heard in exchange for lunch. Auggie tells Paul a tender story about spending Christmas with a blind grandmother who at first thinks, and then pretends, he is her grandson. After the grandmother falls asleep, Auggie finds stacks of stolen cameras in the bathroom and decides to take one for himself. Weeks later, he regrets his decision to take the camera, and decides to return but then finds that the grandmother had died in the meantime, meaning that she had spent her last Christmas with him. The story is based on writer Paul Auster's piece "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story", published in The New York Times on Christmas day, 1990. Paul is impressed by the story, and thanks Auggie for it. The exchange ends ambiguously, with Paul suggesting that he suspects that Auggie has in fact invented and perhaps even improvised the whole story, and Auggie suggesting that Paul's understanding is correct, without actually confirming that to be the case. During and after the closing credits, Auggie's story is enacted in a poignant black-and-white sequence to the soundtrack of Tom Waits's Innocent When You Dream. Cast William Hurt as Paul Benjamin Harvey Keitel as Augustus "Auggie" Wren Stockard Channing as Ruby McNutt Harold Perrineau as Thomas "Rashid" Cole (as Harold Perrineau Jr.) Jared Harris as Jimmy Rose Giancarlo Esposito as Tommy Finelli, OTB Man #1 José Zúñiga as Jerry, OTB Man #2 Ashley Judd as Felicity Forest Whitaker as Cyrus Cole Malik Yoba as The Creeper Victor Argo as Vinnie Daniel Auster as Book Thief Deirdre O'Connell as Sue, The Waitress Michelle Hurst as Aunt Em Erica Gimpel as Doreen Cole Mary B. Ward as April Lee Clarice Taylor as Grandma Ethel Reception On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a rating of 88% based on 32 reviews. The consensus summarizes: "Smoke draws in a stellar ensemble, holds the audience's attention with a robust blend of connected stories, and sends viewers out on a pleasurable high." It opened on 4 screens (including two in New York and one in Los Angeles) and grossed $70,744 for the weekend, being the number one exclusive release in New York and L.A. It went on to gross $8 million in the United States and Canada and $30 million internationally. Awards Won Silver Bear (Wayne Wang) 45th Berlin International Film Festival, 1995 Danish Film Critics Bodil Award for Best American Film, 1995 German Film Award for Best Foreign