When Thank You for Smoking screened earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, rumors abounded that a hot sex scene - or a couple of hot sex scenes - between Holmes and leading man had been whittled down to a fleeting, discreet few seconds under pressure from Holmes' protective beau, .

In fact, the scenes never had any full nudity, and they weren't trimmed. But gossips mongered, bloggers blogged, and now Reitman's deft and darkly hilarious adaptation of satirical novel about Washington lobbyists is generating plenty of buzz. Courtesy of Holmes.

"Half the questions that I've been getting are thoughtful questions about the morals of lobbying and how does satire work," Reitman says. "And then the rest is just, 'Is there actually any nude footage out there?'...

"It's created an oddly wonderful position for us in that we're indeed a political satire, and there's a place for that kind of movie, but it's certainly normally not widely seen - even though this is an accessible comedy. But because of Katie we're in the public consciousness... . If it gets them in the theaters, I guess I'll take it."

The Canadian-born Reitman, 28, is the son of Ghostbusters and Dave director . An award-winning commercials director (the Buick ads, the Heineken Mardi Gras campaign, spots for BMW and Nintendo), Reitman the younger has been wanting to make Thank You for Smoking - his debut feature - since he read the book in the late '90s.

Set inside the Beltway, and following one smooth-talking spin artist for the tobacco industry, the project had been languishing at production company, Icon, where several high-priced screenwriters had taken their shot.

"They had been trying to make it into a big, broad comedy - a $50 million, $60 million movie, something that Mel could direct and star in, and they had softened it up in the process," Reitman says. "By trying to make it accessible to a large audience, they had taken the bite out of it and at that point they had nothing. Because there's nothing interesting about a soft satire.

"So my pitch was, look, this should be cheap. If it's cheap then it will never have to apologize for itself, and I talked to them about Citizen Ruth, which is a film that I really love... . Instead of tobacco, it used abortion as a way of looking at the mania that people get into when they want to tell others how to live."

Gibson and company liked Reitman's pitch and hired him to write the screenplay. Icon then shopped it around to every studio and studio-owned indie in town. No one wanted to touch it. Too controversial. No redemptive third act. No apologies.

"Unlike a lot of guys who have a lot of money who want to make movies to meet chicks, he wanted to actually make movies that he believed in," Reitman says. "He went to bat. I call him my white knight."

And so, Reitman finally got his green light, and got together a pretty amazing cast. Along with Eckhart, it includes kid actor (as the fast-talking lobbyist's son); (a lobbyist for the liquor industry); (a Marlboro Man-like cowboy actor now dying of lung cancer); (a Birkenstock-shod, antitobacco U.S. senator); and (tobacco industry kingpin).

"For me, this is the political movie for The Daily Show generation," says Reitman, alluding to faux news program on Comedy Central. "It's a movie that puts a mirror up to both sides and says stop telling me what do. Stop hitting me over the head with all this stupid liberal bull, and stop hitting me over the head with this conservative religious stuff. Just let me live my life!"

Another satirical bestseller is heading to the screen: and have signed on to star in The Nanny Diaries, an adaptation of and book about a young woman (Johansson) who becomes a nanny for an elite Manhattan family (Linney is the mom) - and all the pressures, pomposity and faux pas that ensue. American Splendor writers/codirectors and have their mitts on it... . Variety reports that and are readying Flawless, a heist pic set in Swinging '60s England - the era, of course, that launched Caine as a Cockney heartthrob. of Il Postino fame will direct the yarn, loosely based on a real jewel robbery. The production, which starts in a couple of weeks, marks the second collaboration of its two stars - Caine and Moore shared the soft-core sands of 1984's Blame It on Rio together... . , director of the epic historical hits Hero and House of Flying Daggers, has begun shooting the most expensive film in Chinese history. His Tang dynasty drama, The City of Golden Armor, is budgeted at more than $44 million, which tops the $42 mil record for The Promise. (The latter opens here next month). Chinese superstars and are joined in Armor by Zhang's latest find, the 17-year-old actress . Filmmaker Zhang discovered , the young female lead of House of Flying Daggers who went on to spokesmodel for L'Oreal and star in the recent Oscar-winner Memoirs of a Geisha.

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