On route to an appearance on Oprah recently, director Jason Reitman stopped by Roger Ebert’s house of all places and took to discussing his follow up to “Up In The Air.”
“The book I’m adapting is ‘Labor Day’ by Joyce Maynard,” Reitman says. “I re-read it over the weekend and when I finished the book [on] Monday morning, I was kind of on the verge of tears and I remembered at the moment, ‘alright, my job is to make sure the audience feel exactly what I’m feeling right now.’ And that’s it, thats the gig. The test is with each film, ‘can I do that?’ and ‘is that something the audience wants to feel at the end of the day?’ And in this case, I think it is. This ones a very very tricky love story. It’s very dramatic.”
“I know what actors I want for it. I’ll be able to go to them easily and, presumably, it’ll be an easier greenlight than my first movie. Or my second movie.”
Thematically though, Reitman notes that he progressively worked towards fulfilling many of his ambitions with his first three films and that he was “starting a new journey with this film ‘Labor Day’ that deals with a very complex drama. And I may not nail it on this film, it may just be my first step.”
The director also previously told /Film that he looked up to director Alexander Payne as inspiration going on to discuss the similarities between their filmographies or, more appropriately, how he likes to mirror Payne’s films.
“[Payne’s] first film “Citizen Ruth” is his political satire and “Thank You For Smoking” is my political satire, his second film [“Election”] is his high school movie, “Juno” is my high school movie and his third movie [“About Schmidt”] is his man on the road movie and “Up In The Air” is mine. So I’m simply just following in his footsteps.”
So, Reitman’s next will be his “Sideways”? It doesn’t sound that crazy if you look into the plot of “Labor Day” which also involves a life-changing journey two males they embark on together though slightly twisted. The novel is a coming-of-age tale about love, sex and the pains of adolescence as a teenager is befriended by an elder gentleman who goes onto mentor and teach him about life.
Here’s the first of four videos of the conversation between Reitman and Ebert which is definitely worth watching. The other three can be found here.