While many believe that movie stars make it up as they go along, everyone on a motion picture is working from a script. It may be adapted from a novel or play, but the screenplay is often original.

Producers almost always demand extensive revisions before accepting a script. In fact, the script may be reworked for years by a succession of writers. If particular stars sign on, the script may be rewritten again to accommodate them.

The original idea may be unrecognizable by the time the movie is financed, shot and edited, so it might be unfair to hold screenwriters accountable for details like smoking. What control do they have over product placement? On the other hand, Joe Eszterhas, once the highest-paid writer in Hollywood, publicly concedes that his own “militant” smoking filled a dozen movies:

"A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star on screen is a gun aimed at a 12 or 14-year-old…We in Hollywood know the gun will go off, yet we hide behind a smokescreen of phrases like creative freedom and artistic freedom. Those lofty words are lies designed at best to obscure laziness. I know, I have told those lies." [Full CNN interview]

This table lists writers whose films since 2004 have included five or more smoking characters played by credited actors. Many of these writers had more clout than is often the case: in 60 percent of cases, the writer directed or produced the film.

Together, these 48 films and their 315 smoking characters delivered an estimated 5.5 billion tobacco impressions to theater audiences in the U.S. alone between 2004 and 2007. What’s the story?

Learn how the tobacco industry has worked with the Writers' Guild on political issues.