Thank You for Smoking

Very early on, I decided I didn't want smoking in the movie. It's not really a movie about smoking, but about lobbying. Tobacco is just the setting. It's not that I believe in the idea that movies should be responsible and not show smoking. But I think if the characters had been smoking, it would have seemed a pro-smoking movie, whereas it's about lobbying and spin and talk.

The film has less to do with smoking and more to do with parenting .

When you have a performer as talented as Bill Murray or as Harold, that can write as well as they can perform, you can do a final draft on the set if you think of it that way.

I call it like the domino theory of reality. If you can go one step at a time and it seems to make sense, you can then take your audience into an area that is relatively outlandish.

Everybody says how hard comedy is, but, when it comes time to honor things, whether it's on a weekly critical basis or whether it's award time, at that time of the year, comedy is the poor, dumb child of dramatic work.