- What's your next movie gonna be?

- It's a great question, and I don't know.

It's the first time for me, frankly, that I don't know.

I'm always writing my next thing, but right now I'm working on "Ghostbusters."

And I also, you know, I spoke earlier about how important movie theaters are to me, and I bought a movie theater in Los Angeles.

- Say more about that.

- Yeah, this is a, it's a gem, it's a palace.

It's similar to the Paramount Theater here in Austin.

It's something, you know, it was built 100 years ago which, for Los Angeles, is ancient.

And it's the home of more movie premieres than any other theater in Los Angeles.

And I put together a group of 30 directors.

- Oh wow.

You all went in together on this?

- Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuaron, some of the greatest directors alive.

We all bought it together and we're gonna reopen it hopefully in about a year.

- What's the name of it?

- It's called The Village in Westwood.

There used to be 10 movie theaters in Westwood, there's three now.

- This is the one near UCLA.

- Exactly.

- I know that theater extremely well.

- It's an iconic theater.

- That's such a great, and it was up until my daughter went to UCLA, so I actually have been to the movies at that theater.

- It's a stunner.

- It's a stunning theater.

- Yeah.

- Oh my gosh.

- It went for sale and I had this nightmare of them tearing it down, you know?

Or that the next time I would show up it'd be a Target, or a Zak's.

- Or a Chipotle, right?

- Yeah, I mean the movie theater I saw "Pulp Fiction" at is now a CVS, you know?

And the National, which was down the street, is now an apartment complex.

And I just couldn't bear it if that happened.

- Good for y'all.

So you said it opens in a year?

- Yeah.

- That's amazing.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Sir.

Well, I'm happy to kind of go back and forth.

So we'll get to you next.

Sir?

- Hi there.

I wanted to ask you about "Up in the Air."

It made a huge impression on me and it felt so sincere.

And my question to you is, how did you approach working with specific actors?

'Cause I think Anna Kendrick, that was one of her first major roles, and so how did you approach directing her as opposed to Vera Farmiga and George Clooney, and how do you look back on that project?

- Oh, I mean, well, "Up in the Air" was extraordinarily meaningful to me.

It was really personal project.

I was trying to answer questions that, you know, were haunting me.

I think that's the best work comes when you're trying to answer something you really don't know the answer to.

And on that film, on any film, you know, you brought up that idea that Lorne Michaels is dad.

And I think as a director you always feel like everybody's dad on set.

And like anyone who has, you know, more than one child, you're trying to understand each child's personality and what will inspire them.

One person needs a monologue, another person just needs one word or just a look.

And one person needs physicality to understand what they're doing, another person needs to be inspired.

And I find often you want two actors in a scene together, dance partners, and George and Vera are very good examples of this, where George, George is almost like a puppeteer of himself.

He so understands where his body is in three dimensional space and understands exactly what he's doing and how it will appear on camera.

Vera is the opposite.

Vera has no sense of how she's gonna appear on camera.

- That was one of her first films.

Was "The Departed" before that?

- "Departed" was before that, yeah.

- But still, this is a fairly early film for her.

- Yeah, it's pretty early for her.

- Yeah.

- And the best thing is to have two people in the scene, one is wild, one is controlled and to let them be dance partners and kind of pull each other in different directions.

- Yeah.

Great.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

Yeah, I mean I was wondering that's, I think it's an excellent question 'cause George Clooney seems to direct himself, but of course he doesn't.

- Yeah, but he knows.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

He knows once he's in frame, what angle the lens.

- Right.

- But then I've worked with actors who don't know when they're standing right in front of the camera and say, "You can't stand there, that's."

- Sir.

Hi.

- I really enjoyed that Nicholas Braun played both Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman in "Saturday Night."

I was wondering if you could talk about how that came about.

- Didn't, Benny Safdie.

I've read that he was supposed to play Andy Kaufman.

- Benny Safdie was originally gonna play Andy Kaufman.

He's a huge Andy Kaufman fan.

Benny Safdie, if you know, was one of the Safdie brothers who made a film called "Uncut Gems."

- "Uncut Gems" yeah.

- If you haven't seen it, it's fantastic.

- Adam Sandler.

Is that the Adam Sandler?

- Adam Sandler.

Exactly.

- Adam Sandler movie.

Yeah.

- And Benny became unavailable 'cause he went off to direct another movie, and we already had Nicholas Braun, who you know from "Succession."

He's cousin Greg.

He was already gonna play Jim Henson, which I thought that's gonna be great.

And when we started looking for an Andy Kaufman, we kept on thinking, you know who'd be great is cousin Greg.

You know, I mean Nicholas Braun would be fantastic.

And then we thought, you can play more than one character on SNL.

Why can't you play more than one character in the movie?

And that was it.

- Right.

- I love that you're wearing a "Puffy Chair" shirt, by the way.

Love that movie.

Love the Duplass Brothers.

I got to actually make a movie with the Duplass Brothers.

- Yeah, I love "Jeff Who Live at Home."

- Yeah, exactly.

All right, cool.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Hi.

- Hi.

I'm a stand in for my 15-year-old son who's a playwright in his home filming his documentary project that's due on Monday.

- Oh, no kidding.

- But he really wanted to be here, but he's busy.

- Oh, amazing.

- So he sent me with a question.

- Okay.

- He is also a Canadian and he is approaching.

- A proud Canadian probably, right?

- He's so proud.

- Really proud.

- So proud.

Especially in Texas, very proud Canadian.

And he is approaching the point in his life where he is making decisions about college or just going and making movies.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Great.

- And I wonder what advice you have for young people who wanna work in this industry but don't wanna spend $300,000 on a college education to go learn something that you can't carry that kind of debt into a career to learn it.

- Do you need a degree?

- So what would you tell him?

- Or a film degree specifically, you think these days?

- It's a great question.

- I'll tell him you said that.

- And more now than ever.

And I think a lot of young people are facing that decision of whether they should invest in college and what do you really get for that $300,000, you know, anymore.

This is what I'll say about film.

I can't make that, you know, decision for him or for your family.

I'll say this, I think this is the most important thing that he needs to do over the next five, 10 years, whether he's on his own or whether he's in school.

The most important thing you do as a storyteller and maybe in life is find your own voice.

And I mean that in a very real way.

When we all attempt to do something for the first time, whether that's write a movie or play a guitar, you at first try to emulate the people that you love.

You pick up a guitar 'cause you wanna sound like Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan, whoever it is.

And you learn one of their songs and you start playing like them.

You start to write, you write like the people you admire.

If you read my early stuff, you'd go, I get it.

You really like Quentin Tarantino.

Like, you like him a lot.

- Yes, I'm raising that child right now.

- Exactly.

And what happens is, as you're doing that, as you're writing, there's a nagging voice in the back of your head that wants to write like you, but you're embarrassed of it.

Because we're all embarrassed of our own voice.

And in the same way that it's very hard to look in the mirror and look at the person across from yourself and say, I love you.

It's very hard to look in the mirror and go, you're beautiful.

It's almost impossible but you have to.

You spend your lifetime trying to say, I love you to the person in the mirror.

And you have to do the same thing for your voice.

You have to learn that that voice nagging in the back of your head that wants to be on the page.

It's not something to be ashamed of.

And you have to start practicing writing in that voice and come to say, I love you to your voice the way that you need to say, I love you to the person in the mirror.

Because the truth is that's what the rest of us are waiting for.

We don't need another Quentin Tarantino.

We already have him.

What we need is your son.

- Oh, thanks, I'll tell him.

- Yeah.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- That's great.

(audience applauds) All right, you're gonna, this is our last one.

You're gonna have to top that answer, just saying, 'cause that was a pretty.

- Good night.

- That was like, that was literally like a roll to credit moment, so.

Okay.

Yes sir.

- Yeah, as a young film student, that was really inspiring to hear.

So thank you for saying that.

But when, before you had made "Afterlife" the third "Ghostbusters" movie, you had said that you thought it would be too boring if you had made a "Ghostbusters" movie by looking at your first two films.

Are you happy with the outcome of the third movie?

Do you think that you did it justice?

- I'm really proud of it.

You know, I had a moment I was in editing on another movie and my editor said, "You really gotta make a 'Ghostbusters' movie."

And I was screwing around joking with him.

And he goes, "No, you're almost running out of time."

And I said, "What do you mean?"

And he goes, "Well, your daughter's 12, if you keep on waiting, she's not gonna care anymore."

- Make it for her.

- And he was right.

That was the last age for her to be on set and really love the process of that film.

And it was in that moment that I realized I'd been running away from it my entire life.

It was just something that scared me.

And I had always had this idea of, you know, a 12-year-old girl who finds a proton pack in a barn.

And I didn't even know who she was or why I thought that was a good idea, but she had always been there.

And eventually I learned who she was.

This was gonna be Egon Spengler's granddaughter, and she had to pick up the proton pack.

And I realized, oh, the person who's been scared to pick up the proton pack the whole time has been me.

And so that's what I wrote a movie about.

I wrote about three generations of a ghostbusting family who live out in Oklahoma.

You know, not the place you expect a "Ghostbusters" move to take place.

And we wrote this, my writing partner and I wrote this movie about a family on a farm who find Ecto-1 in a barn and find a proton pack, you know, underground.

And, you know, it's like anything, it's only once you get deep inside it, you realize, oh, you're just telling your own story.

And as a result, I'm really proud of it.

I'm really proud that I got to sit with my father every single day on set.

I'm proud that I got to watch that film around the world with him and experience that thing together.

Because what I also didn't know while I was making that movie, was that I was about to lose him.

'Cause we never know when that's gonna happen.

And it was only after that I lost him, that I realized had I waited, it would've been too late.

- Right.

- And so that movie happened at the perfect time.

- Good.

You did give a better answer.

(Jason laughing) (audience applauds) It turned out.

Give Jason Reitman a big hand.

Thank you all very much for coming.

Thank you.

- Thank you very much.