Jason Reitman
Jason Reitman
Jason Reitman is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter, and producer, best known for directing the films Thank You for Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air, and Young Adult. As of February 2, 2010, he has received one Grammy award and four Academy Award nominations, two of which are for Best Director. Reitman is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. He is the son of director Ivan Reitman...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth19 October 1977
CityMontreal, Canada
CountryCanada
My high-school years were so mediocre - I moved out when I was 16 and started living with my girlfriend who was 10 years older. Apart from that, I was just a video nerd.
People want to know if I have a moral standpoint that they should be picking up on, and the truth is, I don't. I don't want people to think that I'm trying to tell them to feel a certain way. I think that's cheap filmmaking.
Filmmaking is finding a piece of granite and you start to chip away and then you have the shape of a head, the shape of the arm, you can see the shape of the face and the face starts to gather character. You have to find it.
I think it's a mistake for young filmmakers to just buy digital equipment and shoot a feature. Make short films first, make your mistakes and learn from them.
Most people see a documentary about the meat industry and then they become a vegetarian for a week.
Comedy and horror are cousins; they're related. They both come from storytellers who want to specifically affect the audience and elicit specific reactions during the movie.
I went to college, I went pre-med, I thought I was going to be a doctor.
I've always had an underdog perspective.
It's funny, I can sit through the worst horror film ever made but even a quite good romantic comedy can drive me nuts.
Directing is a reactionary job more than a creation job. The job is to react whether it's moment one, the first time you read the script or see an article or read a book or notice something happen on the street and have an idea for a movie, and it just continues from there on in. You're just reacting to dialogue, a performance, an audition, a headache, a piece of furniture, a piece of clothing.
My writing voice is very much like 'Thank You for Smoking.' It's a guy's voice. It's very masculine.
Really, it's the director's job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel.
There are only so many movies you can direct. And yet there are movies that I want to make sure make it to the screen in as honest a way as possible.
Each one of my films is personal; each one of my films is emotionally autobiographical. And I like directors who do that.