Many people see The SmoKing as an anti-smoking film - still others have thought that it glamorized the habit... As a filmmaker, I think of it as somewhat of a 'fractured fairy tale' that could have involved any vice taken to excess.
I had originally tapped another actor to play the role of the Smoke King, but once I had met Don and learned of his enthusiasm for the idea, he became the only choice. I further developed the idea and had Brian Kasonic and Tracey Mitchell on board early to help handle the production. Things really got rolling with our first official pre-production meeting in May 1999 when we sketched out a shooting schedule and locations for the summer. I formed Smoke King Productions and we got under way.
Our first weekend of shooting in early July was rather ambitious - we shot several scenes for the better part of three days at several different locations: Don's house, Market Street, Centerway Square, my apartment, Lost Angel Glass, and finally the Glory Hole Pub & Eatery. I think everyone involved would agree that we tried to do too much in too little time - but despite the hectic schedule, everything turned out beautifully. The culmination of the 8 hour shoot at the Glory Hole that Sunday left everyone a bit smoked out - but the weekend was a tremendous success.
Scheduling difficulties prevented us from shooting the final scenes until the Fall - but they were equally successful. We wrapped up with an outdoor scene shot in the Radisson's back lot complete with press coverage from the Corning Leader (see article).
Post-production began almost immediately and lasted several months. The time-consuming tasks included video and audio editing, narration recording, special video effects, and music scoring. The film was completely finished on Saturday, February 5th 2000.