Purpose
"Quitting (For and Against)" is a movie about reasons to quit smoking and reasons to continue smoking. Since it does contain reasons to continue smoking, some people seem to think it glorifies smoking. "Why don't you drone on about how additive smoking is?" they ask. "Why don't you talk about how evil tobacco companies are, or how many people smoking kills?"

Because it's a personal thing, quitting smoking. No one's going to quit smoking to spite an evil corporation any more than they're going to stop driving cars or using electricity to spite (even more evil) corporations. And everyone already knows smoking is addictive and kills, yet people continue to smoke.

The approach I took in the making "Quitting" and in the process of actually quitting smoking was necessitated by the failure of the regular "don't smoke" propaganda. It's hard to wrap your mind around death and illness when you're healthy, and quitting smoking won't prevent you from dying anyway (sorry but it won't). On the other hand it's easy to see that the justifications you provide for continuing smoking are nonsense.

By taking apart the "reasons" we tell ourselves we have for smoking, we can hopefully strip away some of the decoration and get down why we really smoke, which is that withdrawal's a bitch. You may have withdrawal symptoms - unjustified anxiety, anger and depression - for far longer than it takes the nicotine to leave your system. I had them (less and less frequently of course) for well over year.

Awards
In 2005, "Quitting (For and Against)" won a Gold Remi in the Original Comedy Short category at Houston Worldfest film festival.

Sheet/Shirt
The picture on the main page is of a sheet which hung in my office for a year and a half while I smoked. (It was covering a hole in the wall.) It was a perfect white sheet when I hung it up.