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
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.
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.
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.
For some reason, tobacco really makes people mad. It's not like other issues of vice. I don't know exactly why, but I can feel it, and I think that's why the book works so well.
Unlike with any other art form, filmmakers have this unique web of festivals. There are hundreds. It is a democratic system in which you submit films, and if they are good enough, they play. The only barrier to entry is the submission fee.
I'd like Hard C to be a modern day National Lampoon -- a name that is immediately recognized as a standard for unique subversive comedy.
I don't want to make films that give you the answer. If there is a message to my films - and I hope there isn't - it's to be open-minded.
There were a couple of thousand people who saw the film at Sundance without the Katie Holmes sex scene. I implore all of them to now go back and see the movie with the Katie Holmes sex scene.
I have one of the original 'Ghostbusters' guns in my house.
I want my audiences to be as open-minded as my characters.
I laugh a lot in horror films. If I'm scared in a horror film, I try to think about what's scaring me... particularly, if it's a bad movie, but something they're doing still works. It's the same way I look at comedy. I've always had an intellectual view of comedy, and what makes people laugh, and how does it work.
'Juno' really changed things for me and I get a lot of screenplays come in now, but I like to self-generate and I like to kind of pursue my own ideas. And I think the more personal the better.
The first set I remember was 'Ghostbusters.' It was a scene in which the street erupted. I remember even at seven years old thinking, 'Wow, if you direct a movie, you can break the streets of New York.'
When characters change on screen, it makes you feel better about yourself. You think, 'Oh I change too, I'm constantly becoming a better person.'