Film's buzz has Reitman walking on Air

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It’s beginning to look a lot like awards time: Reitman (right), with his star Clooney on the Up in the Air set.

TORONTO -- THE recent Golden Globe nominations effectively touted Canadian filmmaker Jason Reitman as a probable Oscar contender for his work directing Up in the Air.

But the love for the film began in earnest in September when it played at the Toronto International Film Festival. Up in the Air may be a studio movie with a big star -- that would be George Clooney as corporate downsizing consultant Ryan Bingham. But the film elicited the same kind of positive buzz Reitman received at the fest in 2007 with his modest indie movie Juno, which went on to win an Oscar for screenwriter Diablo Cody and nominations for star Ellen Page as best actress and for Reitman as best director.

"It all went very fast. I blinked my eyes and it was all over," Reitman, 32, recalls. "So right now, I'm just trying to enjoy it and take it in because this seems to be one of those films that people actually like."

Indeed, people have embraced the film, despite the fact that it is set in the real-world milieu of economic depression. Clooney's character is hired by companies to effectively, efficiently fire people from their jobs, and business is sufficiently booming for Bingham that he has collected enough millions of air miles to secure himself entry to a highly exclusive air miles reward club.

Reitman, who also wrote the screenplay for the film based on the 2001 novel by Walter Kirn, says the movie evolved as he evolved.

When he started writing the script, it was a time of economic boom, he says. He was 25 years old with a girlfriend and was writing from that point of view, which Reitman adds, was quite satirical. The scenes about people getting fired were funny, he says.

"Two things happened," Reitman says. "The economy fell apart and those scenes stopped being funny... and I grew up. I got married, I had a child, I started to learn what is important in life, and my approach to the film, and my approach to that particular plot line changed.

"The movie changed. The world changed. I changed."

The scenes in which people describe their reactions to being fired was filmed, with a few obvious exceptions, utilizing real people recounting their actual experiences of losing their jobs. For a wedding scene in St. Louis, Reitman says he again aspired to keep it real.

"We hired a local wedding coordinator in St. Louis, we hired a priest, we hired a wedding band and we put three videographers and the entire cast and all the extras in a church and the whole crew went and hid and... we threw a wedding."

Reitman admits the notion of keeping it real also extended to the casting of Clooney as Bingham, a man who has steadfastly resisted long-term commitments in most of his relationships. Sound familiar?

"The connection between George Clooney's persona and the character of Ryan Bingham interested me," Reitman says. "I don't like casting actors who are 100 per cent different from the characters they're playing. I like to find real connections between persona and character."

Up in the Air opens tomorrow

at Silver City Polo Park and starts

next Wednesday at the Globe

and Grant Park cinemas.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 17, 2009 D4