Hey, so no reasonable person would argue or expect movies to accurately reflect the manner in which we spend most of our time, or the many pedestrian activities (brushing one’s teeth, putting away laundry, walking from our car to an apartment or home, vacuuming) that round out our days. But one thing that struck me recently is the manner in which even included prosaic acts get trimmed down and glossed over.

Take cigarettes, for instance. It’s become far less pervasive on screen over the past 15 to 20 years, no doubt about it, but when we do see someone smoking, it’s frequently in the act of lighting up and taking that first drag — the ultimate foreplay and sexualization of the act. What about extinguishing cigarettes, though? I’ve seen entire movies set in smoky bars where smokestack characters never once properly dispose of a butt.

On the other hand, if we need to show a character is thoughtless or bad, we’re apt to get the artfully flicked away finished cig. (You’ll never see this from a straight-up protagonist, though, because Lord knows none of that litter comes from decent folks…) This is most recently egregiously represented in Alpha Dog, which goes out of its way to include a scene in which Justin Timberlake’s character flicks away a Marlboro and lobs a beer bottle into a neighbor’s yard. (I mean, kids these days! Abusing drugs, ‘napping kids… littering!) At some point, though, I’d like to see a character rub out a butt and toss it in a trashcan. I mean, that still happens in real life, right?