Since so many artists, writers, and other creative folks have been cigar
smokers, it's perhaps no surprise that some wonderful-as well as
not-so-wonderful-films and plays center on the world of cigars. Some of these
works are already well-known, while others might require a little help reaching
their audiences. A few of them may not even succeed with help. But for those who celebrate cigar smoking, these dramas
(screen and stage) may be special treats.
Anna
In the Tropics
The 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama, this play, set in 1929, gives
viewers a rare opportunity to view the world through the eyes of those who make
fine hand-rolled cigars. It concerns the daughters of a family of cigar
workers, whose lives are forever marked when the factory's new lector-the
person hired to read to the workers-reads Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to them. The book becomes part of the factory's life,
inspiring love affairs, jealousies and fights. Hailed by critic Christine Dolen
as "a passionate, explosive, tender play … filled with … poetic-evocative
imagery, language that almost seems tactile," the play managed to beat out new
works by the far-more-established Edward Albee and Richard Greenberg for the
Pulitzer in Drama. For cigar smokers, it provides a glimpse of the industry's
glory years-before machine manufacture and the dominance of cigarettes, before
Castro and the trade embargo.
The "lector," by the way, was a real position. Cigar
manufacture is a laborious process requiring constant care, and for many years,
for that reason, handmade cigar factories hired a lector (reader) to
keep the rollers alert and entertained by reading books to them. Audio books
have partly eliminated the need for lectors (at least in some factory owners'
eyes), but other factories still use a lector-perhaps the best symbol of
the mental attentiveness necessary to produce well-made premium cigars.
Smoke
This 1995 indie film rendered writer Paul Auster something like a household
name-or as close to a household name as authors of existential detective
stories get. It's also a virtual paean to cigar smoking, with its sprawling
plot set at the Brooklyn Cigar Company, where owner Auggie Wren ponders the
varied types of humanity who turn up therein. (His theory is that everyone in
the world eventually shops at the Brooklyn Cigar Factory.) Within this
framework, the movie ponders the random yet meaningful connections among disparate
individuals-one of the themes of Auster's writing, and a theme of several
important 1990s American art films, including Grand Canyon, Short Cuts and Magnolia. Auster's selection of a smoke shop as his setting renders
the film, which is based on one of his own short stories, especially meaningful
for diehard cigar smokers.
Smokin'
Stogies
An entire movie about the search for some missing Cohibas? This 2002
low-budget crime film may not have won any awards, but with two of the stars of
"The Sopranos" (whose swaggering, smoking mobsters have done their own bit to
promote the smoking of stogies) and its cigar-oriented plot, the film ought to
hold at least some interest for cigar lovers. It is described by Cigar Aficionado's David Savona as
"B-level material, an R-rated, small-budget experience that nevertheless should
appeal to cigar smokers. … [it] serves up a subject matter palatable to
aficionados. The movie includes the search for the mob's missing Cubans and a
plot to put real Cohiba bands on a trove of horrendous counterfeit cigars.
There's also a hilarious cigar-sniffing Doberman Pinscher who can tell a real
Cuban from a fake." If only every cigar smoker in America had a dog like that …
Predator
OK, this eighties sci-fi opus is not about cigars at all-at least not on the
surface. Rather, it concerns a scary invisible alien hunter-thing that
crash-lands in a Central American jungle and cuts up an elite Arnold
Schwarzenegger-led military unit after they're tricked into illegal Black Ops
action by a corrupt major (Carl Weathers). (\But what cigar smoker can forget
the sight of Schwarzenegger's character, Dutch, lighting up the fattest imaginable
stogie as he suits up?
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