Worried about overpopulation? Then here’s some good news (unless governments screw it up):

Smoking could kill 1 billion this century: WHO

 

BANGKOK (Reuters) – One billion people will die of tobacco-related diseases this century unless governments in rich and poor countries alike get serious about preventing smoking, top World Health Organization (WHO) experts said on Monday.

“Tobacco is a defective product. It kills half of its customers,” Douglas Bettcher, head of the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative, said at the start of an international conference in Bangkok to draw up a masterplan for the world to kick the habit.

“It kills 5.4 million people per year and half of those deaths are in developing countries. That’s like one jumbo jet going down every hour,” he said.

With smoking rates in many developing countries on the rise, particularly among teenagers, that annual death toll would rise to 8.3 million within the next 20 years, he added.

However, if governments introduced measures such as aggressive taxation, banning cigarette advertising and making offices and public places totally tobacco-free, smoking rates could halve by 2050, he said.

“It’s a completely preventable epidemic,” Bettcher said, citing countries such as Singapore, Australia and Thailand where tough anti-smoking laws have helped people to quit.

“If we do that, by 2050 we can save 200 million lives.”

Officials from 147 countries are attending the week-long conference, which is likely to agree on binding laws against cross-border tobacco advertising — a move against events such as Formula One — as well as tougher legislation against cigarette smuggling.

Around 600 billion cigarettes were smuggled in 2006 — 11 percent of the world’s consumption — according to the Framework Convention Alliance (FAC), an umbrella group of hundreds of anti-tobacco organizations.

As well as keeping the prices artificially low and thereby stimulating demand, the counterfeit cigarette industry also deprives governments of more than $40 billion in missed taxes, the FCA estimates.

BAN ON ADS

In Thailand, smoking rates have fallen from 30 percent in 1992 to around 18 percent, a decline health officials attribute to a ban on all domestic tobacco advertising 15 years ago.

“The most important medicines in tobacco control are: number one, increasing taxation; number two, bans on advertising; and number three, smoke-free public places,” said Hatai Chitanondh of the Thailand Health Promotion Institute.

Besides agreeing laws on cross-border advertising and smuggling, the conference is also likely to issue guidelines for countries introducing legislation on “second-hand smoke” and “smoke-free” areas.

Although not legally binding, anti-smoking campaigners are delighted with the explicit wording of the guidelines.

“There is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke and notions such as a threshold value for toxicity from second-hand smoke should be rejected as they are contradicted by scientific evidence,” a draft copy of the guidelines said.

“Approaches other than 100 percent smoke-free environments, including ventilation, air filtration and use of designated smoking areas have repeatedly been shown to be ineffective.”

Ifixit.com dissects an iPhone, in glorious color.

…not to be mean, but they could do worse than modeling the Red Skull on Mort Sahl‘s face.

I just got back from another installment of Moving Arts’ “The Car Plays,” at the Steve Allen Theatre. (The show continues the first Sunday of every month through October; tickets go on sale two weeks beforehand and sell out within about 9 seconds, so if you want to attend, keep watching this space.)

On the way over, I found myself wondering if the event was already over. You see this sometimes in the theatre: the sensation that isn’t so sensational any more. We did “The Car Plays” last September, and the clamor for tickets was deafening. Those of us who were lucky enough to be involved (and get tickets) were glad to be there. I wondered if this was going to be a case of been there, done that.

Luckily, I was joined by five guests who are not regular theatregoers. They loved it. Each one of them remarked how different this event was — what a great idea — what an event. That just reminded me — again — of what I love about having expedient access to strange cultural events utterly unavailable where I grew up.

It was interesting to see my play “All Undressed with Nowhere to Go” revived — and, again, performed in a car, exactly as it was written to be done — but with a different director and with one new actor. The returning actor was Laura Buckles, whose work I’ve grown to appreciate more and more; I told Laura some time ago that from now on she has to be in all my plays. She was terrific in Nancy Weiner’s “The Invalid James” (in this production, directed by my good friend Trey Nichols), she was great Friday night in a reading from my workshop, and she was great last year (and this year) in this play, in a role I wrote somewhat with her in mind. Last year James Smith played “Jerry”; James has been in my plays “The Size of Pike,” “Happy Fun Family,” “Animals,” “Safehouse,” and probably others that elude me at the moment — to me, he really gets the rhythm of my lines and the subtext of my characters. Either that, or I keep subconsciously writing for him. Or, another choice, he’s just really good in them and elevates the material. Or all of those options. He wasn’t available for this revival, and neither was the original director (Trey), so I recommended Tony, who was in my play “Visiting Ours,” as the seemingly nice young man who reads porn to the old lady in the nursing home. I’ve also worked with Tony on several other plays not my own, and have always admired his odd comic delivery. He can be amazing in a role. The new director, Paul Nicolai Stein, changed the action around a bit for this 9-minute play about adulterers who can’t find a good spot to consummate their deceit high in the parking areas of the San Gabriel mountains. For one thing, the play now started with Jerry off in the “mountains” (the parking lot of the Steve Allen) “urinating” off the edge. For another, the button — the comedic summing-up of the play — that worked so well with James’ interpretation wouldn’t work with Tony’s interpretation. I’ve seen many of my plays remounted and reinterpreted, but never before within such a short period of time and inside a car, so this was oddly illuminating about how interpretative a performance can be. (And I say this after three decades of doing theatre of some sort.) And, as Tony later pointed out, the one I saw was only the first performance:  They still had 14 additional performances that night.

(Yes, each 9-minute “Car Play” is performed 15 times.)

I saw many of the writers and theatre enthusiasts I’ve known over the years from Backstage West, Entertainment Today, ReviewPlays.com, and the LA Times, so I’m sure some ink is going to follow on this. And, as I said, “The Car Plays” will continue into the fall (albeit with a shifting slate of plays). I saw 10 of the 15 plays tonight. As I was saying to the dean of our program at USC, this is a difficult little form to write in — as with haiku (good haiku), the rules are rigid and the form demanding. Each play has to be 9 minutes, each has to have an inciting incident, it must take place inside a car, and it must have a “button” that ends the action.

So much care has gone into writing, directing, acting and producing them, that I believe I can spot a problem looming with this production in nearby Santa Barbara (seemingly inspired by our success last September, which was Pick of the Week in the LA Weekly). “Pick your own” sounds like an owner’s manual for chaos.

By putting the Clintons into it.

Carrie Rickey of the Philadelphia Inquirer was a panelist at this event yesterday about the dumbing-down of the Ritz. I would’ve loved to hear this one, and I’m looking forward to her coverage on her blog. (A free refill to Rich Roesberg for sending this in.)

The iPhone hits the streets Friday, and I know you want one. But remember, kids — you’re going to want to wait a few months. That’s what I’ve told the couple dozen people who assume I’m going to be caught in the traffic snarl of an Apple Store checkout line tomorrow. Here’s why:

If almost every Apple product’s history (especially that of the iPod) is any indication, there will be a brand-spanking new version almost immediately. My bet for two features the 2nd or 3rd generation iPhone will include: responsive touch (so you’ll know when you’ve touched a button, the equivalent of a soft electronic “click”), and more storage. The 4GB phone has a lot more memory than the competition, but it’s not much storage to swap out an iPod; the 8GB still isn’t enough.

There was a new iPod about every 19 minutes, with greatly expanded storage and features, about every 12 minutes. If you can put off the iPhone ’til November you might get a Generation 9 model with built-in sonic screwdriver.

A reader of this site (and, I admit it, friend and mentor) emailed me to bemoan the changes at the beloved Ritz cinemas in Voorhees, NJ (somewhat over the water from Philadelphia).

Hello Lee,
Now I know how you felt when your beloved ‘silents only’ movie house closed.  I just checked the listings for the Ritz 16 and they were gone.  Further searching revealled that a huge chain bought the theater and is making it over into a hit distributor.  Someone else bought the Philly branches and it appears that they are still doing the right thing, but ‘our’ Ritz is gone, despite claims by the new owners that they will devote two out of sixteen screens to art films.
I found a blog that had many posts from equally shocked and disheartened folks.  Some of them had attended the ‘new’ Ritz and were sadly disappointed.  There were reps from the new masters in the lobby telling people that indy films are very slow in the summer, which is why they got replaced by Shrek.  One blog poster responded with a list of 25 art flicks he saw last summer at the Ritz.  So much for that argument.
I posted, answering one question people kept raising.  They wanted to know why the new lords didn’t keep the old policy.  I suggested that, if you already buy the same eight hit movies for all your other outlets, it’s easier to add one more multiplex to that list, rather than deal with some small distributor to rent films that don’t even get advertised on prime time TV.
Anyway, I’m in shock.  I mean, the old Ritz was going to get the new Guy Maddin film.  I was looking forward to seeing it on a big screen.  I ask for justice… DENIED!

Sorry for the rant, but I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.  In protest I’m going to go and re-watch my copy of Donny and Marie Osmond in “Goin’ Coconuts.”  Vive le Cinema.  Or Viva la Cinema.  Whatever.

Inconsolably,         Sad Rich

Dear Sad Rich:  All too often it’s about selling the popcorn rather than the art. Here’s another case. Here’s what I learned from my years working for Twentieth Century Fox:  on first-run films in initial weeks, the distributor gets 70, or 80, or 90, or sometimes even 100% of the ticket (the percentage goes down as the weeks roll by). The theatre gets what’s left (if anything) and the concessions.  So, how much have you spent on popcorn and Coke at the Ritz, and how does that compare against the popcorn-and-Coke sales for the new “Die Hard” movie? I thought so. Same here.

That doesn’t tell the entirety of the tale, though, because I’m sure there’s a good business model for upscale art houses, like the Arclight here in LA.  The Arclight shows both art flicks and major releases, but here are the differences:  it costs more, but in return you get reserve seating and a true and enforced “be quiet” policy. Once upon a time I used to go to art houses — like the delightful Little Art Theatre, in the middle of the woods in Egg Harbor Township, NJ, where my wife and I had our first date (“Rocky Horror Picture Show”) and where later we saw great movies like “Jean de Florette.” But now that I’ve got a Netflix account — 70,000 films and counting, including the complete Werner Herzog (!) — and I’ve got a large cinema-quality screen at home, why hassle with text-messaging and other cellphone interruptions at the movie theatre? There’s only one good reason:  the audience experience. So if it’s a comedy, like “Borat,” you want to see it with an audience. But anything else? I’d rather see it with an audience of 1 to 5 — myself, and maybe assorted family members.

If you don’t have one, it’s time for a Netflix account. And I just checked and yes, they have Guy Maddin’s films in stock.

You decide. Me, I’m hooked. (In my copious free moments.)

On the other hand, perhaps the Microsoft Surface isn’t so cool.