E-mail a friendJason Reitman
original airdate January 23, 2008
The son of two successful directors, Jason Reitman has found his own success in the industry. He grew up on his father's sets, worked as an extra and was a production assistant before moving on to making shorts and directing TV ads. Reitman followed the success of his debut feature—the critically acclaimed Thank You For Smoking—with the teen-pregnancy film Juno, which netted Oscar nods for best director and picture. Next up for his Hard C Productions is the seriocomedy Bonzai Shadowhands.
Juno director describes finding out that he was nominated for an Academy Award. (:58)
Jason Reitman
Tavis: For most in Hollywood an Oscar nomination comes after years of hard work and often failure, if you're lucky. But as for Jason Reitman, yesterday his Academy nod came as a belated present for his 30th birthday. The talented young filmmaker received a nomination as best director for his acclaimed film "Juno." The movie itself is also up for best picture. Here now, a scene from "Juno."
[Clip]
Tavis: Ouch. Jason, (laughter) congratulations.
Jason Reitman: Thank you very much. You made it sound like I got lucky there.
Tavis: No, no, no, no, you didn't get lucky. You did good work, good work. Ellen was here just not long ago, as a matter of fact. How cool is that, though? You're nominated, the picture is nominated, she's nominated.
Reitman: Well, this really always felt like a movie about a family made by a family, so it's oddly fitting that we each have our nominations, we can all enjoy it together.
Tavis: So the obligatory question: where were you when you heard about it, how'd you hear, who called you?
Reitman: It's funny, I was up at Sundance where I was on the jury this year, I was there with my wife. We were watching the nominations more just to see Ellen's and Diablo's name be read out loud. And we thought we may have a chance at picture, so when the director's names came up we had stopped listening.
I never really thought had a chance in hell at that and I certainly had not been nominated for anything up until then, so I didn't even hear my name get read out loud. And all of a sudden I noticed my picture on screen and I stopped short. My first thought was oh, my god, they made a mistake.
Tavis: Now that you know this is real, so you do know you were nominated now, yeah. (Laughs)
Reitman: It still hasn't sunken in. My wife burst out crying, immediately I got a phone call from my father. He couldn't finish a sentence, he was so overwhelmed. He was crying, too, and that's when I started crying.
Tavis: So what do you make of it, though, now that it's real?
Reitman: It's incredible. Yesterday I did an interview where someone introduced me as Academy Award nominee Jason Reitman, and that -
Tavis: (Unintelligible.)
Reitman: Yeah, that left me with chills.
Tavis: How do you - to your point about your father, so get used to this, you're going to get asked this question 1,001 times. I'm glad I got you early on in the process.
Reitman: I've been answering questions about my father for a long time. (Laughter) Fortunately, we're so close that it doesn't matter. I know there's always parents and children who are estranged and that must get uncomfortable, but my father's my hero so I'll talk about him all day long.
Tavis: Well, one question and I'll move on. Given who your father is, what your father has done, how do you contextualize this award for you and your family?
Reitman: Well, I grew up in a comedy family and amongst comedy directors; we all know that there are no awards for comedies. Very few comedic directors or comedies in general have been nominated for anything. And my father a guy who's made some of the greatest films of all time, the most successful films of all time, and has never been nominated. So this, I think, felt as if it were a nomination for him as much as it was for me.
Tavis: See, I'm glad you said that, and I thought you might get to that given that he has not been nominated before. And this is not even close by way of example but it's just my own personal anecdote here. I remember my first job out of college, my father - there were 10 kids in my family and my father is the hardest-working man I've known in my life.
I love him to death. At my first job out of college I made more than my father was making, and he'd been at the same job for 20-something years. It was the weirdest feeling when I got that first paycheck and realized that I was making more money in my first job out of college - my father, who didn't go to college, of course - but my first paycheck, my annual salary was greater than my father's. It made me feel sort of weird.
Reitman: It's terrifying. It's actually bad. You would think that it would give you personal pride, but I would imagine it's a scary feeling because your father is a giant.
Tavis: Absolutely.
Reitman: Yeah.
Tavis: I'm only raising that because I'm wondering - and again, your father, to your point, has done all this classic work and then you come along at barely 30 and you get a nomination.
Reitman: When I was in high school and I started pondered the idea of becoming a director myself, I was kind of scared off of it because my father was a filmmaker. I had seen the way that the children of filmmakers are treated. The presumption is that you're a talentless brat with a drug problem. (Laughter) And my father was the one who actually gave me the confidence to follow my voice and try to be a director.
But part of that was knowing that this can't be a competition because I'll never achieve what my father's achieved in his lifetime. And I'm really just going to try to tell a few stories and see what I can do.
Tavis: So to your point, how, then, do you go about - since this comparison is always going to exist, by your own admission, how do you go about trying, then, as a director in the same universe, trying to craft a body of work for you, for Jason, that is Jason's work?
Reitman: I tell stories that are very personal to me, and so far that has led me to two films that my father probably would have never done. I doubt my father would have ever done "Thank You For Smoking." Hard for me to have imagine him having directed "Juno." At the end of the day, through our work we establish that we're actually different people who even though we both do comedies do very different kinds of comedies.
Tavis: Right.
Reitman: It'd be hard if I tried to make, like, a "Ghostbusters" movie.
Tavis: Right.
Reitman: Then I'd be really asking for it.
Tavis: (Laughs) Does it bother you, does it trouble you, does it ever even come up in your own head, in your own heart, that some people might think that you have the opportunity that you have, obviously, because of your father?
Reitman: You know what's funny is I wrote "Thank You For Smoking" back in 2000, and I made six short films, I directed commercials for about seven years, and it took me five years to find someone to finance "Thank You For Smoking." No studio would do it, no mini-major would do it. "Thank You For Smoking" was finally made by an Internet mogul who had created and sold PayPal and financed "Thank You For Smoking" himself.
We brought it to a film festival and it sold there. So if there was any truth to the nepotism idea then I should have been able to find someone to make "Thank You For Smoking," and no one would make it. So I think at the end of the day, the biggest advantage I had was that I knew that directing was an actual job that I could do.
I think for most people who don't grow up anywhere near Hollywood, the idea of being a filmmaker is so foreign and so strange, seems so impossible that they don't go after it. And because I grew up around the film business, I had that chutzpah; I had the confidence to know that is a job and I think I'm going to try to do it.
Tavis: For those who have not seen "Juno," as the director, tell me how you would describe the story line and what you think it is about the story line that's making this thing work? You guys are getting close to the $100 million mark and I'm sure you're going to cross that, thanks to all these nominations. But tell me about the story and what you think is causing it to resonate so well with moviegoers.
Reitman: "Juno" is a comedy about a teenage pregnancy. It follows a 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant, decides to give her baby up for adoption, and follows the nine-month relationship between her and the adopting parents, played by Jennifer Gardner and Jason Bateman. It's an amazing screenplay and has some great performances in it.
I think what really made it click, though, was the fact that there's so much drama out there right now. And not only in our real lives but in the movie theaters. There's plenty of movies about Iraq, there's lots of tough, self-important stuff out there. And here's a movie that actually makes you feel good and makes you laugh.
And most of us don't know what it's like to go to Iraq, but most of us do know what it's like to be a family and have experienced that moment where we decide to become an adult or shy away from it, which is what this film, at the end of the day, is really about.
Tavis: When you get the kind of acclaim that you're getting so early on now for a project like this - and this may be probably a question so silly that you haven't even had a chance to think about it yet or may never think about it. But you think this acclaim - let me phrase it the right way. You think this acclaim might somehow alter, adjust, the way you make your choices now about what you do next?
Reitman: Oh, yeah, I'm terrified. I was going to use a word that I actually can't say on your show, that's how scared I am. (Laughter) After "Thank You For Smoking," which was kind of a moderate success and well-liked, I thought okay, I'll just try to find another film that means something to me. This film we made for $7.5 million. It was supposed to be a small, personal comedy that hopefully found an audience outside of film festivals. It's eclipsed anything we could have ever imagined.
And now, (laughs) I've had to give second thought to anything I do because it will probably be compared to "Juno" and it will almost definitely not do as well as "Juno." So it scares you a little. Being the son of a filmmaker, I've always had a very third-person perspective on the careers of filmmakers and almost my own. I've thought about what kind of body of work do I want to have, and I'm very aware of the reactions to films. So no, it scares me a little but I do want to continue making small movies.
Tavis: You've done two small pictures that have gone on to do, to your point, big things. Small pictures, big things. I guess the other question now is whether or not there's an appetite to do the big, blockbuster kind of stuff.
Reitman: It's fun to look at those big sets. There's a lot of trucks, the catering is certainly good. (Laughter) And you get a lot of time. But I want to make personal films. I grew up in an affluent house. I've been very fortunate. Because of that, I've never worried about money. And I don't have that impetus to go make a huge money and make a lot of money.
I really make movies because I feel like I need to. I want to tell stories; I want to tell personal stories. I think I'll probably sell out at some point. If I look at most directors, (laughter) I'll spend the next 10 -
Tavis: You'll sell out in some - but at least you're predicting your own sellout. You're being honest about it.
Reitman: That's the only way to handle it right. I think if you make about 10 years of good movies, and once you've said what you're going to say, the best thing I could do is actually sell out in the biggest and worst way imaginable. Find some colossal failure (laughter) and then decide what to do from there.
Tavis: Well until he completely sells out - and you heard it here first, he will sell out at some point - but until he completely does he's done two wonderful pieces of work, "Thank You For Smoking," great piece, and of course the one now garnering all of these - five? Is it five?
Reitman: We got four, but I appreciate the thought.
Tavis: Four, four, yeah. Yeah, okay, I was just trying to push you a little further. (Laughter) Four Academy Award nominations, including, of course, best director for "Juno," directed by this guy, Jason Reitman. More work from him, I'm sure, to come in the coming months and years. Pleasure to meet you.
Reitman: Thank you for having me here.
Tavis: Before you sell out. (Laughter)
Back to January 23, 2008