Director Ross McElwee wraps an anti-smoking message in amusing and compelling family lore. He begins his documentary with a dreamlike image of emerald tobacco leaves and moves to the world of Hollywood melodrama, in the form of Michael Curtiz’ 1950 film "Bright Leaf." Starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, the fictionalized account of the North Carolina tobacco wars in the 1890s is possibly the story of his great-grandfather. McElwee accepts an invitation from his cinephile cousin, who pulls the film from his to-die-for collection of movies and posters. In it, he detects family history and speculates: they might have been as rich and famous as the James B. Duke family.

The glamour in everything from sharing a cigarette to the sexiness of a slim silver cigarette case nourishes the allure of smoking. The difficulty for smokers to kick the habit is even stronger. Without the tobacco fortune that might have been, the McElwee family nurtured a line of doctors, including his grandfather, father, and brother. Intercut with hospital scenes, interviews with carefree young smokers, remorseful older ones, cancer survivors, and local historians, the dead-pan tone shifts between an investigation of the movie, and the many loosely connected moments along the way that McElwee films. Perhaps he should spend a little more time living his life and a little less behind the camera trying to document it, and at times, the film seems to be such a memo to himself.

He tracks down Patricia Neal who graciously answers his questions about her and Cooper, as McElwee tries to find moments in "Bright Leaf" that are a documentary record of his great grandfather. He calls his family camera-crazed and likens his compulsive picture taking to an addiction. One flight of fancy imagines him as the great-grandson of Neal, through her character in the movie.

Another thing McElwee can’t quite put his finger on is a satisfactory way to quit. Evidently, people love to smoke. The film finds irony in the legacy left by Duke’s dominance in the tobacco industry in the university that bears his name and its teaching hospital, with more than its share of lung cancer patients. Granted access to the historic Duke mansion and the university’s hospital, he was denied access to the R J Reynolds Tobacco Company for filming. No surprise there.

At the heart of this documentary is tobacco as a way of life - growing it, celebrating it, smoking it, and the people’s love/hate relationship with it. As it was for Henry Ford, it was the automation of the industry, and not the product itself that made the fortune. The conflict inherent in the crop that supports the people while providing them with a slow death has no easy answer. As the pretty young girls prepare for the Tobacco Festival parade, McElwee finds optimism in the words of a former tobacco queen. She tells him it will be known as the Farmers Day Parade from now on. I quit smoking over 20 years ago. McElwee would probably be distressed to hear that watching the film made me want to light up just one more time.