- in a way that feels spontaneous, and revealing. In the car on the way to the book release event, she describes her craving for a cigarette: "With me it's 40 a day or nothing."

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What are they smoking?! When scenes call for pot or cocaine, Hollywood turns to stash of faux drugs 

Ever wonder what movie actors are really smoking and snorting when they do a line of coke or lift a joint to their lips?

Turns out that many cocaine look-alikes are ingredients you might use in a cake, like powdered sugar, powdered milk and baking soda, while herbal tobacco fills in for genuine cannabis.

Though the fakes are legal and don’t provide a high, sometimes they can make the actors feel a little buzzed. On Showtime's "Weeds," for instance, where potheads Doug and Andy are often lighting up, the herbal tobacco makes them feel a little lightheaded, says "Weeds" executive producer Roberto Benabib. . . .

Herbal tobacco is also the preferred “pot” for cinematographer and prop master Jeff Butcher, who’s now working on a movie with "Pineapple Express" star James Franco, and who also worked with Mickey Rourke on “The Wrestler.”

“You can get herbal cigarettes made out of marshmallows and a bunch of different herbs,” Butcher says. “But they don’t have any nicotine.”

So-called stoner magazines advertise products like Herbal Ecstasy, he notes, which is an herb-based product that can be smoked or snorted. Wizard Weed is another product that can be used in place of marijuana, he says.

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Smoking ban on cartoon characters too! 

If you thought it was only a certain former Indian minister who zealously wanted to put an end to smoking on screen, you’re wrong.

For a health group in the UK is trying to one up the ex-minister. Yes, it is planning to certify cartoons that have smoking scenes as 18+!

And, people are equally flabbergasted by the move like many across the world. “It’s quite funny to hear this because the cartoon Popeye single-handedly made spinach a craze in the US, and created awareness about healthy eating among youngsters. If you mention the word Popeye to any kid, I’m pretty sure a pipe will not figure even in the top five terms that they associate with the cartoon,” says software professional Nirmal Venkatranghan.

VJ Pooja, who is a self-confessed Popeye fan, says, “As a fan of Popeye, I can safely say that he doesn’t exactly smoke, in the truest sense of the word.” . . .

Agrees a volunteer from an NGO that preaches against smoking, “These are actions being taken by a few over-zealous individuals who are misguided in their efforts to restrict smoking.” He also offers a constructive alternative, “Instead, governments across the world should use these cartoons constructively to preach about the evil effects of smoking to children.” Now, here is someone talking reason. But will the folks who matter listen?

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• GASPING FOR BREATH: After battling lung disease for six years, Corrie's Liz Dawn terrible legacy of her life-long smoking habit  

When Vera Duckworth, one of Coronation Street's most loved characters, passed away 18 months ago, there was barely a dry eye among the soap's 12.5million viewers.

But for actress Liz Dawn, who played Vera for an astonishing 34 years, it was a significant personal moment - not only because it was the end of the role, but also because she'd been building up to it since being diagnosed six years earlier with the lung disease, emphysema.

The condition leaves sufferers struggling for breath.

'My last years in the Street were increasingly stressful,' Liz says, talking about living with emphysema for the first time. . . .

Concern that others avoid the same problem is why she has agreed to be the celebrity ambassador for the British Lung Foundation (BLF) and is heading the organisation's Love Your Lungs campaign, launched this week.

Its aim is to encourage people with symptoms such as a persistent cough, breathlessness or wheezy chest to ask their doctor for a lung test. . . .

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The cigarette is part of Sharon Gless' act 

"Do you mind if I smoke?" asked Sharon Gless.

The question was odd because the actress was seated on the patio of the posh Langham, Huntington Hotel & Spa. Californians tend to object to smokers even if they're obeying the rules.

It also was strange because it's hard to imagine Gless without a cigarette dangling from her digits. On the USA Network series Burn Notice, her character, Madeline Westen, is rarely without a smoke. It's as much a part of Westen's personality as her white hair and passive/aggression.

The third season of Burn Notice began last night. More than 7.6 million viewers watched the second season finale in March, making it one of this year's highest-rated cable shows.

Gless never expected she'd be allowed to smoke on TV again.

"But that was the way the character was written: a chain-smoking hypochondriac," Gless said, sending a puff of smoke into the afternoon air. "My husband said, 'How happy are you? They're paying you to smoke.'

"I'm glad they allow me to smoke because I can do so much with that cigarette. I can take a hit, hold it in my lungs, say whole sentences, and then blow it out when I choose for emphasis."

She knows plenty of people disapprove. Gless said she doesn't care because it helps her act and she enjoys it.

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影视“清屏”运动连连发力 

一周来，荧屏“清屏举措”连连———继央视传出消息，广电总局将禁播所有30集以上剧集以预防“注水影视”后，5月31日，中国消费者协会乘世界无烟日之际，特别呼吁整顿“烟草影视”，减少吸烟镜头。

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