I was really annoyed at a preview I saw the other day for “The Nice Guys.” This is an R-rated movie that takes place in 1977.

One of the characters, a private eye played by Ryan Gosling, is apparently a heavy smoker. In the preview, he’s shown in virtually every scene smoking. Not just smoking, but in one scene actually smoking sitting next to his young daughter … indoors.

Man, my head exploded. I hate to be such a judgemental nerd about this stuff. I get the First Amendment and I get that this is obviously an R-rated movie taking place in 1977 … but the preview isn’t R-rated! There was no red band with this preview. It was an all-audience preview, not one of those red band previews that are only shown before R-rated movies.  It was part of some “pre- preview” studio feature they show before the previews begin along with Coca-Cola commercials (let me put it this way, the lights in the theatre were still on.). Is this being shown at PG movies? It better not be. And the smoking is what I would definitely call “pervasive.”

Hollywood has slowly and grudgingly gotten better about removing smoking from PG and PG-13 movies marketed to kids. Not ideal, but it actually is tangibly improving.  But, this ticks me off that you will still see plenty of smoking in an all-ages preview for that R-rated movie. How hard would it have been for the studio to put together a preview excluding the smoking?  I’m assuming because of the R-rating, there’s probably plenty of salty language and violence in the movie, and manage to not show that in an all-ages preview.  This is something the MPAA needs to crack down on.

Anyway, I think this is indicative of how stubborn Hollywood continues to be about depictions of smoking in movies, and how much still needs to be done to get Hollywood to quit dragging its feet.

Anyway, that really pissed me off. It was the second time I’ve seen this in the past year. A few months ago, I saw a preview … on TV, no less, for some Liam Neeson movie called “Run All Night” showing Liam Neeson smoking. You can’t having smoking on network TV or tobacco commercials, but you can still have smoking in movie previews.

Anyways, here is the smoking preview for “The Nice Guys.”

Here is a non-smoking preview for “The Nice Guys” that I assume — and hope — is being shown at PG and PG-13 movies. See, how easy that was to make a non-smoking movie preview?