By Michael Fleeman
AP Entertainment Writer
Friday, June 26, 1998; 1:09 a.m. EDT

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- When producer-writer Chris Carter needed to create a villain for ``The X-Files,'' he opened a pack of smokes. Cigarette Smoking Man was born to puff his way through one sinister plot after another, from television to the big screen.

When writer-director Don Roos needed a villain for ``The Opposite of Sex,'' he came up Christina Ricci's tart-tongued, chain-smoking character, someone who tossed a cigarette butt into her father's grave at his funeral.

Julia Roberts lighting up in ``My Best Friend's Wedding.'' Passengers taking drags in ``Titanic.''

American movies continue to reek of cigarettes even as courts, states and politicians take aim at the tobacco industry.

Oddly, the cinematic puffing comes while tobacco is said to be playing a lesser role on the business side of Hollywood. Although Minnesota's recent $6 billion settlement with the tobacco industry included a ban on cigarette product placement deals in the movies, producers contend they haven't entered into such deals for years.

A Federal Trade Commission report to Congress found that tobacco companies have spent no money on film product placement since 1989. By contrast, other product-placement deals have flourished with everything from automakers to a video chain scrambling to get screen time.

Still, the smoking issue smolders in Hollywood.

Filmmakers insist they have a First Amendment artistic right to use cigarettes for character development. Activists say filmmakers wield a powerful influence over young and impressionable audiences and therefore have a social responsibility not to glamorize smoking.

``I'd like to get rid of smoking on the screen,'' said Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America. ``I've talked to a number of directors and producers, but they tell me that even though many of the actors and actresses don't smoke, they still use cigarettes for character development.

``In 20 seconds, with a cigarette, you can show nervousness, arrogance, anxiety.''

But critics like Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco aren't convinced.

``I think the creative thing is a bunch of BS,'' he said. ``The fact is that the amount of smoking going on in movies has skyrocketed, and I haven't seen any big change in the overall plot lines of films that somehow made this desperately necessary to be creative.''

Glantz's study of top-grossing movies found that movie smoking has returned to 1960s levels after three decades of decline. Only about 14 percent of on-screen tobacco use is contextually linked to ``adverse social or health effects.''

Another study, by the American Lung Association last year, surveyed 133 movies and found that 77 percent had at least one scene in which a character smoked. Eleven percent had more than 50 smoking incidents.

The increase has come despite years of complaints about screen smoking. Last December, Vice President Al Gore contended that Hollywood was partly to blame for teen-age smoking.

In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of teen-age smokers is steadily rising and that 25 percent of U.S. adults smoke, a proportion that has held steady in recent years after large drops since the 1970s.

The latest pressure on Hollywood to change came in May from Minnesota, where tobacco companies agreed in a settlement to ban payments for tobacco products in movies nationally.

Although said by Hollywood to have no practical economic impact, the provision, Minnesota prosecutors argue, put movie people on notice.

``Am I saying that we have evidence that producers were paid money? We don't have that evidence,'' said Minnesota Assistant Attorney General Doug Blanke. ``But there have been a lot of films lately that would cause one to wonder.''