SMOKING

There is an awful lot of smoking lately on the big screen and small screen. Several of the New York Film Festival movies are so choked with smoke one might imagine Big Tobacco was a festival sponsor. Mad Men, set back in an ad agency that works for Tobacco, also is full of smoke.

When actors drink "liquor" onstage it's usually "apple juice" or some other benign, colored liquid. I don't know what they do for cigarettes, but acting could become a dangerous profession if there's a proliferation of shows with relentless fumes and no safe substitute for tobacco.