Jason Reitman

He might be best known for delivering cute offbeat comedy à la Juno, but there’s a sadistic edge to Jason Reitman, one that spills over to gut-punching effect in his latest film, Young Adult, which stars Charlize Theron as a shallow thirtysomething writer who visits her hometown to win back an old flame. LWLies sat down with Reitman recently to talk about his unique creative relationship with stripper-turned-screenwriter Diablo Cody, and why he loves making audiences squirm.

LWLies: What makes you and Diablo work so well together?

Reitman: No idea. We’re the same age; we have a similar perspective… Her scripts are so well-defined, so well detailed and so emotional. Everything is on the page; it’s so easy for me to translate her words to the screen.

We weren’t expecting Young Adult to be like Juno, but it is a lot darker than we expected.

Yeah, well, I remember the first time I read the script and it was very dark. It made me very uncomfortable, and that’s exactly why I wanted to do the movie. The third act in particular is extremely moving and emotional – Mavis breaking down on the front lawn at the baby naming party, her having sex with Patton, and then the breakfast table scene with Sandra are the reason I wanted to make it. That’s where all the darkness is, and I guess what makes us a good combo is that I don’t shy away from that. I dive right in. I did work with her for a couple of weeks on making some of those scenes longer.

Can you give an example?

So, the Sandra scene was like three pages and we ended up stretching it out to five pages.

It’s a great scene.

It really is. I mean, to have a scene where your main character is about to make an emotional change and then a character we don’t even know convinces her not to, that’s pretty fucking bold. It’s a defining Diablo scene, it’s a mistake to think of her as someone who writes about hamburger phones and cute teenage dialogue. What defines her as a writer is brave choices, and that’s a brave choice. It’s a brave choice to have a character who is nasty and says and does mean things, but to never fully have an explanation. That’s good storytelling. I love walking this tightrope and making the audience cringe without ever giving them a way out. It’s like an emotional horror film.

Do you think Diablo wanted to get away from the Juno label a little bit with this?

No. I mean, you’re a writer, you can’t just change consciously like that. You just write. No more than I was trying to get away from Juno in making Up in the Air. I’m really proud of Juno, but when I think of Juno, the scene that wanted to make me make that movie is where Jason Bateman’s character takes Juno down into the basement to make a pass at her, at the teenage surrogate mother of his child. It’s ballsy, and it’s what Diablo does better than anyone.

Perhaps the ballsiest thing about this movie is that Mavis doesn’t really change.

Oh, she absolutely doesn’t. A lot of movies have characters that have these big changes, and I’ve never really bought into that. My inspirations for this were like Shampoo, Downhill Racer… You don’t see a lot of movies like this anymore. Up in the Air is about somebody that doesn’t change, and Young Adult is about someone who doesn’t change.

In reality it’s not as easy to change as Hollywood makes it seem?

Easy? I don’t know how possible it is, full stop. The 180 degree changes you see a lot on screen are bullshit. The best examples I can think of is the people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. That’s serious, 180 degree change. And the people who do that work so hard, every day to make that change last.

And that’s not a movie, right? That day-by-day view.

Exactly. And what I love about this script is that it acknowledge how hard change is, and how easy it is to go back to being that some person. I actually originally wanted to end the movie with the scene with Sandra, but I feel like if we’d have done that it’s a little too big a ‘fuck you’ to the audience. The audience doesn’t want to be told ‘fuck you’, because their response is likely to be ‘well fuck you, too!’ They came to see a movie, so we’re going to be them an ending. But you’re definitely less than uncomfortable during those last few scenes, I like to think they rattle you. That’s where this movie really takes shape, where it really becomes a mirror towards the end and you see yourself in the characters you would never want to see yourself in. The same sort of emotional realisation Mavis goes through, you can go through as an audience member. It’s a slap in the face, abrasive by nature, but it comes from a very civic way of making this film. Everything’s hyper-real – hand-held, digital, muted colours, very real acting and dialogue. I owe a lot to Charlize and Patton for not making caricatures out of their characters.

Patton’s character is an odd one, because at first you pity him and then you feel absolutely guilty for doing so.

It’s all about selective pity. I want to make the audience feel bad for feeling empathetic towards my characters. We pick and choose when we want to empathise. These two characters, who started at opposite ends of the spectrum in high school, have found themselves at the same point in adulthood. There’s a Romeo and Juliet quality to them, you know, they should be in love, riding off into the sunset with each other. You know that’s not going to happen from the moment you meet them, and I love that you know it’s a doomed relationship from the start.

What’s the message?

There isn’t one. I know a lot of movies have them, mine hopefully don’t. Whether Mavis succeeds or not doesn’t really matter to me, nor does where she goes after the movie. I’ve got you for two hours, and in that two hours I want to make you feel something very specific, manipulate you in a way that hopefully you’ve never felt before. If I can somehow sneak in and catch you off-guard, maybe when you think you’re watching a different type of movie, that’s what I’m aiming for. The characters, everything, it’s just a tool. The real purpose is to get you to feel something. In Up in the Air I’m convincing you you’re watching a movie about a guy who discovers true love, and all I’m really doing is tricking you into feeling true sadness when you realise that love doesn’t exist. It’s my magician’s trick.

So you’re ideal audience is the Juno fan who wanders in expecting a sweet, quirky comedy?

Oh yeah, such an easy target.

What’s next for you?

I’m doing a movie called Labor Day, which I adapted from the Joyce Maynard novel, starring Josh Brolin and Kate Winslet. It’s a heavy drama… romantic, dark. It’s going to be interesting.

Are you set on feature directing for the time being?

As opposed to?

We always pictured you’d make a good sitcom.

I did direct a couple of episodes of The American Office. That was fun. Movies are getting more and more dramatic, so I don’t think I’d end up on TV. Unless I did something like Breaking Bad. That’s the closest thing I could think that I’d be interested in doing. But I never really think of my characters as having long lives, so I don’t really know how I’d work around that. It’s like that Brad Bingham line in Up in the Air: “Fast friends aren’t my only friends but they’re my best friends.”