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
When I think of 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' there was a warmth to those teenagers that I related to. They were not aware that they were in the middle of a horror film, and I really loved those characters and I empathized with them.
When you're young, you want to make every kind of film: musicals, Westerns, horror. Slowly you begin to hear your own voice. I hope people receive what I do as small, personal films that are somewhat contrarian about their main characters.
Humanizing good people is kind of boring and I don't really see the value in it... humanizing tricky characters is exhilarating, and making audience films out of indie subjects excites me.
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.'
I'm trying to figure myself out through my movies. Whether it's big stuff like what we're doing here, or little stuff like, 'Why aren't I happier?' With every film I feel like I'm apologising for something. I feel I'm most successful when I'm looking for something that embarrasses me about my character that I'd like to expose.
I want my audiences to be as open-minded as my characters.
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.
Everything I've wanted to turn into a film becomes something new and different when it becomes a movie... Each time I work with an author, I say to them, 'A book and a movie are different things.'
We were sitting there in shock. And I turned to other people who had worked on the film, and we were completely confused. But the audience didn't seem to notice or care.
Growing up sucks, doesn't it? I understand why people wouldn't want to get old - but it'd be one thing if we became a culture obsessed with eating right, doing yoga, going to therapy and becoming at one with ourselves. That be great. But we don't do that. We seem to be obsessed with all the wrong ways to stay young.
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.
I didn't want it to be another one of those movies. I could have made it five years ago if I had changed the ending.
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.
Politically correctness is just a polite way of saying lying, and they're tired of turning on the TV and seeing people who are so terrified of their arguments being invalidated by a simple word choice that they don't say anything.