About us

We are two sisters who love films.

But, we don’t just love watching movies we have acquired knowledge and made life decisions based on what we have learned at the movies. Such as – if you are going to be carried out of a factory don’t have it be by Richard Gere in An Officer and A Gentleman. Instead, go kicking and screaming local law enforcement like Sally Field in Norma Rae.

We have never been content to just watch a film. We have always deconstructed films in search of deeper meaning, greater insight and bigger laughs. As kids, one of our favorite games was re-casting classic movies.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in our version, starred Charles Nelson Riley as Brick playing opposite Joey Hetherton as Maggie the Cat. We cast Pat Carroll as Big Daddy. (Making gender bending casting possible long before Linda Hunt ever dreamed of playing a male character in The Year of Living Dangerously.) What we actually took away from this movie is simple: be yourself and love who you want.  (And if you are a woman in a Tennessee Williams script you typically go insane by the third act. So get out while you can!)

We like to think we are qualified to comment on celebrities due to our longstanding devotion of  celebrity gossip in all it’s glorious forms and what we consider our stunning insight.

Smoking at the Movies is part film criticism, part memoir, part life lessons, part dish, part rant and mostly entertainment.

Enjoy!

Betty Wagner-Anson (posts as boots1965) & Kari Wagner-Peck (posts as notatypicalmom)

P.S. – Be on the look out for guest writer’s to the blog! We can’t do it alone and we really don’t want to.