Smoking with Lulu is based on the actual meeting between legendary theatre critic Kenneth Tynan and the 1920's silent movie icon Louise Brooks. Obsessed by his lifelong erotic fantasies of Brooks' amoral character Lulu in the 1928 film Pandora's Box, Tynan spent three days with the then ageing star to gather material for a New Yorker profile. The Girl in the Black Helmet was to launch the actress once again into the limelight after decades of anonymity.