Put Your Lips Together and . . .

David Brancaccio, the stiffest man (by far) on television, interviewed Christopher Buckley on the PBS program Now the other night. (Note: They sat at a table with espresso cups. In case anyone over at PBS is trying to figure out how to avoid always coming off as prissy & elitist, espresso cups are not the answer. How about a six-pack of PBR next time?) Besides being the son of William F., Chris is also the author of Thank You for Smoking, a novel I read way back in 1994 and which has finally been adapted for film.

Protagonist Nick is a PR flack for the tobacco industry, while his best friends run cover for liquor & firearms. Here’s a glimpse of Polly, the chain-smoking spokeswoman for The Moderation Council, formerly the National Association of Alcoholic Beverages:

Polly lit a cigarette. Nick appreciated a woman who smoked sexily. She leaned back and tucked her left arm under her breasts to support her right elbow, the arm going straight up, cigarette pointing at the ceiling. She took long, deep drags, tilted her head back, and let the smoke out in long, slow, elegant exhalations, with a little lung-clearing shot at the end. A beautiful smoker. He remembered her by the pool, summers in the fifties, all long legs and short pants, pointy sunglasses and broad straw hats and lipstick that left bright, sticky smudges on the butts that he filched and coughingly relit behind the garage.

IMAGE: Take it away, Nick:

“In 1925, Liggett and Myers ran the Chesterfield ad showing a woman saying to a man who’s lighting up, ‘Blow some my way.’ It broke the gender taboo. But it wasn’t until a few years later that we really gave women a reason to want to smoke. George Washington Hill, who’s just inherited the American Tobacco Company from his father, is driving in New York City. He’s stopped at a light and he notices a fat woman standing on the corner gobbling chocolate, cramming it down. A taxi pulls up and he sees this elegant woman sitting in the back and what is she doing? She’s smoking a cigarette, probably one of Liggett and Myers’ Chesterfields. He goes back to the office and orders up an ad campaign and the slogan is born, ‘Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.’ And suddenly the women are lighting up. And they’ve been puffing away ever since.”