The Real State Of Play

With its DVD release I finally got around to watching State of Play. Maybe I should have waited just a little while longer to catch it because, with Paul Abbott’s original miniseries still relatively fresh in my mind, as the events began to unfold I couldn’t help being distracted by the changes they had made, paring down the characters and situations to fit the shorter running time.

Once the film took on a life of its own, switching the location from London to Washington DC, where the political conspiracy now involves the privatisation of homeland security rather than the dirty dealings of oil multinationals, all that was put behind me. What interested me more than the familiar thriller aspect was the story thread about the newspaper being taken over by a media corporation, where Russell Crowe’s old-school reporter teaches the young political blogger on staff that, rather than simply having an opinion, it’s better to dig a little deeper for the facts that will provide an informed opinion.

While State of Play is a decent enough film, ultimately it was the end credits that intrigued me. Once the presses started rolling and the film was played out with a really good Creedance track, I moved the chair closer to the television screen and concentrated on the credit roll. During Jason Bateman’s brief but marvellously sleazy turn as Dominic Foy, stuck in the hotel room and hectored by Crowe’s Cal McAffrey, the pill-popping PR weasel lights a cigarette. Never mind the grubby political manoeuvring and sick shit the character is revealed to get up to at work and play, it’s when he sparks up – in a no-smoking room no less! – that one of the newspaper’s support team videotaping the interview calls him a “douche”.

Last month I’d been surprised to see the notice in the end credits of Gran Torino that distanced the film from smoking products. Whereas the central character of that film was a smoker, and a major plot point hinges on that fact, here that brief scene with Foy is the only instance a cigarette appears, and once it’s lit McAffrey plucks it from his lips and keeps hold of it while he barracks him some more. Still, after the American Humane Society notice appeared in the credits, reassuring viewers that no one had had a hissy fit on set and hurled kittens headfirst into a brick wall to get rid of their frustrations, this appeared:

THE DEPICTIONS OF TOBACCO SMOKING CONTAINED IN THIS MOTION PICTURE ARE BASED SOLELY ON ARTISTIC CONSIDERATION AND ARE NOT INTENDED TO PROMOTE TOBACCO CONSUMPTION. THE US SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THAT THERE ARE SERIOUS HEALTH RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH SMOKING AND SECOND-HAND SMOKE.

For one lit cigarette?! And yet leading up to that scene we see McCaffrey repeatedly making calls on his mobile while driving in the rain, jumping a diner’s lunch queue to order an artery-clogging meal, and jaywalking. So that’s acceptable, right? And what about an announcement reminding people that hindering a police investigation is bad? Or that murdering people is, on a scale of bad, even more bad? In fact, why not just end the movie by telling the audience to go home, be nice and behave, and maybe the world will be a better place?

If they just went down that route, maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. Unfortunately the filmmakers didn’t stop there. After the American Humane Society notice – and to be frank, I couldn’t remember seeing one goddamn animal in the film – and before they tucked their tails between their legs like a bunch of fucking pussies and ran away from any association with the evils of tobacco, there was a statement that said:

THIS MOTION PICTURE USED SUSTAINABLE STRATEGIES TO
REDUCE ITS CARBON EMISSIONS AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT.

Oh, for fuck’s sake! Granted State of Play was a relatively low budget affair compared to the big summer movies that followed it into the cinemas, and actually had something to say rather than just be an empty, piece of shit blockbuster, but if this starts being a regular announcement, isn’t it a wee bit hypocritical for studios pissing away close to $200 million or more on movies with absolutely no value whatsoever, and then point out they recycled all their fucking soda cans?

The problem with this green is the new black horseshit everyone’s trading on is that once Hollywood starts flying that flag, every time you go looking for some relaxing entertainment you come away resisting the urge to vomit.