Jason Reitman talks YOUNG ADULT

Last weekend YOUNG ADULT opened on 8 screens with a solid $40k per screen average and it expands to wide release tomorrow. I recently attended a press junket for the film written by Diablo Cody & directed by Jason Reitman. Below are the highlights from the press conference with director Jason Reitman.

JASON REITMAN on Charlize Theron:  I was only going to make this movie if I could make it with Charlize. I had read the script and I thought it was phenomenal, but I knew how tricky this character was and I knew how easily it would be to misinterpret this character.  You know on the page she was written perfectly. She was nuanced and complicated and she wasn’t just some mean girl.  She was a woman with deep wounds that like anybody wanted to be loved and was searching for her place in life who really only knew how to find it by going back to high school to the last moment where things kind of made sense to her, but she was looking for an on road, you know, an on ramp to the highway. And it’s one of those things that in the hands of the wrong actress would just be a mean girl.

JASON REITMAN on Patton Oswalt:  I needed someone who was going to be the accessibility point to this movie and I think this movie works because of Patton Oswald.  I think the audience strangely sees the movie through Patton Oswald.  He says the things that everyone in the audience wants to say and his rare combination of like brilliant comedy, but also his pathos, his ability to go to these really sad places makes the whole thing work.

JASON REITMAN on Movie Night: I loved that Scorsese probably screens these great Italian films for his cast and the only thing I ever sent Charlize was season’s one of The Hills of Laguna Beach. Oh yes. Following in the footsteps of giants. I have a movie night at my house every Sunday night and it really came out of my own embarrassment of the amount of films that I had not seen and I presumed that if there were a lot of films that I had not seen that my friends perhaps had not seen them either. So what I did was every Sunday night I show a classic movie that you’re supposed to have seen that I have not seen and I just invite my friends and say hey here’s a moment for us all to stop being embarrassed and start seeing these films. And it started a couple of years ago and we watch films like and now I’m going to embarrass myself for all of you.  Cool Hand Luke, which I had never seen, Patton I had never seen, Say Anything I had never seen.  I know, that’s always the shocker.

JASON REITMAN on Casting Patton Oswalt:  When I went to do the table read for this film I called on friends at first and Patton is a friend and I said hey would you read this role?   And watching him do it was just so – – he was so perfect and then when he read it with Charlize they had this unbelievable chemistry. It was actually the moment I realized this was a romance was watching the two of them together and a heartbreaking romance.  It’s like a Romeo and Juliet because it’s a romance that cannot be.  But anyhow yeah, that’s, that was the research and that’s how I know Patton.

JASON REITMAN on Diablo Cody: I have the rights to Diablo’s life. In a deal that really benefits me more than her. I always feel and I’m not sure if directors or writers will get more upset at me for saying this, but I feel like they’re all part of the same thing.  I see my job as storytelling and that starts with simply an idea, a feeling I want the audience to have and it travels through writing, directing, shooting, cutting, post, doing this to the whole thing.  And so if I don’t write the script I get to personally skip one part of the process.  And with Diablo, I don’t know, we get along so well and we trust each other so much, there’s never been a question of whether or not she was going to be on set.  So when she could be on set it’s great.  I put her to work, you know.  I say, you know, I need this, I need a line, I need a scene and she does it.  But there’s also enough trust that if she’s not there, she knows I’m not going to screw up her script.  And I’m a writer myself and I strangely feel as a writer on set the job is to be a tailor.  It’s to, you know, and I know Sorkin would be pissed if I said this, but if an actor can’t say the lines, in my opinion it’s not the actor’s fault.  If you put on a pair of clothes that don’t fit, it’s not your fault, it’s the clothes fault.  And the clothes should be tailored and that’s how I feel about dialogue.  If I’m with an actor and they’re struggling with the words, then I tailor the words for the actor.  Very rarely would I say this is the line, you need to say the line.

JASON REITMAN on directing theater:  You know I spent last year in New York making this film from start to finish, including post. And it was a great moment for me ‘cause for the first time in my life I had seen most of the shows that were playing and it was really exciting to be able to get into a conversation and actually know what I was talking about for a very brief nano-second and certainly looking at great plays made me want to try to direct a play.  That said I know nothing about theater so it’s a little presumptuous of me to think I could do it. But yeah, although on the other hand what I love about directing movies is I have the final say, you know. I get to cut the performance and the idea that you just hand off the play to your actors, that seems insane. I mean I would literally be on stage.  Let’s do that again.  You know let’s just hold on audience and it would be a ten hour play of just me all right one more time, all right that was great, continue the scene from there.  That would be like me directing.  It would be a boring play.

JASON REITMAN on Women Behaving badly: Women behaving badly is, excuse me, I’m not trying to be rude, I think is just kind off a cheap term and look, I’ve always been interested in making movies about women. They interest me far more than men.  And I’m interested in honesty in filmmaking and I think the darker moments are far more interesting than the cheerful ones.  And I guess that’s my approach and I don’t know why they made Bride’s Maids and I don’t know why they made Bad Teacher.  That’s certainly why I made this movie.

JASON REITMAN on the film’s message: First and foremost I don’t have a message in any of my movies.  You know if I have a message and hopefully there’s a continuity of that in all my films it’s think for yourself and come up with your own opinions and I certainly don’t want to tell you what to think. That is the core theme of Thank You for Smoking and since then hopefully people draw their own conclusions and that’s always been kind of the case. On Juno pro life people thought it was their movie, pro choice thought it was there’s and I’ve certainly got a variance of opinions of where George Clooney goes at the end of Up in the Air and that makes me happy. That lets me know I’m doing my job.  I really just want to – I’d rather inspire the conversation than tell you what to think.  So on this movie I’m certainly not saying this is my message to women.

JASON REITMAN on writing: As far as how we treat her life, I thought it was a fairly true and, you know, I’m speaking to a room of writers, point view on what it’s like to write, which is it’s a really lonely existence, man or woman. Often it feels like a trip to Office Depot, makes me feel as though I accomplished something today. I did something and it’s the only – – and you do it for the pure reason of if I didn’t do this it really would feel like I did nothing, but I had an adventure.  I picked up toner. And being a writer is tricky in that your sense of accomplishment is always so varied. Is it by page count?  Is it by that you wrote something special? Will anyone ever read this? Will anyone ever see this?  And I don’t think that changes no matter how much success you have. Every time I write I feel like this is awful, no one will ever see this or if they do they’ll think it’s, you know, they’ll never hire me again.

JASON REITMAN on parental advice: There were a couple times we’re on set she would say something that was so mean that we just had to cut the line of dialogue. It was just, at that point it wasn’t even interesting anymore, it was just that’s really bitchy. I mean, you can’t, you know, the audience is just going to hate her for no reason and it all of a sudden is actually out of character and dishonest because it’s just so mean. It’s mean for no reason. All of this always goes back to a piece of advice that my father gave me and he literally gave it to me the night before I started shooting Thank You for Smoking. And he said “always remember it’s not your job to be funny. Your barometer for comedy is nowhere as good as your barometer for truth. And the only thing you’re trying to achieve on set is honesty.” You look at a performance, you look at anything the way people interact, the location, the way you’re shooting it, does it feel truthful because you’re not going to be able to tell if it’s funny. Ever once in a while it’s okay that’s hilarious, but you always know when it feels like bullshit or not. Even with people you know when they’re being truthful with you and so it’s the greatest piece of directing advice I’ve ever gotten and it plays, it feeds everything and if I’m ever unsure I can always go back to that and think about what my father told me and say all right does this feel honest. And that plays into is this too mean because if it’s so mean that it feels otherworldly then it’s not right.

JASON REITMAN on music selection:  You know one of the great parts about working with Diablo is that she’s so specific in her writing; the production design, wardrobe, specific as her dialogue seems, the description work is even stronger and the songs are there. And so the only question there is then, you know, do I agree with them or not and I usually agree with them. And on this movie, even though we love the same music and we come from the same era, there’s a few songs that I’m not a huge fan of including the Teenage Fan Club song.  But I knew it was right for the movie so that’s kind of all that mattered. [The song mentioned is The Concept]

JASON REITMAN on tone: I wanted – – to do something that I hadn’t done in my other films.  And I think as a director I try to grow with each film.  I try to do something different to the audience.   In the first movie I just wanted to make people laugh.  Second film, I wanted them to feel romance.  In the third film I wanted them to feel lonely.  And on this one, I wanted people to feel uncomfortable.  I wanted them to look at the screen and be so in the moment that they felt like they were standing there on the lawn watching Charlize break down right in front of them and they don’t know what to say because you feel sorry for her, you’re not sure if you’re part of the cause of this.

JASON REITMAN on audience reactions: I know with my films I don’t want to judge anybody. I don’t want to judge any of the characters. It’s very important to me. If the audience feels as though they know how I – – my judgment of a character that I considered, then I think I failed.  I think my job at the end of the day is to create honesty and truth and real moments that instead of telling you to think, just push you to think about something. And nothing gets me more excited than an audience arguing over what I was trying to say or having a thoughtful conversation about the film rather than walking out. I would be much more disappointed by someone walking out of my film and thinking and now I believe this because that strangely isn’t my job.

And finally, this next quote isn’t an answer to a question but rather Reitman’s response to receiving some praise prior to a question. I wanted to include it because it was so genuine & I really enjoyed seeing this reaction in personal.

JASON REITMAN: Okay. First of all, thank you for saying those really kind things.  That means a lot to me. That’s nice to hear. Sorry, I just, you know, I just did an interview earlier. I was just talking about how I became a director and I just remember a moment where I thought I’ll be lucky if I ever get to direct a commercial and that’s a really cool thing to hear. Thank you for saying that.

Check back tomorrow for highlights from the YA press conference with Diablo Cody, Charlize Theron & Patton Oswalt.

 Jerry Cavallaro – www.JerryCavallaro.com