Director Jason Reitman tells describes career ups, downs

11/11/09 Jason Reitman, director of the films Juno, Thank You For Smoking, and, Up in the Air, told Emersonians Monday that he grew up in the shadow of his father, director Ivan Reitman, and that in trying to avoid it he created films that were personal. Ivan Reitman has directed Ghostbusters, Stripes, and Kindergarten Cop.

Reitman said he knew a lot about the "presumptions of the sons of famous people." "[You] most likely have a alcohol or drug problem," he joked. He said that he viewed it as "best case scenario, you live in your father's shadow. Worst case, [you're] a public failure."

Because of this fear, he originally went to school as a pre-med major, but found it uninteresting. He did poorly and his father suggested that he "do something magical."

"[My father] was probably the first Jewish father to say 'don't be a doctor. be a film major'" Reitman joked. He switched his major to creative writing, but soon became interested in film. His first film was a comedy about kidney stealing that "desperately wanted to be Tarantino." By his third film, he had an agent and was starting to direct commercials.

He became interested in adapting Christopher Buckley's novel Thank You for Smoking onto the screen, writing thirty pages of the script before learning that Mel Gibson owned the rights to the film. He sent the script to Gibson in hopes of winning him over. To his surprise, he received a very positive reaction. "Mel Gibson called me from a plane to [tell me he liked it]." However, nobody ended up making it for years. "Projects get buried under money," said Reitman. It took an Internet millionaire years later for the film to be made, and in the years between he strove to keep his work meaningful, he said.

Reitman said that, because of his age, he was offered a lot of low brow comedies. He was even offered Dude, Where's My Car? Twice. "[I] turned it down in hopes to one day make a film that was personal to me," he said. "All of my screen plays have been personal to me. It's a lot easier to write if it's in your heart." He said heloved the independent film festival circuit because it was so anonymous that he was able to make a name for himself separate from just being his father's son. By preserving this level of closeness with his films, he was able to go on to make successes such as Thank You for Smoking and Juno.