Given the question: Build a movie plot around this: who's a handsome, smooth-talking tobacco lobbyist? Nick Naylor
The answer is:
The film opens with Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) appearing on Joan Lunden's daytime talk show, along a doctor, a senator's aide, and a teenage boy with cancer. As he's introduced, the audience spits at him. The screen freezes, spittle in midair, while Naylor explains what he does for a living in a voice over. He works for the Academy of Tobacco Studies, and he represents Big Tobacco. The Academy is supposed to research links between disease and smoking, and has never been able to find anything conclusive.On the show and throughout the film, he takes the offensive position (in both senses). On Joan Lunden's show, he protests that in no way would he want a potential customer to die, and accuses the doctor of profiting off cancer patients.His immediate nemesis is Senator Ortolan Finisterre (William H. Macy), a Birkenstock-wearing Vermonter whose office is decorated with cheese and bottles of maple syrup. Senator Finisterre wants to plaster a graphic skull-and-crossbones picture on every pack of cigarettes.Through all of this, Naylor is also trying to maintain a relationship with his son Joey (Cameron Bright). Naylor's boss BR (J.K. Simmons) wants ideas on how to make smoking sell. "We don't sell Tic Tacs, we sell cigarettes. And they're cool, available, and addictive. The job is almost done for us." Naylor has the idea of product placement in movies.He takes Joey on the trip to Los Angeles to meet with an agent about putting more smoking in movies. Naylor is divorced, and shares custody of his son. His son is rather uncomfortable with his father's profession, but Naylor is as great arguing with his son as he is with the press and starts to win him over. Naylor portrays himself as being on the side of freedom and personal choice.On a side trip, Naylor takes a briefcase full of cash to the original Marlboro Man Lorne Lutch (Sam Elliott) who is dying of cancer. There's no strings attached; Lutch can just keep the money. A suspicious Lutch asks why he can't just go to the press. Naylor suggests he do exactly that,...