"Why are the box office revenues getting smaller?" asks one asshat. Part III: The Third One

Since I'm on a bit of a roll with my ranting about what's going on with North American cinema (I almost feel dirty calling it cinema sometimes with all the fecal matter that a lot of the major studios expect us to embrace), I thought that I would conform with Hollywood on this one and complete a "trilogy."

Click here.

If you just read that article I linked to you're probably shaking your head like I'm still doing. In fact, I've been shaking my head in disbelief for the entire two days since I read it for the first time. People have been stopping me to ask me what's wrong:

Michael, man, what's bumming you out? You're body language is scaring me. What could be so bad?

Cigarettes........no......cigarettes.......no cigarettes in Casino Royale........bad example.....for.....kids......

That's right. James Bond is not going to be smoking in the upcoming Casino Royale. And the reason for changing the famous spy to a non-smoker? Smoking sets a bad example for kids.

I'll let that sink in.

Smoking, not such a good example for impressionable youth. We can't have kids going around smoking cigarettes and ruining their lungs. That's bad. Violence? Nothing wrong with violence and international espionage.

Holy shit! You're going to excise smoking so that kids don't get any bad ideas, but you'll keep violence in there because there's nothing wrong with that. Are you batshit crazy or just regular crazy? Seriously.

If you want to make a movie that is kid-safe, fine, so be it. But if you're going to do it, do it right. Fuck.

And get this. One scene in Casino Royale will revolve around James Bond's genitals being beaten with a carpet-beater. So you can have genital torture scenes in a movie, but you can't have smoking? There goes your credibility out the window right there. I know that after I just finish torturing my genitals for a while there's nothing more satisfying than a cigarette. If James Bond doesn't light one up I'm going to be forced to hurl my popcorn at the projection booth and scream, "Fuck you, Hollywood! No cigarettes after wang flogging? That's bullshit, you fuckers!"

I suppose I should take solace in the fact that althought a generation of kids will grow up thinking that taking the genitals to task with torture is acceptable behaviour at least they'll have a lot of lung capacity for prolonged beatings thanks to the fact that they never took up smoking.