• Quotes (6)
• Trivia (4)
• Plot Description
• Soundtrack
• Wallpapers
• Shooting Locations
• Popularity
Release Date
• USA: Jun 9, 1995
DVD Release Date
• R1: Jan 25, 2005
• R2: 2 Aug 2004
Budget $7,000,000
MPAA Rating
Rated R for language.
Running Time
1 hour, 52 minutes
Country USA, Germany
Studio Miramax
More info on IMDb.com
|
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Black Comedy, Society, Christmas, Urban, Thieves, Love
Tagline: Where there's smoke... there's laughter!
Plot: In 1990, novelist Paul Auster was asked to contribute a Christmas story to the New York Times. The resulting piece, "Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story," forms the basis for his screenplay for SMOKE. Directed by Wayne Wang and set in a Brooklyn cigar store, Auster expanded the story to include four other characters whose lives intertwine with Auggie Wren’s. As Auggie, the manager of the store that serves as a neighborhood meeting place, Harvey Keitel gives a restrained, mellow performance. The other characters, Paul (William Hurt), a blocked writer; Rashid (Harold Perrineau Jr.), a troubled youth; Ruby (Stockard Channing), Auggie’s former lover; and Cyrus (Forest Whitaker), Rashid’s long-lost father, form a web of relationships over a few summer days. Auster, who had previously adapted his novel THE MUSIC OF CHANCE into a taut script, here exhibits a loose, almost improvisational style as he lets his characters simply talk about their lives. Wang eschews the big, somewhat melodramatic style he used in THE JOY LUCK CLUB for relaxed, natural direction that allows the actors, who are all terrific, to project an everyday realism seldom seen in American movies. The actual Christmas story appears at the end in a beautiful black-and-white montage, accompanied by a bittersweet Tom Waits song.
More Plot Descriptions
 |
Related Movies:
|
 Discussion forum for this movie
|
| |
|
| Directed by |
Wayne Wang
Maid in Manhattan, The Joy Luck Club, Anywhere But Here | Paul Auster
Blue in the Face, Lulu on the Bridge, The Inner Life of Martin Frost |
|
| Written by |
Paul Auster
The Monster of Longwood, In the Country of the Last Things, Blue in the Face |
|
| Music By |
Rachel Portman
Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, The Manchurian Candidate |
|
|
|
Movie Database
In Theaters
