I’ve been very, very lucky in my career, in my life – from day one. When aspiring directors say, ‘What’s your advice?’ first I say, ‘Be born the son of a famous director. It’s invaluable.’ – Jason Reitman
I remember when I was like 19 years old and I started a desk calendar company to pay for my first short film, just so I could say one day that my daddy didn’t pay for my first short film. And I really established myself in the film festival world. – Jason Reitman
When it comes to casting, I’ve been so lucky. I’ve worked with unbelievable actors who make me look better than I am and take the written word and make it honest. – Jason Reitman
Rian Johnson’s ‘Looper’ is inventive, entertaining, and thought-provoking in every way a movie can be. It is in fact the kind of movie that reminds us why we watch them and make them, a beautifully told story that deserves to be not only remembered, but acknowledged for its writing. – Jason Reitman
There certainly is no secret in that there are plenty of people who don’t like plenty of my movies. Each one of my films is personal; each one of my films is emotionally autobiographical. And I like directors who do that. With each one of my films, I’m exploring one of my own issues and I try to expose myself a little in the film. – Jason Reitman
I hate movies that tell people what to think. I’m proud that Democrats thought ‘Thank You For Smoking’ was their film and Republicans thought it was theirs. I’m proud that pro-choice people thought ‘Juno’ was their film and pro-life people thought it was theirs. – Jason Reitman
My writing voice is very much like ‘Thank You for Smoking.’ It’s a guy’s voice. It’s very masculine. – Jason Reitman
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. – Jason Reitman
I don’t believe in director’s cuts where you make things longer. The coolest thing was when the Coen brothers did a director’s cut of ‘Blood Simple,’ and they made it shorter. – Jason Reitman
I always believed that you can make challenging films, but they should be fiscally responsible. – Jason Reitman
‘Alien’ asked ground-breaking questions about eco-politics and female empowerment. ‘The Matrix’ delved deeper into the concept of perception versus reality than perhaps any other film I know. But for some reason, we tend not to remember the significance of their writing. – Jason Reitman
I’m not going to have a perfect career. It’s better to be Billy Wilder and make lots of movies and have five or six great ones than to make so few movies that when you make a bad one it crushes you. – Jason Reitman
Yeah, I was born in Montreal and I go back to Vancouver and Toronto a lot, so I have a sense of being Canadian, and I was raised by two Canadians, and my wife is Canadian, so yeah, I feel it. – Jason Reitman
If someone else made ‘Up in the Air’ or ‘Thank You For Smoking’ or ‘Juno,’ I would have wanted to rip their head off. I need that same sort of passion for every project I take on. – Jason Reitman
From the onset of the ‘Live-Read’ series, we wanted to hit all the major writers and Woody Allen is simply one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. He has ability to match pathos and comedy and drama and then turn it all on a dime. If you’re going to make a series based on dialogue, you can’t find much better than Woody Allen. – Jason Reitman
Growing up the son of a director has made me very aware of the various turns that a directing career can take. Sometimes your films turn out exactly as you want. Sometimes they don’t. I spent a lot of my childhood on sets. I think as a joke, my father gave me a line of dialogue in each of his films during the worst moments of my puberty. – Jason Reitman
Well, Toronto, I consider to be the birthplace of my films. I’ve made three films and this is the third one to premiere here in the same theater on the same day at the same time – they are my audience. They’re the people that I think about while I’m writing, directing, and editing. I specifically make movies for them. – Jason Reitman
It’s easy to get caught up in a moment and think, ‘Oh, I’ve been offered some giant studio film or a superhero franchise or some actor wants to meet with me about a project they want to do.’ And it’s easy to get caught up in a moment because it’s flattering. But you can’t do a movie because it’s flattering. – Jason Reitman
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. – Jason Reitman
Selfishness, narcissism, being uncomfortable in your own skin, not feeling connected to the world around you, feeling dislocated from family and youth, having a strange relationship with your childhood – all those things feel really true to me. – Jason Reitman
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. – Jason Reitman
Things like Facebook have made you feel as though you’re connected to everybody. You’ve got a thousand friends on Facebook, but you don’t actually talk to anybody. You’re not close to anybody. – Jason Reitman
And over the course of the last six years, as I’ve directed more features and commercials, I’ve become better at articulating exactly how I want the audience to feel. – Jason Reitman
I grew up on movie sets, I’m comfortable on sets. A movie set is like a circus. I don’t understand why moviemaking has to be such an insane environment. – Jason Reitman