Activists’ Ads Focus Fire Where There’s Smoke : Entertainment: Anti-smoking group plans campaign against Hollywood directors who feature characters that light up.

Robert Redford and Ron Howard, two of Hollywood’s top directors, are about to get smoke in their eyes.

The two will be criticized by an anti-smoking group in ads scheduled to run over the next two weeks in the trade magazine Daily Variety. The ads, written as open letters, chastise the two directors for featuring characters who smoke in their films. In Redford’s “A River Runs Through It,” two of the central characters are smokers, and in Howard’s “Backdraft,” firefighters are shown smoking after dousing a fire.

Outside attempts to influence--if not strong-arm--Hollywood’s artistic creativity rarely have profound impact.

“The ads won’t change the future of movies in America,” said Frank Delano, a New York corporate identity expert. But some directors may now think twice before putting cigarettes in the mouths of actors, he said. “They may ask themselves: ‘Do we really want to do this?’ ”

Popular culture is again starting to portray smoking as a sign of being hip. A recent study by UC San Francisco found that smoking is three times more prevalent in movies than in real life. And trend-setting magazines such as Vanity Fair and Interview have increasingly featured photos of celebrities lighting up.

But there is also a renewed backlash against smoking. On Thursday, tough new anti-smoking TV spots are to be unveiled by the California Department of Health Services. And earlier this week, Hillary Clinton said smoking would be banned from the White House.

The group behind the anti-smoking ads, New York-based SmokeFree Educational Services, said it wants Hollywood directors to adopt the same voluntary guidelines followed by the TV industry: Actors do not smoke unless smoking is essential to the role played.

“We’re not trying to restrict artistic freedom,” said Joseph W. Cherner, president of SmokeFree. “We’re just saying, if it’s not important to the role of the character, why help the tobacco industry kill people?”

Last year, the group ran ads in Daily Variety criticizing several young actors--Luke Perry, Jason Priestley and Christian Slater--who have been portrayed smoking in films or in magazines. But this time around, Cherner decided to go after Hollywood’s real artistic power brokers: directors. It is directors who ultimately decide what appears in films.

Redford and Howard--neither of whom smoke--were unavailable for comment.

But Richard B. Lewis, co-producer of “Backdraft,” said the depiction of firefighters smoking in the film was “an accurate portrayal” of firefighters at a Chicago fire department. “The movie would have been phony if we made these guys squeaky clean,” said Lewis, who noted that a former firefighter wrote the screenplay.

Redford’s New York agent, Lois Smith, said the film is a period piece--set in the 1920s--and that the characters reflect that. She also said that Redford--an environmentalist--has no interest in promoting cigarettes.