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• The Spy Who Rolled His Own Smokes  

When it comes to movie character-building, cigarettes are an easy choice. But the prop's mystique was traceable to reality, of course. Before James Bond, there was his creator: Ian Fleming, who was known to smoke 80 cigarettes a day.

In a similar vein, a bit of character-building appeared over the weekend in a Week in Review article by Mark Mazzetti, who covers the intelligence beat for The New York Times. While exploring the complicated relationship between American and Pakistani spies, he described the "odd affectations" of Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who headed Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence until last year:

During meetings, he will often spend several minutes carefully hand-rolling a cigarette. Then, after taking one puff, he stubs it out. . . .

Mr. Eszterhas argued that nothing was lost by cutting cigarettes out, saying "there are 1,000 better and more original ways to reveal a character's personality." Just tell that to General Kayani.

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