Thank You for Smoking is a 2005 American black comedy film written and directed by Jason Reitman and starring Aaron Eckhart, based on the 1994 novel by Christopher Buckley.

It follows the efforts of Big Tobacco's chief spokesman, Nick Naylor, who lobbies on behalf of cigarettes using heavy spin tactics while also trying to remain a role model for his 12-year-old son.

Maria Bello, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott, Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe, William H. Macy, J. K. Simmons, and Robert Duvall appear in supporting roles.

Senator Finistirre, one of Naylor's most vehement critics, promotes a bill to add a skull and crossbones POISON warning to cigarette packaging.

As Naylor is about to appear before a U.S. Senate committee to fight the bill, he is kidnapped by a clandestine group and covered in nicotine patches.

Meanwhile, Naylor is seduced by a young reporter named Heather Holloway into revealing secret information about his life and career.

She makes it public via an exposé, criticizing his business activities and accusing him of training his son Joey to follow his amoral example.

He then appears before the Senate committee, admitting to the dangers of smoking but arguing that public awareness is already high enough without extra warnings.

He also mentions Heather was humiliated upon being terminated by the paper for her article and has been reduced to a cub reporter handling weather on a local news station.

[5] Reitman became interested in heading an adaptation after reading the book, and independently wrote a draft for Icon executives after he discovered they owned the rights to the film.

Reitman saw himself as a comic writer with a voice similar to Buckley's, and consciously attempted to maintain the satiric flavor of the book for his draft.

[4] It was only after meeting David O. Sacks, who had made his fortune as the former COO of the Internet payment company PayPal, that Reitman found a financier for his script.

The only scenes that include smoking are older films the characters watch, such as when John Wayne lights up in Sands of Iwo Jima.

Thank You for Smoking was met with tremendous popular reception and afterward disputed claims emerged as to who had signed a distribution deal with Sacks.

Fox Searchlight Pictures and Paramount Classics both issued competing press releases claiming that they had secured rights for the film's distribution.

Ruth Vitale, co-president of Paramount Classics said "He can't resell the film" and noted "I can only think that because of his naiveté and inexperience he would do this.

The site's general consensus is that "Loaded with delightfully unscrupulous characters and a witty, cynical script, Thank You For Smoking is a sharp satire with a brilliantly smarmy lead performance from Aaron Eckhart.

[13] USA Today film critic Claudia Puig called it a "razor-sharp satire" that was "the wittiest dark comedy of the year thus far.

She praised the film for a "quirky and intelligent rarity that elicits wry smiles and hearty laughs alike" and compared it in tone to Election (1999).

"[16] While Thank You for Smoking the book was praised as a sharp criticism of both anti-smoking lobbyists and the tobacco industry, the film has received more mixed reviews on its satirical content.

Steve Palopoli of Metro Silicon Valley writes that "no matter" how much the hype machine might hard-sell the idea that the movie "skewers both sides of the issue", "any child old enough to recognize Joe Camel can tell that underneath the sarcastic joking, this is a bitterly anti-smoking film.

The Washington Post's Desson Thomson thought that "as written and directed by Jason Reitman, Smoking is filtered too heavily with moral redemption.

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times notes "although he [Reitman] steers his cast through its paces with facility, he tends to oversell jokes that were already plenty loud in the book.

"I wanted to look into this idea of why we feel the need to tell each other how to live and why we can't take personal responsibility for our own actions when we fall ill from things that we know are dangerous.

Dargis of The New York Times unwittingly states, "Thank You for Smoking is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).

AllMusic wrote that "The thread is obvious, but the selections sound handpicked rather than researched solely on the basis of their subject matter."