Ridiculously trivial question about the cigarette

Thanks, Peter, at the very least I know I'm not the only person ever bugged by this. It bugged me even when I first saw it in the theater in 1982. I just looked at the scene closely on the laptop in slow motion and freeze framed it.

The first thing you notice about the table is how smokey the air is under the bright light; really smokey; too smokey for a table full of kids. At first you think it's steam coming out of the mugs on the table and some of it may be, but some of it is thicker and silver like smoke and not stream. Besides, they each have a different soft drink next to them and so I doubt that they'd also have hot drinks.

Then from 8:40 to 8:48 as the camera circles the table, you can clearly see a cigarette just right of Tyler between the mug and the Tab can, with the filter clear on one end and smoke at the tip. What's really odd though is that there seems to be even more smoke coming from the same area but from behind the Tab can and thus not visible.

This doesn't make sense - the whole smoky room effect and the cigarette, given the ages of the boys and the fact that Mom is home (at their ages they might be sneaking a smoke, but...). Also, Mary is not right there. Besides, would a mom leave a lit cigarette on the table with the kids? Maybe the second-hand smoke thing wasn't so big then.

It's a small point, but this is SPIELBERG, who determines every minute detail of his films and even went back to tweak this one. There couldn't be an accidental element in a Spielberg film. Maybe there's no real answer to this question, but the smokiness of the room has always been a mystery to me.

I was re-watching it today and noticed that too. Like, she's ok with the kids smoking, but not ordering a pizza?

But I got the sense from the whole movie that she was pretty out of touch.

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Oh yes, the Raid can. I saw that when I was checking for the cigarette and couldn't even begin to explain it. Crazy product placement? Or did they have such a roach problem they always had to have it handy?

You may be right about wanting a "smokey ambiance" because it's so thick that I DID notice it at the first screening. I'm thinking how possibly it ties the indoor scene to the forest scenes before it which were so foggy.

Filmed in 1977? Drew Barrymore is the most mature looking/acting 2-year-old I've ever witnessed.

The movie was released in 1982. I think you're thinking about Close Encounters.

My mother used to send me to the corner store for smokes, back then. Probably from about 9 years old & beyond. Clerk didn't bat an eye.

I didn't smoke, but I knew a couple of boys who did. One was about 13 @ the time.

Several variations of the D&D scene were shot. You can see other stuff in some of the behind the scenes footage. My guess is that at one point they had Mary smoke and she set down a cigarette. I can't imagine that they would have had the kids smoking.

It's also possible that the intent is subliminal and symbolic: the cigarette and the cans of Raid and Wizard might go unnoticed by a casual viewer, but what that all adds up to is chemical pollution surrounding children. (Before this we also have the shot of the truck exhaust smoking up the forest when the trucks arrive.) It's just another bit of strangeness in an odd scene that also has Mary wearing a bathrobe around her son's friends. And what radio station is there that would go from playing "People Who Died" to (apparently as a phone request from the kids) "Papa Oom-mow-mow"?

Parents who let their kids smoke are not doing their job right. Did your parents also let you drink alcohol?