Ryan Gosling: "I never want another cigarette again!"

It took some time for the news to make it here from Australia, but the Daily Mail reports that  Ryan Gosling — star of The Nice Guys (R, Time Warner) — told a Sydney radio show that "I smoked myself out" in the film and "never want another cigarette again!"
 
And no wonder. TUTD reports that The Nice Guys, now on video worldwide, features:
 
• 24 smoking actors, including Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe
• L&M (Philip Morris) cigarette brand display
• 400+ tobacco incidents, making it the smokiest film of the year (as of Nov. 2016)
• 1.8 billion tobacco impressions delivered to domestic theater audiences
• A smoking "disclaimer" in the closing credits of the US release.
 
The disclaimer states:
 
No person or entity associated with this film received payment or anything of value, or entered into any agreement, in connection with the depiction of tobacco products.
 
The depictions of tobacco smoking contained in this film are based solely on artistic consideration and are not intended to promote tobacco consumption. The Surgeon General has determined that there are serious health risks associated with smoking and secondhand smoke.
 
In an interview with CinemaBlend, Shane Black, director and co-writer of The Nice Guys, commented: 
 

...you know, it's weird, because at the end of the movie, there's a credit, which is mandatory, which says, "Even though people smoke in this movie, we wish to say as a studio that this in no way reflects a desire on our part to teach children to smoke." Like who the [expletive] would approve of teaching children to smoke? Do we need to say that?

 
Time Warner appears to have cribbed the second section of its disclaimer on The Nice Guys from one that first appeared in the closing credits of a James Bond film, License to Kill (PG-13, 1989). It turns out that the Bond film's producers had made a tobacco promotion deal with Philip Morris worth $670,000 in today's dollars. 
 
Coincidence or not, The Nice Guys is Time Warner's second movie in 2016 to show a Philip Morris tobacco brand. The other was War Dogs (R), which featured Marlboro.
 
Why did Time Warner choose to add the disclaimer to this R-rated movie? Perhaps because Warner Bros. released The Nice Guys in May 2016, soon after a federal class action lawsuit was filed against the MPAA and its member companies for their tobacco rating practices.
 
While the film is R-rated in the United States, it is youth-rated in other countries (15 in the UK and 14A in Canada, for example).
 
That means the smoking throughout Time Warner's film can easily reach millions of kids worldwide. Meanwhile, the company's disclaimer, exploiting the credibility of the US Surgeon General at the tail-end of the closing credits, shows to an empty theater.
 
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Thanks to Renata Atayeva for spotting The Nice Guys' disclaimer and relaying the Daily Mail report and Jonathan Polansky for preparing the blog post.
 
This item is on the Smoke Free Movies blog at https://smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/blog/ryan-gosling-i-never-want-another-cigarette-again and @SmokeFreeMovies and @ProfGlantz.