Jason Reitman was born in 1977 in Montreal. Reitman attended USC where he studied English LIterature. In 2005 Reitman won the TFCA Award at the Toronto Film Festival for his directorial debut, Thank You For Smoking. He won several awards for his screenplay for the same film. Reitman directed his second picture, Juno , in 2008 and was nominated for and Oscar for Best Achievement in Directing. His next film, Up In The Air (2009) stars George Clooney.
REITMAN: I was born in Montreal but I grew up in Los Angeles. In fact, I was on a set at eleven days old. I was on the set of Animal House. My parents are both Canadians. My mother grew up in Montreal and my father grew up in Toronto. And I really grew up in and around film sets. My father would try to shoot movies over the summer so I could be on sets with him. We spent a lot of time together in editing rooms, which I think, at the end of the day, was the most useful education I got. Because it is in editing that the movie really comes together. But at thirteen I was a [Production Assistant] on one of my father’s films, on Kindergarten Cop. And when you’re the son of the director, being a P.A. is about as useless a position as possible. Because no one really wants to ask you to do anything. It’s like, “Can you go grab me that walkie talkie, please. If you don’t mind.”
To be honest, I was nervous about becoming a filmmaker. I really considered myself more of a film fan than a filmmaker. I went to see tons of movies. My parents would drop me off at the theater and I would just go see three movies in a row. Generally I was interested in broad comedies and horror movies and things like that. But right around the age of fifteen or sixteen I started seeing indie films. My dad had a big film collection and he bought Slacker. And I was, “What the hell is this.”
HYLTON: Richard Linklater directed the film.
REITMAN: Right. And it was incredible. It was kind of a life changing experience. I didn’t realize a movie could be like that and not have a standard three act plot structure. It was a movie that did whatever it wanted and was still very funny and entertaining and accessible. And after that I saw Clerks and Bottle Rocket. And they locked in this idea in my mind that I could be my own filmmaker. And I didn’t have to follow in the tradition of anything. I could tell the kind of story I wanted, about the type of people I wanted to discuss, in whatever kind of way. It became evident that you could be unique and still be entertaining and successful.
Still, I was kind of scarred off because I was the son of a famous filmmaker. “People reading your interview may say, what the hell can I learn from this guy? He had his entire life handed to him on a plate. What am I supposed to learn, how to be the son of a famous filmmaker?” But the truth is, it’s quite difficult to get people to believe in you when you are the son of a famous director. The presumption is that you are talentless, that you are a spoiled brat, and that you never had to work to earn anything. And thus, you haven’t developed any skills.
In high school I made a lot of videos. I actually took some video classes and edited stuff. I actually made an AIDS public service announcement that won some awards and played on television. So I tried stuff out, and it was definitely an interest of mine, but I was scarred off by the industry. So knowing all this, I said, “Why would I want to get involved in film making.” So, I went out east to college. I went to a little school called Skidmore in Saratoga Springs, NY. I went pre-med. I think I’m a bright enough guy. I did well in high school. But I was doing awful in pre-med, because I just did not care. I didn’t show up for classes. I just didn’t give a shit. I would have made a very bad doctor. So my father came to visit me at school and said, “Why are you doing this? Why are you going pre-med? You never talked about medicine before.” I said, “You know, I just see it as a decision that if I became a doctor no one would ever question why I became a doctor.” He said, “I don’t think that’s enough of a reason to make that decision.” And he told me a story. He said, “When I was around your age I went to Montreal and I discovered submarine sandwiches. They had not hit Toronto yet. And they were hugely popular in Montreal. I came back to my dad in Toronto and I said, ‘Dad, Dad. I just discovered the most amazing thing that’s going to change our lives. They’re foot long sandwiches. They’re delicious. We’ll sell them and have lines around the block. Just give me the seed money and we’ll franchise a store and we’ll make a fortune.” So my grandfather said to my dad, “You know Ivan, I’m sure these sandwiches are delicious and we could make a lot of money doing that. And if we did, you know your mother and I would be very proud of you. But I just don’t think there’s enough magic in it for you.” They didn’t give my dad the money. He went to college as a music major. He started a film club and became one of the greatest comedy directors of all time.
So my father said, “You know Jason, there is no more noble profession than a doctor. And if you became a doctor, your mother and I would be really proud. But there’s just not enough magic in it for you.” And he was right. I came back to L.A. over winter break and I went over to U.S.C. after one semester at Skidmore. Their semester started three days from when I got back. I went to see the head of admissions. She had no time to talk to me but I convinced her to let me talk to her on the way to her car. On the way to her car I convinced her to let me into U.S.C. I just started talking passionately about finding myself and I think my argument ended with, “Help me come home.” And she totally bought it and let me into the school.
And I got really involved. At U.S.C. I started doing a radio show and was in an improv troupe. And a kid came up to me at one point and said, “Do you want to make a movie? Do you want to make a short film?” And I had never thought about it. But we started talking and I thought, that’s a pretty good idea. I obviously knew what Sundance was about and had seen many Sundance movies. I had read Robert Rodriguez’s book Rebel Without A Crew, which is about as passionate a book about film making as has ever been written. And I thought, “Through the film festival system there is this really democratic way to establish oneself.” My fear was always that people would question how I got legitimacy or how I got where I was. So here was a system where I would submit a short film, if people liked it, they’d play it. If the audience liked it, they might give me a reward. If they don’t like it, they wouldn’t play it, and that would be it.
So I was in college and I didn’t want to ask my dad for the money to make the film. So I started a calendar company where a friend of mine and I went around the U.S.C. area and sold advertising space to all of the stores in the U.S.C. area, which we then distributed for free to all of the dorm rooms at U.S.C. And the add money from that calendar company made my first short film.
HYLTON: What was the budget for the film?
REITMAN: The budget was ten grand. It was a comedy about kidney stealing. It was called Operation. I had been going to see the Groundlings a lot. I used actors I’d seen there and I actually traded advertising space on the calendar for locations I needed to use. And it was a crazy shoot, because I didn’t know shit. I met my producing partner on it, Daniel Dubiecki. I think a big key to becoming a filmmaker is finding a producing partner. No one ever talks about the producers. All the love is given to the actors, directors, and writers. But he’s a guy I’ve known since high school. And everything I’ve worked on his name has been on it. He had produced a few short films by that point. And I had this weird notebook with post its on it. He just laughed at my mess, then put it together for me in a way that made sense. He saved the film. The shoot was crazy. We’d shoot like twenty hour days with five hour turn-around, because we didn’t know any better. We were shooting at a motel at one point and the cops came thinking we were shooting a porn. They just wanted to watch. Then they realized we weren’t shooting a porn, so they left.
It was my film school. At U.S.C. I was an English major. I did film independently. And every time I had to deal with a problem, I was going through film school. It turned out to be much cheaper than to go to film school. We shot on super 16 which was a mess. The blow up process was a nightmare. It was a mess. But it was my film school. So we submitted it to Sundance, because that was what I knew to do. All of my favorite filmmakers had gone there. I remember there was a week that I heard from friends that they did or didn’t get into the Festival. And I hadn’t heard, so I was like, “Shit, I’m not getting in.” And one day I’m driving home from school and there’s a message on my phone, “You got into Sundance.” And it was a life changing moment. I called Dan to tell him. He was in a restaurant and stood up on the seat yelling, telling everyone we got into Sundance. So we had to finish the print for Sundance.
We got to Park City, and the short film did alright. We made these bullshit little fliers to promote it. What you have to understand is almost every screening sells out so there is no reason to promote your film. And the best thing you can do is meet other filmmakers, make connections, meet agents, and hope that the film creates a buzz. My first short film created zero buzz. I had a twenty minute short film that was going to be hard to program. It got in hardly anywhere else. It got into L.A. and a couple of other festivals. It was too long and was very similar to a lot out there. It was a dark comedy and there were a lot of others out there.
And we came out of the Festival thinking, “OK what do we do next? I guess we make another short film.” I mean I wrote a screenplay, but it wasn’t very good. And I had an agent, but my agent was like do you want to do broad comedies. I was twenty years old and he said, “You’re a young guy, do you want to make broad comedies?” But I didn’t want to make films like those. I wanted to make films like the ones I was watching, like Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson’s films.
I got hired by Fox to do a short film. And that was fun and played a bunch of festivals. It didn’t really do anything for me either. So Dan and I sat down and tried to figure out what to do next. We’d heard about these reels which circulate throughout the industry. They contained like five to seven short films. They would circulate to agencies and to the studios. If you wanted people to be aware of who you were, you had to be on those reels. Those were the reels of the most important short films of the time that agents and studios will have to be aware of. So we figured, we have to get on those reels. What’s amazing is that most people go to make a short film, never having been to a short film festival. Imagine trying to write a novel, never having read a book.
So, now I had a better idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted it to be shorter, something that would make people feel good, something that was going to be joyful, and something that would show people how I could direct in a number of ways. And we made a short film called In God We Trust. And that was another hellish shoot. We spent some real money. It cost about fifty grand and shot for twelve days in 35 millimeter. That film changed my life. It continues to play film festivals to this day. It’s played and won at many film festivals. It was bought by Atom Films and has played all over the place. It got me directing commercials. I got an agent who really believed in me. I got on those reels. And I got an agent who, when I sat down and told him the kind of movies I wanted to make, he said, “Ok, let’s make those kind of movies.” I said to him flat out, “Look, I don’t want to make romantic comedy. If you have to shoot me a copy of something to do your job because someone submitted it, fine. But if you ever try to convince me to do one of those films, then this relationship is not going to work.” So he said, “Fine.”
I had read a book called Thank You For Smoking. So at the first meeting I had with the agent, after I’d signed with him, he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him Thank You For Smoking. He looked into it and said, “Well, Mel Gibson bought the rights to it back in 1993 before it even came out as a book. And he’s had it for years and he hired a series of writers who all did a mediocre job.” Mel was already over a million dollars against this movie. And so my agent said, this is going to be tough. So I said, “Get me a meeting.” And no one wanted to meet with me. But I sat down with one woman from the company and I came in and berated her. I told her that they’ve been wasting time trying to make a broad comedy out of this film. “You need to do something small.”
I came out terrified that I was really mean to her. And my agent called and said that she loved what I had to say. So over the weekend I wrote thirty pages on spec and showed it to her. They loved it so they hired me, at scale, to write a draft. So I wrote the draft and everyone loved it. No notes. I got a call from Mel Gibson. He called me from a plane to tell me how much he likes it. And I’m thinking, “This is going to be easy!”
Then we go out to the town. And nobody wants to make the film. Everyone turned it down. A couple of places were like, “You know this is really funny. We might consider it if you rewrote the third act.” Their suggestions were awful. So, I realized I have this great writing sample now, but nobody wants to make the film. So I started directing commercials. It was a slow start, because it’s really difficult to get into commercials. Within a few years I was able to build up to doing maybe a commercial a month. I did Honda, GM, Wall Mart, and Nintendo. I shot all over. We were in London, Mexico, and South Africa. Had I gotten the chance to make Thank You For Smoking in 2001, it would not have been nearly as good. In the last few years I shot with some of the best Directors of Photography in the business, worked with big name actors, and tight budgets. That gave me a large amount of experience. I also got to make short films, one for Ford.
It was a very fun time, but time went by and I thought, “Am I ever going to get to make a feature film?” I wrote another screenplay which was a horror film. It got set up at Fox, but couldn’t quite get it done. I found another book, started to adapt that and then one day I get a call from my agent and he says a guy named David Sachs, who founded PayPal is interested in Thank You For Smoking. He and his founders sold PayPal and he wants to make movies. He found your script and wants to make it. And once again I think, “This is going to be easy!” So I go to see him at his house. He’s bought the house in which they shot Pulp Fiction. He has no furniture since he just moved. We sit on folding chairs on his patio. So he absolutely sees my vision and loves my script. So we call up Warner Brothers and says I want to buy the project to make this movie. Back then I wanted to make it for six million. So he calls him up and Warner Brothers turns him down. They didn’t want to make it, but they didn’t want to sell it either. It’s this strange tradition in Hollywood that basically companies would rather eat the money they spent, than watch someone else have success with the film. So it took a year of pleading. It was an independent filmmaker’s dream. I’ve got a guy who has the money and but we can’t get the script. So he finally convinces them to sell him the project and, for the first time, in 2004 we’re making the movie.
So now we start going out to actors and everyone we asked said yes. Aaron Eckhart said yes. Then Katie [Holmes] and [Robert] Duval came on, then Macy came on. And that was it. You make these lists when you’re going to make a movie with forty names of actors who you hope to see in each role. And I was really lucky. In every case I got the person who was first or second on the list. Unreal. So we cast it and we were shooting January 2005 after starting casting October 2004. It went to Toronto 2005 and broke the sales record at Toronto. And it was an astonishing experience, wanting to make it for so long and then showing up at the Festival Premiere. I was scarred shitless. I mean I made the movie, but I was still one of three hundred films. There’s no reason that it has to get bought. We had a tremendous screening and the film got bought. We brought it back to Sundance, which was a dream for me. It was incredible.
HYLTON: What would you say to a young writer or director looking to break in?
REITMAN: Well, if they’ve made a short film the best thing they can do is try to get it into film festivals. It’s the only democratic way. Filmmakers are lucky that they have that route available to them. If you’re a writer it’s a lot harder to get your work seen. But as a director if you’re work is good enough, it will play and you can get recognized.
