Grounded: Jason Reitman

It’s not so easy, however, to keep making those kinds of movies in a Hollywood that has rarely been less hospitable to films for adults and to filmmakers who think outside the toy/happy-meal/video-game box. “That’s what has made my job difficult right now,” says Reitman, adding that Up in the Air — a movie he’s been trying to make since before Thank You for Smoking — was green-lit only due to Clooney’s presence and Juno’s robust $231 million worldwide gross. “I’m making films in a kind of netherworld,” he continues. “I’m not an indie guy; I’m not Gus Van Sant. I don’t make a movie for $5 million. I have made two movies for $6 million and $7 million, but I would prefer not to be that strapped. At the same time, I’m not going to spend $80 million on a movie — that, for me, makes no sense. If you think of the studios having these slots they’re trying to fill on their release schedules, none of those slots bear any resemblance to what I’m making.”

These days, with his early career anxieties behind him and Up in the Air tipped as an Oscar front-runner, Reitman should be breathing a well-earned sigh of relief. Instead, he still finds plenty to worry about, as if his constitution depended on a steady infusion of nervous energy. He worries about whether he’s being a good husband to his wife, Michele, whom he met when they were next-door neighbors in the same West Hollywood apartment building, and whom he credits for his ability to write strong female characters like the businesswomen played by Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air. He worries about whether he’s being a good father to his young daughter, especially given the long periods of separation that come with making movies.

Kevin Scanlon

Hometown boy makes good

Related Content

• Jason Reitman Directed an All-Female Glengarry Glen Ross Reading at LACMA Last Night
  February 22, 2013
• Awesome Twerk Video Means School Suspension for SoCal Kids
  May 2, 2013
• Beverly Hills Courthouse Closure Decried By Business; It's A Westside Legal Hub
  January 31, 2013
• Beverly Hills Jewelry Robbery Nets Whopping $1.43 Million Take
  January 29, 2013
• Now Open: SugarFish in Beverly Hills Bar Nozawa Coming Soon
  April 19, 2013

More About

• Jason Reitman
• Ivan Reitman
• Ryan Bingham
• George Clooney
• Beverly Hills (California)

While shooting Up in the Air, he tells me, “For the first time, in a real way, I felt this strain, particularly because I’m the son of a director and I know what it was like to have my dad go away for months. The tricky thing about being a director is, even when you’re home, you’re not there. I could be sitting at the dinner table across from you, but in my mind I’m trying to figure out the movie. As soon as I start writing, all the way through postproduction, my mind is in the world of the characters, and I’m trying to figure the movie out. First, I’m figuring out how to write it. Then I’m figuring out how to get it made. Then I’m figuring out how to shoot it, then how to cut it. It’s a year where I’m just not present, and that’s tough.”

But Reitman worries that he may not be making movies fast enough. “Right now, I make a movie every two years, and I’d like it to be every year and a half,” he says, noting that, historically speaking, most directors tend to make their best movies early in their careers. “If I have something to say, it’s going to happen right now. So, I don’t want to make three movies in my 30s. I’d like to make six movies in my 30s.”

When I ask Reitman where he sees himself 10 years from now, he tells me simply that he hopes he’s made five more films, that they’re all personal, and that most of them are good. “I’m not saying I’m going to have a perfect career,” he says. “I’m going to make movies that don’t work, particularly because I’m trying to do material that’s tough. Hopefully, if I keep on doing personal stuff and I trust my gut, I can put together a group of films that you would look at the same way you would look at the admirable directors of the ’70s, or the admirable screwball-comedy directors — that they did something right for long enough.” His highest aspiration, he says, is that if he’s making an appearance somewhere and the presenter rattles off a list of his credits, “It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s a good list.’ ”

Back in the present, Reitman has his sights set squarely on what he hopes will be his next project — an adaptation of To Die For author Joyce Maynard’s recent novel, Labor Day, about the relationship between a lonely 13-year-old boy, his single mother and the escaped convict who enters their lives over the titular holiday weekend. “It’s just strange and dramatic and romantic,” he says. And decidedly not high-concept. “I’m not going to be relying on cute jokes,” he adds. “I’m not going to be relying on anything. I’m just going to tell the story.”