David Hoffman, filmmaker.

Back at a time with a very special time in the evolution of smoking cigarettes in America, girls were smoking.

Women had always smoked cigarettes, but high school girls were adopting cigarettes at an alarming rate.

So the American Cancer Society gave me the chance to talk to women, to try to influence girls, not to smoke.

Now this is interesting what they were showing in schools at that time you may have seen this is lungs that were all black and people with holes in their throats talking through gadgets.

It wasn't working.

Girls were taking them cigarettes in spite of that.

Why?

Because part of the reason for the cigarette was rebellion, and part of the reason for the cigarette was cool.

So what I tried to do is do something that was somewhat different.

If you're a smoker, I'd like to know what you think.

If you're not a smoker, would this have worked on you with this?

Have kept you from smoking?

The film you're about to see is not a drama.

It's not a story.

It's not a piece of entertainment.

It's simply ordinary women talking about a personal problem, a problem that on a worldwide basis is killing more of us now than ever before.

The problem is cigarette smoking, and the people are really It was 1967.

Okay.

In fact, I started smoking April 17th of 1967.

Okay, that's going to have my first real cigarette that I inhaled.

Okay, Before that, I had smoked out behind the barn and just blow it out.

But that was the 1st 1 And I remember it because we're standing on Main Street.

Um, a friend of mine and I and this guy went around the rotary and he was with his parents, and it was someone from school, you know, when he was the big jock, it's school.

And so it was, You know, we thought we were cool because when they came back around, we had a cigarette.

I took my first drag of a cigarette when I waas eight.

23 Now.

So how long is that?

I forget?

It makes me relaxed.

I enjoy it.

It's part of my relax ation.

My time to myself.

After you make love one of the nicest things about making love is if you're both smokers, is to sit back and both of you share a cigarette together.

I got a job on a major newspaper in Houston eventually, and very quickly got to the point that I never turned to a top writer without lighting a cigarette.

It was just something to do with your hands.

It gave me something to do with my hands.

It's something to do with my hands.

I'm at an interview.

It's more acceptable to smoke a cigarette than it is to, like, take out my pen and paper and, you know, drug little creatures or something on school mornings when I get up, I have a cigarette before I get out of it before you can go to the bathroom.

I have a cigarette and then I have them on the island on the way to school.

And then I have one second.

Did I get out of school?

And I probably that's where I probably have the most from after school until dinner.

Just Constant spoke, and I smoke doing my homework after dinner and on the weekends I took from the moment I get up all through the day.

I spoke most of the day that whenever I'm doing anything driving, I spoke everything I do, I smoke Well, guys, you know, they go.

You know, that's that's how they they hold it like this, you know?

And they like their movement.

Movie person, girls just, you know, hold it like that.

Girls are much more of this book.

Very prim and proper.

Really long cigarettes, like, very something sort of sexy about it.

And to blow the smoke through your nose or the French inhale those sign of class.

I just couldn't direct my energy through the cigarette as opposed to allowing it to go through my body and be seen that way.

So, you know, I can do little things like that and display with cigarette.

Okay, I'm nervous.

And the first thing I have to do is have a cigarette.

That's gonna make me feel better.

Um, I didn't It didn't help anything at all.

Well, it was a month.

A month ago, I told her star, but she she stopped and well, and it was Larry was still live.

Another and, um, she stopped smoked.

My mother stopped smoking, but Larry didn't.

He kept on smoking.

Then we went upstairs me of my brother to consider at some random underwater.

When I quit, I the first day, I feel like I'm in control.

You know, I have one.

I've quit.

This horror will have it.

Now I'm in control again.

And the second day, it's like, Don't come near me, kids, because I don't know what I'm gonna do to you, okay?

Don't talk to me.

Don't look at me.

The eighth day is always the worst for me.

Um, for some reason, I could just I could you know, I eat myself sick.

I screaming everyone.

I don't answer the phone.

I locked the doors, I locked myself away.

Hopefully not seeing anyone with cigarette, because if I do, I know I'm gonna grab it and smoke it.

You don't know you're becoming physically hooked on cigarettes.

You don't know because it happens slowly.

Gradually, you're enjoying the cigarette.

You're having them when you want them.

So you have no idea that your becoming addicted to it And you think you can quit whenever you want.

But you just don't want to right now, because you enjoy it.

I used to be able to sing and I took lessons singing and I was developing a fairly good high soprano and I hope to develop, maybe even in tow, a cholera chur.

Who knows?

But I would I decided to smoke rather than to be able to sing.

I didn't really decide to, but it was just easier.

I couldn't give it up.

And so now I'm 33 years old and I'm not gonna be able to sing like that ever.

I will never sing opera.

I am too old to learn net, but I've quit.

But I'm too old now.

You know, I smoke when I get home from work.

It's just not stopping during the night.

I wake up every couple hours and have a cigarette fell asleep with a cigarette, I guess.

And then my mother woke up.

She walked in the room.

My nightgown just burned off me and I had for a second and third degree burns all over me.

And I didn't stop me either.

I can't take a deep breath.

I cough all night long.

It literally hurts in my Jess constantly, But I can't.

It seemed to stop.

I guess I don't care.

At some point, I decided I really wanted to live.

And coming to that realization made me decide that I I had to make some changes in my life.

Um, I left a bad marriage.

I started a new business, and I quit smoking all in about three months.

And that was two years ago.

And I'm still not smoking.

My business is successful, and and, uh, I'm living alone with my son, feeling very good about myself.

It was smoking, for me was a form of suicide and almost acceptable form of suicide.

It was a ziff.

I got cancer and died of smoking.

It would be all right.

Nobody would be mad at me.

They feel sorry for me.

And, boy, I wanted out of life a lot of times out of my six Children only to ever smoked.

And the others were going I can't stand it, mom, you know, knock it off for you.

But I'd say, Look, I live here too.

I may be raising you, but I live here too, and I'm gonna be comfortable and do my own thing.

Now we're discriminated against were the oddballs of the world.

The people that smoke and, uh they blame us for pollution when it's really cars and factories.

And, uh, they say, say it spreads cancer.

Well, a lot of people that never smoked have cancer in this rain pollution.

This whole world is going right down the bucket because of pollution.

But it doesn't mean it's all cigarettes, but we can't smoke in.

Grocery stores were the housewives of the world.

We enjoy going out buying our groceries, planning our meals.

We enjoy being able to smoke in a supermarket while we're figuring how much everything costs.

And will we have enough a check out.

And now we cannot smoke in any of the stores or, you know, public places.

I cough.

Um, and I do cough up mucus.

Um, I used to get every wonder would have bronchitis.

At least twice.

I would have pneumonia.

I would have any upper respiratory disease.

You know, whatever you can think of.

I would have it.

I had read the, uh, sorry clown smoking where position said, uh uh, if you smell Ah, you get cancer, our emphysema, whatever.

If, uh if you don't smoke, then you gain weight and you have to die of a heart attack.

that's you know, that's not He felt there wasn't much choice.

There was medication is that there's a chewing gum that's out, uh, trying to get through this chewing gum.

It's, um, probably cost about $200.

No, that you had to chew about.

You start out chewing about 30 pieces a day.

It's very difficult to work with public showing 30 pieces of dag.

Uh, but there again, I I'm rationalizing because I've probably spend much more than $200 a year on cigarettes, which I can't afford, So I'm rationalizing my husband had him for semen.

You really had it, man, does he?

Very few nights that he was able to too low down.

I don't think it was an addiction with me because I quit just like that.

I just want you to just up whatever I feel like that, uh, I want to to do, I can I don't like nothing.

Take it, you know, have power over me.

But I was sitting in a chair in this room one night in February 1985 and just doing this sort of thing, like, you know, looking at TV or reading and doing things like this and and all of a sudden my hand went right here and there was a lump, and I knew it shouldn't be there.

It was very small, but it simply shouldn't be there.

And that was a Saturday and the following Monday or Tuesday.

I was at a doctor's office, and even though I had been X rayed in December, there was the shadow on the lung and he said, Worst the effect of Oh my God, I mean, this is not good.

So he sent me for a CAT scan and it was there.

And this means it was already metastasized into the left system.

The my first reaction was rage.

I mean, I shook my fist, it God, because I quit 12 years ago.

Dammit, I quit.

I should've had a break.

And I mean, that's exactly the way I feel, huh?

I mean, this is this wasn't fair, but they don't have to remind myself, which is a firm belief in my that only teenagers think life is fair.

Any people smoke for different reasons.

I think some people smoke socially.

I know people who smoke.

So, um, and they're addicted.

They just smoke When they're around people who smoke.

I think some people smoke for that reason, and some people smoke just cause they started with their friends and then they keep doing it.

Otherwise, I don't think people smoke because they want to be smoke.

They want to be.

I don't think anybody wants to be smoked.

I think people just smoke because I started, but I can't stop, I was told as I was dropped at the University of Texas from the dormitory steps to never come home with a cigarette, and I thought that was a very it's kind of sad thing for somebody to tell me when I was going off on what I hope was the big adventure of my life.

But right or wrong?

Whatever my father meant by saying it, I watched the cargo around the corner and I went to the corner drug store and bought a package of cigarettes.

I had never really fully thought it out our every thought to myself that I would begin smoking.

But this was rebellion.

This was You can't tell me what to do.

I'm grown up.

I'm gonna show you I'm grown up.

I'll do this and 30 years later, I was still smoking.

I'm addicted to cigarettes.

I have been since I was five years old.

I'm not ashamed of it.

I'm not proud of it because I don't want anybody else toe pick him up when they're five.

In fact, when I've caught my kids when they were five, I'll say it.

All right, take a deep breath and inhale it all the way down.

And when I threw up and say you want another one, they say no.

When I said Good, because I don't want you to smoke.

I don't want you to be hooked like me.

I paid attention to the warnings on the pack, but not by that time.

I was already hooked, you know?

And I figured I felt all right.

I felt as good as a smoking person feels.

So it didn't really make any difference to me when they put on that.

It did affect pregnancy or could affect the pregnancy.