Directors do not have total power over such things as product placement, a $1.25 billion-a-year part of Hollywood. And despite the “auteur” theory, which credits a film’s quality to the director alone, few U.S. directors even have the right to make the final edit of a project they may have worked on for years.

Recognizing directors’ frustrations, we also ask them to look beyond a single scene or film to consider the real effect that tobacco imagery has on their audiences. The harm is cumulative and outside of any one director’s control. Five hundred conscientious artistic choices can still produce unintended, lethal results. That’s why a permanent, industry-wide solution is needed.

Time to think outside the frame.

The directors who make the most commercially successful films and complete the most projects need most urgently to look up from their work and take in the big picture. The forty directors listed here represent just 7% of the 550 directors whose U.S. films made it to theaters from 1999 to 2004. But because of the level of tobacco content and the size of the box office, their movies delivered almost 40% of all tobacco impressions.

The effect of these impressions on adolescents is directly dose-related, so we estimate that these directors’ films recruited some 900,000 teen smokers over the past six years. Of these new young smokers, 275,000 will ultimately die from tobacco-related disease — more people than were killed by the 2005 tsunami.

These films include all 1999-2004 motion pictures with extreme smoking content and 35% of all 1999-2004 releases displaying tobacco brands.

Of the 94 films listed for these directors, only six are smokefree. Five of the six are set in classical times (Galdiator, Troy), in outer space (Solaris), in a Dr. Seuss fantasy (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), or based on a theme park ride (Pirates of the Caribbean). The other, Varsity Blues, features high school students — the one sort of movie that tobacco companies explicitly instructed product placement agents to avoid.

Is that cigarette really necessary? Ask any director in care of the Director’s Guild of America.

How we selected these directors:

This list balances the two factors — smoking incidence in a film and the number of theatrical viewings these received — contributing to estimated tobacco impressions between 1999-2004. One "tobacco impression" is one member of the audience seeing tobacco use or other tobacco promotion once in a film in a theater. (This estimate does not include seeing the movie on DVD or television. For more details on how we obtained these estimates, click here.)

To be listed, a director must have delivered:

• More than 200 million estimated tobacco impressions 1999-2004

And have at least one of the following characteristics:

• One or more youth-rated movies with smoking
• Brand display
• For all of the director’s films since 1999, an average ≥ 2 on the Screen It! scale of tobacco incidence.

In addition:

• If directors made at least two PG-13 films during the survey period and included smoking in all, they are included even if tobacco impressions totaled less than 200 million.
• If the director made only one youth-rated movie and it had extreme smoking content (5 on the Screenit scale), that director is included unless the film was biographical in nature and the subject was a documented smoker.

The Lord of the Rings cycle had minor smoking content but sold so many tickets that director Peter Jackson delivered 1.8 billion tobacco impressions. While not condoning the smoking content of his cycle, we treat these impressions as off-trend.

List updated May 2005.