Random Thoughts

[Rev. Rye]

So, imagine you’re watching a zombie movie that a Youtuber you follow recommended to you. She recommended it as part of a list of movies she’d recommend for people under quarantine, and you finally get around to checking it out of the library. But, much to your horror, once you pop in the movie and press play, the first three minutes are just a collection of anti-smoking PSAs strung together. Why? Because one of the characters smokes. Apparently, there’s a law in India that says that any movie where a character smokes has to include a 20-second disclaimer telling the Audience that they don’t condone smoking IRL (and also include a little watermark saying “smoking is injurious to health” every time a character is seen smoking.) And for some reason, the filmmakers (or distributors) decided that stringing along a couple more anti-smoking PSAs to pad out the runtime (is 102 minutes just too short for Bollywood?)

You know, it’s one thing to remind the public that smoking is bad once in a while. Belaboring the point just makes it all the more Fucking tedious. To be fair, it’s not like the time I went to see Gravity and for whatever reason, the coming attractions included a 10 or 15-second PSA about how the chemicals in cigarettes can also be found in car exhaust and antifreeze being repeated for 20 FUCKING MINUTES with intervals of black screen that may or may not have been a specific length. And they didn’t even smoke. Hell, since the vast majority of it was set in space, the characters couldn’t smoke without killing themselves instantly!