To hear him tell it, he has done little more than puff cigars and let the players play.
The script is peppered with overt references to Mr. Clinton: "You're not supposed to inhale," Evans tells the film's heroine, Senator Laine Hanson Joan Allenn), as they puff cigars on the porch of the White House.
Although there are tourists aplenty in the restaurant, right next to them blue-suited businessmen in striped, high-collared shirts puff cigars; next to them, burly natives in T-shirts and sweats happily dig into a plate of raw Irish oysters; and over yonder a group of Sloane Rangers enjoys a sherry lunch.
In Washington, college students spilled in front of the White House chanting "U.S.A! U.S.A.!" and puffing cigars.
On Sinatra Saturdays, Steven Maglio and the Stan Rubin Orchestra perform impeccable standards to a spiffy crowd drinking single-malt Scotch and puffing cigars to their heart's content.
As its impeccably tailored protagonists sit around boardroom tables, puffing cigars, the thrilling realisation arrives that you're watching a mainstream Hollywood entertainment that's actually aimed at grown-ups.
Jockeys milled about their locker room, horse owners puffed cigars by the paddock fence and the few fans in attendance ambled from grandstand to betting window and back again.
In others, photos of a Wall Street street sign segue into scenes of corporate types swilling cocktails or puffing cigars, and smug-looking bankers roaming the streets of Manhattan.
The Rev. Al Sharpton was among those who tried to protect a predominantly black district centered in Harlem; he convened black and Latino leaders last month at the Grand Havana Room, a members-only cigar club in a Midtown high-rise, for a testy discussion of their competing political interests as they puffed cigars and sipped drinks like hot tea or gin.
Over the past year, sportsmen's caucus members have clinked glasses and puffed cigars at a "Wine, Wheels and Wildlife" fund-raiser at a North Carolina vineyard, a "Whiskies of the World" and cigar reception on Capitol Hill, and a "Stars and Stripes Shootout" in Tampa, Fla., where the top shooting awards went to a Republican congressman and a lobbyist for the N.R.A.
Some have been known to steal dealers' passes in order to sneak in early and get the pick of work that is newer and, in many cases, weirder than anyone else's.By lunchtime on the first day, the VIP lounge is a scrum of hugely wealthy adrenaline jostling for food, puffing cigars and flashing digital images of art stored on Palm Pilots.
