In the olden days, of course, cigarette companies would pay to have their product advertised in movies and to have actors smoke cigarettes.[Ronald Reagan used to do it.]

I just wanted to make sure that what I write is what appears on screen, to not have some idiot change it on its way to the screen.

All has changed, thanks to Joe Eszterhas' life-threatening battle with throat cancer. He announced in "The New York Times" that he and Hollywood had blood on their hands and now Eszterhas is crusading to stop Hollywood's glamorization of smoking.

There's no doubt in my mind that Bill Clinton will stop smoking cigars, will never smoke them again, as a result of what he did with that cigar.

And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet.

The charm of smoking a cigarette from the point of view of the people who smoked them, and I was one of those people for many, many years, is an amazing pleasure and a hit that some people say, and I've never done heroin, but some people say that it rivals the heroin hit, so there is that pleasure. The-it kills you the same way that heroin kills you.

The studios have been taken over by marketing people and accountants.