Before I would view Rob Reiner as this really annoying pest. Every time he'd come on TV or talking about smoking, I found my blood pressure go up. I just met-really met Rob for the first time last week and told him how much I admire him. He's done more than anyone else in the industry.

I started making a point earlier that women's cancer rates are skyrocketing, and we have some women movie stars, young women movie stars, who are smoking in many of their movies.

From a writing point of view, you now have teams of screenwriters working with a director. What's lost in the process is the power of that one heart, brain, gut and soul that makes something an original piece of writing.

No one is going to tell a movie star to smoke or not smoke because they can do whatever they want.

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.

I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.

I think to put death on screen where it isn't that turns it into comic book time and there I think by desensitizing an audience, you really do open the possibility that someone is going to kill.