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Up In the Air

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : From Jason Reitman, the Oscar nominated director of “Juno,” comes a comedy called “Up in the Air” starring Oscar winner George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizing expert whose cherished life on the road is threatened just as he is on the cusp of reaching ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met the frequent-traveler woman of his dreams.

Q&A with Director Jason Reitman

(Jason Reitman): I’m the son of a famous director. My father’s name is Ivan Reitman; he directed “Ghostbusters” and “Dave” and “Twins.” I remember when I was 17 years old, I was terrified about the idea of being a director, I thought why would I possibly try to be a director, why would I try to live in my father’s shadow for my entire life? More than likely, I would be a failure and I would be a failure on a very public level. I know the presumptions about the children of famous people; usually if you’re the son of a famous director you’re a talentless spoiled brat, and more than likely you have an alcohol and drug problem.

And I thought, why enter a profession where this would be the going assumption of who I was? And so I went pre-med; I thought I would be a doctor. I thought no one questions why you become a doctor; no one’s like, “A doctor, really? You could do better than that.” And I went to college, I was pre-med, and I was doing very poorly. And I’m a bright enough guy, I did well in school, but for some reason, I didn’t have the heart for this. My father came to visit me and he said, “What are you doing?” and I said, “I’m sacred. I’m scared to become a director; I’m scared of following in your footsteps. Even if I were to have success I would never have any real success of my own.” And he told me story from when he was my age, he told me a story from when he was17.

My father grew up in Toronto, and at one point he went to Montreal, and in Montreal he discovered submarine sandwiches. Not the brand Subway but just foot long sandwiches; I guess they were really popular in Quebec. And he came back to Toronto and he went to my grandpa and he said, “Dad, you’ve got to give me the money to start up a submarine sandwich shop. We’ll make a fortune. It will have lines going around the block.” And my grandfather said, “You know Ivan, I’m sure these sandwiches are very good, and if I gave you the money to open up a submarine sandwich shop we could make a lot of money and I would be very proud of you. But there’s not enough magic in it for you.” My father went to school, he was a music major actually, and he started a film club and that’s how he became a filmmaker.

So my father told me the story, he said, “Jason, there’s no more noble a profession in the world than being a doctor, and if you became a doctor your mother and I would be over the moon, we would be so proud of you. But I don’t think there’s enough magic in it for you. I think you’re a story teller and you have to follow your heart.” And it was off of that advice that I actually came back to Los Angeles, I was in upstate New York at a school called Skidmore that I really only went to because they had a two to one girl/guy ratio. And I got back to Los Angeles and I went to USC and I went to the head of admissions, the spring semester was literally starting three days later, and I went to her and she had no time to see me, and I said, “Can I please just walk you to your car?” and she agreed, and on the way there I convinced her to let me into the school.

The end of my argument was, “Help me come home,” and she bought that, and I started school there three days later. I was an English major, I was a creative writing major, I listened to a lot of books on tape, I wrote, and I started to get the urge to make my first film. And a lot of people presume that the reason I became a director is because I grew up on the sets of broad comedies and that was my greatest influence, but the reason I became a director is because all the American independent filmmakers that were coming out of festivals like Sundance in the ‘90s, it was guys like Quentin and Rodriguez and Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola and Alexander Payne probably most of all. It was their films and really the fact that they came out of festivals was an enormous influence to me because I’ve already explained to you, I was really terrified of having my own name, and in the film festivals was when I suddenly went, here’s this strangely democratic process, if I was a sculptor I would have been fucked, but as a filmmaker there was this Darwinian system that I could submit myself to.

And for the same reason that people looked to film festivals to break from obscurity, I could actually kind of be obscure and let my film speak for itself. And I made my first short film and I submitted it, it played a few film festivals, it did okay. And then I made another one and it was a little better and it played a few more. By the third one I really nailed it; I made a great short film, it was called “In God we Trust,” it played at a hundred film festivals, and that got me my agent. I started directing commercials too, and my agent said, “So what do you want to do?”

And I think he expected me to talk about a specific genre of film, and I said “I want to make ‘Thank You for Smoking.’” It was a book a friend of mine had given me, she gave it to me and she said, “Jason, this book was written for you,” and she was absolutely right. A couple of years later oddly, that woman went to prison – it’s true – but in the meantime to book really spoke to me. It was my first introduction to arguments and I just thought it was hilarious. It was exactly the kind of filmmaker I wanted to be, and I told my agent, “This is what I want to make as my first film.”

And he looked at me and he said, “This is going to be really tough. The rights are owned by Mel Gibson.” He originally wanted to direct and star in “Thank You for Smoking” which is crazy to me now. It was buried under a pile of money, which is very often the case. They bought the book, they had hired various screenwriters, and this is a very common thing in Hollywood, where they will go after a project, they will approach screenwriter after screenwriter, at a certain point they’ve spent millions of dollars, and they basically say, “You know, it would be easier just to start with someone new, we really don’t need to push any farther on this project.” It’s kind of like being in a relationship.

You’re in a relationship with a guy or a girl and you realize, god we have so many problems, and yes, we could work this out if we put enough time and effort, but maybe I’ll just start with somebody new. Maybe that would actually just be the easier thing to do. And that’s what’s happens, and these projects die, and that’s what “Thank You for Smoking” was, and I went in and I fought very hard, I told them exactly what kind of movie I wanted to make, the following weekend I wrote like 30 pages of the screenplay, I submitted it, they liked it, they hired me, they paid me like Writer’s Guild scale, I wrote the draft, and everyone seemed to approve. I even got a call from Mel Gibson who loved the script; he called me from a plane and talked to me for about 30 minutes. At first about the script and then about digital filmmaking; he wanted to talk to me about how much he loved digital filmmaking.

He invited me to go watch the new “Star Wars” film at Skywalker Ranch; an invitation that never ended up coming to fruition. But at that point, we went out to the town with the script and nobody wanted to make it; no one would make that film and years would go by and no one would make the film. I continued to direct commercials, I got offered movies but they were the wrong movies; they were the kinds of movies that would really set me down the wrong track. The case I always bring up is “Dude, Where’s My Car?” was offered to me twice, and it was very tempting to take “Dude, Where’s My Car?” Maybe if it was called “Dude, Where Is My Car?” I might have done it. I wanted to be on set, I wanted to be making a film, I wanted a film that would play in theaters and people would actually see it, but I knew if I made that film it would have taken me years off course and certainly the 12 of you that showed up to see me today wouldn’t have wanted to hear me talk.

In that time I went to a bookstore, they have a great shop in LA called “Book Soup” and I went in and I found “Up in the Air.” It was sitting on the table, and because I’m awful I judged the book by its cover; I really like the cover art and I bought it. And I fell in love with that book. I started writing, I got about 30 pages in, when my intern gave me a call and said, “Look, there’s a guy named David Sacks, he’s one of the creators of PayPal, he and his partner sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion, they now have some extra spending cash, and they’d now like to make your movie. And that was kind of it; they signed a check and made “Thank You for Smoking,” and that’s how my career actually got started.

I was told my entire childhood that it would actually be nepotism, but in the end it turned out to be a San Francisco millionaire. We made that film and we brought it to the Toronto film festival, it sold to Fox Searchlight and actually had a release. And after that I went back to writing “Up in the Air,” I wrote about 30 more pages. And at about 60 to 70 pages in to “Up in the Air” I got another phone call; it was from a friend who said, “Hey, I’ve got a screenplay you have to read.” I said, “Oh, what is it?” he said, “It’s a teen pregnancy comedy written by a former stripper from Minneapolis.” Wow, that sounds fantastic.

About an hour later, my doorbell rang, I answered the door, there’s a messenger bringing a screenplay, and I realized 20 minutes later I was still standing in front of my door reading the script; it was outstanding. It was “Juno,” it was a script that changed my life; it was a script that I knew if I didn’t direct I would regret it for the rest of my life.

And frankly, what blew me away about it, it wasn’t the language, it’s not the thing that people most often talk about, it was the fact that characters were so inventive and made unusual decisions and surprised me the entire way. And I stopped writing “Up in the Air” again and I went to direct “Juno,” which was a wonderful experience.

I got to work with great actors, and we had this kind of unusual phenomenon where we made this tiny movie for $7 million and it went on to gross $240 million, and no one ever could have expected it, and I still don’t quite understand it to this day. When it was done I went back and I finally finished the screenplay for “Up in the Air.” And when I went back and reread it, it was very strange, because when I started writing I was basically a single guy living in an apartment and by the time I was finished I had met my wife, I had become a father, I had a mortgage now.

My life had changed, and this movie, this book, this adaptation that began as a movie about a guy who fires people for a living, and it had become a movie about a guy who was trying to figure out what and who he wanted in his life. It had become a lot more about me; it began to reflect the economy. When I started writing it we were in this economic boom, and then by the time I directed it we were in one of the worst recessions on record. It became a very personal screenplay for me, and by the time I finished the movie I realized I’d made my most personal film, and I think this is perhaps the most personal film I’ll ever make. I think it really reflects me; I see myself in the main character, and I ask a lot of personal questions with it. None of you have seen it yet right? Have any of you seen it? I assume some of you just stole it offline? No? Really? “Juno,” number five stolen film last year. Just saying. And that’s my career; that’s my life so far. If you have any questions it would be my pleasure to answer them.
 
(Q): I was noticing dialog is so important. You were influenced by Billy Wilder, is that correct?

(Jason Reitman): I do like Bill Wilder.

(Q): Is there an influence there?

(Jason Reitman): No, I haven’t seen enough Wilder films to say that he was a big enough influence to say that I direct like him. I think the world of him, the few films that I’ve seen, but I’m much more influenced by [who? 13:02] at the end of the day. But dialog is important to me; I like making talking movies. That’s why I probably won’t end up directing an action film; it would just be people talking about action.

(Q): Could you explain how you go about directing dialog?

(Jason Reitman): The best advice I ever got on directing actors I got from my father. He said, your barometer for comedy is nowhere as good as your barometer for honesty so when you’re watching your actors don’t worry if they’re being funny, you actually have no idea. You have to trust the fact that the script is funny, trust the fact that you chose the right actors, and at this point, as yourself, “Are they real?” Because you’ll know if they’re being honest, watch them and listen to the way they say something; how they begin the line, how they end the line, what do they physically do while they’re saying the life? The way they respond to someone saying something to them; does it seem legitimate, authentic? That’s the thing that you’ll actually know and that’s all you can do. So when I’m directing actors I just ask myself, “Does this feel real?” And even if everyone on set is laughing, that doesn’t really matter to me.

(Q): With that being said, do you allow your actors to improvise at all?

(Jason Reitman): I do. Look, I work very hard on my screenplays and usually the reason why actors show up on my set is because they like the screenplay, so we pretty much stick to the dialog. That said, working with guys like Jason Bateman or Danny McBride, you let them have a little fun. Or not have fun, I think that’s actually the wrong word, I misspoke there. It’s more if they find a way into something or find a way out of something that really adds to the scene. What I love about those actors is usually when you let actors do improve you don’t really get anything good out of it. The result is they may be funny, but who gives a fuck, anyone can be funny. You need something that propels the story forward, that helps your characters, that helps the drama, and what I like about those two guys and a few others that I’ve worked with, is when they add something they add something legitimate that is really helping. It’s not adding a joke, it’s moving your story forward, it’s giving you transitionary material, it’s informing who these guys are.

(Q): You clearly have a cast full of talented people. I was just wondering what it was like working with Vera Farmiga, who is one of my favorite actresses.

(Jason Reitman): Vera’s wonderful. Look, I had a very tricky character here in that she goes toe to toe with George Clooney the whole time, and her character is really tricky tonally. Through her character I’m trying to explore a female midlife crisis in a way that I feel like hasn’t been explored properly on screen. What I love about her is that she doesn’t judge her characters, and she’s able to hit a very fine tonal line. She’s able to be as masculine as she is feminine, as sensitive as she is tough, she’s able to own her own sexuality, but most importantly she doesn’t judge her character, and that’s a big thing for me. And it’s a very easy character to judge, and I can’t really go into why until you see the film so I encourage you to see the film.

(Q): Can you talk a little bit about your preparation, and also how you would deal with two actors who like to prepare differently.

(Jason Reitman): That’s an excellent question that no one’s ever asked me before; how do you deal with two actors who prepare differently? Because that’s really tricky, that’s tough directing. How do I prepare? In so many ways. The screenplay is the way in which I really prepare; I write everything I need to know into my screenplay. But when it comes to shooting I go to locations and I try to take a photo of every angle I’m going to shoot. And I bring two stand-ins who act as the actors so I can really set up every shot with my camera, take a photo with the actors in the location, so when I get to shoot I know what I’m shooting. I don’t rehearse, I don’t believe in the idea of rehearsal, I’ve never met an actor who actually enjoys rehearsal, and I feel it wastes the good stuff.

If you’re doing a play and you need to get it right before you go to stage, obviously it makes sense, but in a film I want the first time someone says something to another, I want to be the scene I’m going to get. That’s just me. Working with two actors who work differently is very tricky. There are all sorts of things you have to do, to be honest. First you have to figure out who’s the actor who’s better on take one, who’s the better actor on take five. Because you want the actor who’s better on take one on camera first, and you want the person who’s better on take five, who’s first few takes are always lousy, to be off camera first and then you switch them to on camera. The best thing is when you have an actor who is just real and legit and they just do it, and they’re not overly emotional and all over the road.

If you have two actors working together who are both all over the road that’s a lot of work and you just have to know you’re going to have to do a lot of takes with both. You only need one good take, so my first advice is don’t get nervous when someone’s all over the road. Some actors they do ten takes, every one is different. It’s annoying but as long as one of those ten is good then you’re going to be fine. So at the point the big rule is just be patient and know that you’re going to have to do that on both sides. Figure out which actor is more reasonable in a line or something like that is a good technique. See if you can just kind of confide with them on the side and go, “Look, I’m going to be doing this to get this out of the other actor, just so you know.” Remember that you job is to manipulate people into doing something they don’t want to do; that’s what you’re doing as a director.

You just want them to be honest. Now, sometimes the best way to get an actor to do something is to tell them exactly what you want. But sometimes the best way to get an actor to do something is to tell them exactly what you don’t want. Or give them a direction like, “Just do it faster,” knowing that if I tell them to do it faster they’ll become more excited. Or, tell an actor, “I want you to focus on this line,” knowing that you don’t give a shit about that line but it’s the line after that you care about, but if they just focus on the first line they’ll stop caring about the second line so much and they’ll finally do it right.

So you develop little tricks. It is harder though when you have two actors who work differently. I don’t work with actors who use method or any of that crap, so I kind of steer away from that in general just by not casting them. When I meet an actor – I don’t audition, I meet actors – generally by the time I meet them I know they’re right for the part, the big question for me is how do you like to work? Are you a nice person? That’s the most important thing; I don’t want to work with dicks, life’s too short. And, how do you work? What’s it going to be like when I tell you to do this? Just tell me, let me know. And I find I get a lot out of that.

(Q): Can you talk about your relationship with Diablo Cody as a writer and also as someone who was on the set a lot?

(Jason Reitman): I loved just hanging out with Diablo so I loved having her on set because I just liked to be with her. She’s kind of like my long lost sister, but the kind of sister you get along with. And she’s an unbelievable asset because she understands the material better than anyone; she wrote it. I remember I once said, I need a scene where this happens, and she just went and she wrote it. She went off and she wrote it on the back of a napkin or something and came back and we shot it. I find it very useful to have the writer there, I’m a writer myself so I’m not really threatened by having another writer on set.

Maybe some directors are, they feel like it’s some sort of challenge to their ego to have the writer there. I don’t; I like having the writer there. And I’m very honest with my writers when I first meet them. I say, “Look, I want to collaborate with you but at the end of the day I’m the boss, apple sauce, so my way goes. I’m open minded but very very opinionated, and as long as you can deal with that we’re going to work together great.” And I find that kind of honesty, it’s like any relationship, honesty and communication is going to solve problems.

(Q): In “Juno,” for example, I thought every character you created was very three dimensional and very real and had very strong character development. How did you go about making all those characters really come off the page so strongly?

(Jason Reitman): Honestly, I think I understand people. I wish I could say there was a technique where I sat down and I wrote an essay about each character, but I don’t do any of that. I have no idea where my characters come from, I don’t know where they go. I just don’t know. I think it’s an instinctual job, and what happens is, you start with your first short film, and you make it and you do an okay job. And basically, you have an idea in your head and you have a feeling that you want to convey, you want to make the audience feel that way. And at first you don’t know exactly how to do it; it’s like trying to paint a painting that’s in your head.

You basically make a thousand decisions a day, whether you know it or not. And it almost is binary, it’s like 1, 0, yes or no, red or blue, happy or sad; it’s that kind of stuff, the culmination of which makes you feel something. So after the first short film you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got about 10% right,” and by the time you make a feature film maybe you get 50% right. I look at “Thank You for Smoking” to “Juno” to this film, and my ability to articulate the moment has grown exponentially, and I think it continues to go in that direction. How you get your characters to be three dimensional, think of them as human beings and think to yourself, what would they do in this situation? Understand story versus location.

I remember my father was like, “Jason, you’ve got to come over to watch ’24,’” and I was like, “The tv show?” and he was like, “Yes, it’s amazing.” So I went over to his house and he put on “24” and I sat down and I watched it with him, and I was like, “Wow, you’re right, this is really really good. But there are like 20 shows about terrorism, why is this show so good?” And he said, “Because it’s not about terrorism; terrorism is the location. This is a tv show about a guy trying to keep his family together.” And that was a huge lesson; you have to make sure that your location doesn’t become your plot. “Thank You for Smoking” is not a movie about cigarette lobbying; cigarette lobbying is a location to make a movie about a guy who is trying to figure out how to be a Libertarian and be a father at the same time.

“Juno” is not a movie about teenage pregnancy; teenage pregnancy is a location for a movie about people trying to figure out what is the moment you decide to grow up? And this new movie, this is not about corporate termination; corporate termination is a location for a movie about a guy trying to figure out whether or not he wants to be alone in the universe. Once you separate location out and you focus on what your movie is really about, it becomes very clear who your character need to be, and how they need to be well rounded, otherwise you won’t have anything.

(Q): When you get a new script, what’s the thing that affects your opinion first?

(Jason Reitman): When I get a new script, the first thing that affects my opinion is if there’s too much description; I hate description. When I open a script and there’s paragraph after paragraph, I really just start reading the dialog because I don’t care. Second, and most important; is it unusual? Do you have a fresh point of view? Every screenplay is the same, is the sad truth. I’ve maybe read four or five screenplays of the thousands of screenplays I’ve read in my life that turned me on, that made me go, “Yes, I need to direct this.” I have a general rule; if I’m going to direct a screenplay I have to feel the following:

I have to feel as though if someone else were to direct that screenplay, it would feel worse than if another man was fucking my wife. Literally, it has to feel that bad. And I remember when I read “Charlie Wilson’s War” and I was like, “Oh my god, this is so me, I know how to direct this,” and I made the phone call and said I wanted to direct it, and they were like, “Well you know, Mike Nichols,” and it felt like Mike Nichols was fucking my wife. But I’ve only had a few of those screenplays, so it’s got to be unusual, the character has to make new decisions, you have to have a new point of view on something.

But look, that’s me; you can’t take that as advice on how to write screenplays because maybe you don’t want me to direct your screenplay, maybe you just want to sell a screenplay. If you want to sell a screenplay then you should write something that’s exactly the same as everything else on the screen, because they need those movies. But if you want to make something that I would direct then it should have a fresh point of view. I’ve made three movies; one’s about the head lobbyist for big tobacco, one’s about a pregnant teenage girl, and the other one’s about a guy who fires people for a living. I like tricky, new characters, I like having a fresh point of view on those kinds of characters. So it just depends on what you want.

(Q): It sounds like you’ve come to the books that you adapted on your own rather than have some executive or studio be like, “Dude, this is what’s next.” So I’m wondering what you’ve been reading and if you’ve dug anything lately.

(Jason Reitman): The next thing I’m going to adapt is Joyce Maynard’s “Labor Day,” which just came out, it’s a terrific book. I don’t read enough, frankly, but I have read a couple things I’ve liked recently. The stuff I’ve read recently you can’t adapt; I love Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great” but it’s hard to imagine how you make that into a movie.

(Q): As a screenwriter, do you find adaptations preferable?

(Jason Reitman): Yeah, for whatever reason, I’m an adaptor. I like adapting books rather than writing original screenplays. I wrote some really shitty original screenplays when I first got out of college, which I think everyone needs to do; I encourage you to write about 500 to 1,000 pages of bad screenplay. How many of you read the Robert Rodriguez book “Rebel Without a Crew”? Two of you. That is the best book ever written on filmmaking. And he talks about the idea of getting the bad stuff out of you, which I did. Maybe I have more to go but I did get a lot of it out of me.

For whatever reason I’m kind of a reactive artist; you look at a book, you have a take on it, you watch a performance, you think it should be different. It’s not about what’s in your head as much as what you’re seeing and how you react to it. Usually there are things that I want to say, I read I read a book and I go oh, they’re talking about what I feel, and from there I can make it into a film. The adaptation of this is actually very different from the book. You haven’t seen the movie yet, but just to give you an idea, Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga’s characters aren’t even in the book, and these are the two main women who challenge George Clooney’s character’s life. It doesn’t mean you can’t be original but I do like having something that sparks me.

(Q) Have you ever considered tackling a different genre?

(Jason Reitman): It’s funny, I get this question a lot, and I like getting that question because I get to speak about something important here. I think you need to find out what your voice is. When I talk to young filmmakers, what I see in them, it’s something I felt when I was their age, is they want to make one of every film; they want to make an action film and a musical and a western and a comedy and a period piece, and ever time they come out of a great movie they’re like, “I need to make one of those.” And that’s nice, but you need to figure out what your voice is, and the directors that you admire did that. They figured out their voice and then began to make those films.

And every once in a while perhaps they tried a different genre but it was still very much their voice. You figure out your voice by writing and directing. When I made my first short film it so desperately wanted to Quentin Tarantino it was pathetic. And then I wrote things that sounded like Kevin Smith, and I wrote things that sounded like Richard Linklater, and then I finally found my voice. I started to realize that I had kind of a natural way of approaching things. At first I was kind of avoiding that to try to be like other filmmakers, and when I finally decided this seems to be how I want to write it, why don’t I just go with the natural way that I would word things, in writing I found my voice and then in directing I did the same, so I don’t really care about trying on a bunch of different genres. I’m a pretty good director, I probably could do it, but honestly, the most important thing to me write now is to tell personal stories, stories that come from my heart.

I don’t have any personal stories that are big budget ideas or fancy ideas or horror ideas right now, and I can’t help but think that if you see me make one of those films, it’s probably because I sold out and ran out of shit to say. Or maybe my wife left me after my comments today and I’m going through a brutal divorce. But I think I want to make small personal films the way I’ve been making the last three and do that as long as I can until I run out of things to say. And then hopefully I’ll die, because that seems to be the best career move sometimes.

(Q): What’s the best way to get financing for a slightly bigger movie?
(Jason Reitman): How big a movie? $1 million. That’s a very tough movie to make. It’s the hardest; it’s easier to make a $10,000 movie, it’s a lot easier to make a $50 million movie than a $1 million movie because there’s no model for monetizing a $1million movie. Half a million? Is this an auction? Half a million bucks, just as tricky; half a million dollars, you should be looking at rich people at that point, because a studio is not going to spend $500,000 on a movie. They’d much rather spend $200 million on a movie than half a million on a movie, so at that point you need to find rich people or the very few people who are actually making films that size.

I would say, get a screenplay; get actors because actors make movies at the end of the day; and if your last movie was any good use that as a way of getting the actors and convince the studio that you can direct this thing. It depends on what your movie is about; if your movie is really indie and you shouldn’t be spending a lot of money on it, look, the one thing I believe in is that you should spend the appropriate amount of money on your film. If you have a really indie idea that shouldn’t be made for a lot of money at a studio then yes, you’re right, you should probably make it for half a million to a million bucks, it’s going to be really tough, as you already know, the best way to secure that money is to get actors; actors make movies, that’s kind of all there is to it.

(Q): The festival circuit is one way of getting some recognition and maybe getting some meetings but what are some other ways? Because a lot of people won’t take meetings unless they know you.
(Jason Reitman): I don’t really know another way. I’m thrilled that there is a film festival system; you’re lucky to have that. The only frustration of the film festival system is that they have these fees for submitting your films and those can add up if you’re submitting to a lot of places, but otherwise it’s a completely democratic system. What more could you actually ask for than a system like this where your film can play, it can play huge festivals, it can actually win awards and get recognition. Again, I think a lot of people think that because I am the son of my father people would want to work with me and want to view my material; it is the opposite. The presumption is that my work is going to be awful, like the other children of famous people. So it was even more important to me to have some sort of demarcation of quality, and that came when I played Sundance. So I don’t know another way, but that system works pretty damn well.

(Q): You’re making everything sound a little too easy.

(Jason Reitman): Oh, sorry, no, let me be clear: it is very difficult. One of three things is the truth: either you are talented and it will be recognized; you are talented and it won’t be recognized, which would be sad; or most likely, you are not talented and it will be recognized. You have to be talented, skillful, extraordinarily lucky, you have to have the right thing to say at the right moment; it’s very very difficult. So I’m sorry if I gave the impression that it’s easy.

(Q): Do you have a cautionary tale or a nightmare? What was the thing that kept you going?

(Jason Reitman): You’ve got be fucking hungry; that’s kind of it. You’ve got to be hungry and competitive. You want to kill your fellow filmmaker. It’s got to be in you. Everyone’s hungry for different reasons; I was hungry because I desperately wanted to make a name for myself. I grew up in Beverly Hills, a lot of kids that do are really complacent, for me that was the reason I wanted to make a name for myself, and I’m hungry. Now that didn’t mean I was talented – I did happen to be talented – but I could have been untalented and then I would have figured out something else to do.

But you have to be hungry. When “Thank You for Smoking” came out, the screenplay won a lot of awards; it won some critics awards, it got nominated for a Writers Guild award, and I remember when the Oscars came up, the prognosticators thought I was supposed to be a nominee. And I woke up that morning at like 4:30 in the morning and the broadcast comes on, and it wasn’t nominated. “Borat” took my spot; a fucking improvised movie took my screenplay spot. And my father called me, my father had been up like an hour before me, and he called me up, and he consoled me.

And I don’t really remember what he said when he was consoling me but I do remember the one thing he said was, “It’s only going to make you more hungry.” And that was 100% true. So I don’t know what to tell you about how to get through the time when you’re not making it. You’ve got to want it that fucking bad; I don’t know what else to tell you. And if it doesn’t work for you, you have to find something else that makes you happy.

(Q): I’m more interested in the stuff that happened before “Thank You for Smoking.”

(Jason Reitman): From 1998 to 2005, which was seven or eight years, I was making short films. I was at USC and I started a calendar company, and I made these desk calendars. And the desk calendar money paid for my first short film. And then my girlfriend at the time, I don’t know how, came up with this jewelry idea that took off, and I’m being honest here, was this hot idea that became the fad of the moment, and I ran the jewelry company for her. We were in 40 fucking countries, we were in Barney’s we were in Neiman’s we were in Sacks, and jewelry money paid for a couple of my short films, including the one that really started my career.

I remember I missed the Aspen Shorts Fest the year I won Audience Award and Best Comedy because I was here in New York selling jewelry to women who own jewelry stores all over the Midwest at this convention. So I was hustling in very strange ways, and then I got to direct commercials, and I directed some good commercials and I directed awful commercials. I directed an Outback Steakhouse commercial that, if you ever saw it, you would say, “You are not allowed to direct ever again.”

But filmmaking is learning from your mistakes; you’ve got to know that the first time you direct something it’s not going to be good, it’s like the first time you try to write a sentence. And really, it comes from writing and directing as much as you possibly can, and trying to realize why you’re not moving the audience as much as you are. If you are trying to be a filmmaker right now you are lucky to be alive right now. In the ‘70s Coppola said, “The next Mozart will be a kid with a video camera from the middle of nowhere,” and he was right, he was just early; it couldn’t happen yet. Now, if you have a video camera you can shoot it, if you need to edit it, it’s funny, usually at this point, I say you could probably see Final Cut Pro in about 30 minutes with a good download speed, but you could buy it right here in the Apple store. And then you could distribute it online using You Tube. My last short film; shot at home, cut on Final Cut Pro, put it on You Tube, had a couple of a million hits.

So you’re at a time when you can be making films all the time, and the youngest generation of filmmakers right now blows me away. Their understanding of cinema verite wipes the floor with my generation of filmmakers. I see things done by high schoolers now where their understanding of how to use handheld and create reality and edit sophisticatedly, I just can’t believe it. So there’s no excuse anymore, you should be making films as much as possibly and trying to become better.

(Q) Was “Juno” a pro-life political statement?

(Jason Reitman): Really? Are you asking sincerely? Look, Christopher Buckley, the guy who wrote the book “Thank You for Smoking” once said to me that when a movie works best it’s a mirror, and you simply see yourself in it. I’ve been fortunate that my movies have been mirrors; “Thank You for Smoking,” Liberals thought it was theirs, Conservatives thought it was theirs. “Juno,” pro-lifers thought it was theirs, pro-choicers thought it was theirs. And the same thing happens with this film, “Up in the Air.” There’s a great wedding sequence in this film, and I wanted to just throw a real wedding, that’s how we shot it. There are so many wedding scenes that have been done, how do you do a new wedding scene?

The way we did it, and I was really proud of this, we threw a wedding – hired a wedding coordinator, got a priest, got a wedding band – and the people who shot it were actually the wedding videographers and the stills were done by our still photographer dressed as a wedding photographer and it was a lot of fun. But when I went to hire the priest nobody wanted to make the movie. Literally, I had one priest who had counted the f-words and uses of the word Jesus in my film. And I remember one of them said, “I just want to thank you for making such a great pro-life film in ‘Juno.’” My pleasure.

End.