Screen smoking row

HOLLYWOOD directors Ron Howard and Robert Redford are the butts of advertisements criticising the depiction of cigarette smoking in movies.

Two characters in Redford's A River Runs Through It smoke and firemen in Howard's Backdraft light up after putting out a fire.

SmokeFree Educational Services said it wants movie directors to follow television guidelines where actors do not smoke unless it is essential to the role. President Joseph Cherner said: ''If it's not important to the character, why help the tobacco industry kill people?'' Richard Lewis of Backdraft said: ''The movie would have been phoney if we made these guys squeaky clean.''