Interview: Thank You for Smoking Director Jason Reitman

Thank You for Smoking director Jason Reitman's first feature film premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, and was featured this year at Sundance. Reitman was in Seattle recently for a screening of his film at the University of Washington, and graciously sat down with me for over an hour in the lobby of his hotel even though he hadn't eaten lunch yet. Reitman strolled into the lobby in casual attire, looking relaxed and confident. We started out joking about the lengthy production notes for the film ("I had to read them like, five times - all 40-something pages, and I was like, do they have to be this long?" Reitman noted), then moved on to discussing what it's like to be a famous director's kid, how he came to make Thank You for Smoking, and what it was like to direct Robert Duvall and William H. Macy.

Cinematical: You wrote in your director’s notes that you fell in love with Nick Naylor from the opening sentence [of the Christopher Buckley novel on which the film is based]. What drew you to that character?

Jason Reitman: Like love at first sight, it’s an emotional reaction. Here’s a guy who knows he’s the devil and he’s fine with it; he’s unapologetic. He’s comfortable with who he is and he has a thick skin. When you live in a world of spin, you understand that everything is spin, and everything is affected by spin from the other side. Nick has to be always calm, he can’t lose his cool. The other side is very emotional - the anti-smoking crowd is very emotionally reactive. Nick gives nothing away, he’s charismatic, he’s perfectly dressed, he’s well-read and charming.

Cinematical: Like in the opening scene on the talk show, with Cancer Boy.

JR: The script calls for Cancer Boy to be a 15-year-old kid. But we realized we had to have someone over 18, because that scene was going to be an all day shoot. That scene had to be shot twice -- once with video and once with film, because everything that’s in the talk show is video, but the scenes in Nick’s head are film. The kid who plays Cancer Boy was an extra -- he's over 18 but has a young face -- I "Nick Naylored" him into shaving his head. We had a fake bald wig, but you can always tell if it's fake, and I told him it would just look so much better if he was really bald -- and he agreed to do it.

Cinematical: Is Nick a hero or an anti-hero? Does he think deep inside that his job has moral ramifications, and choose to ignore that? Or does he philosophically see both sides as equally bad -- or not bad at all?

JR: I see him as a hero. There’s a scene where he’s talking to Joey and he says even bad guys deserve a defense and so do large companies, and he believes that. He says it pays the mortgage, but that’s bullshit. People vilify corporations and forget that it’s just people. Representing drugs and tobacco is tough in the way that representing baby killers is tough. I want it to feel like Nick is controlling the film, not me -- the actor controls what’s being seen.

The problem I have with the Senator Finistirres of the world is that they want to tell people what to do. Finistirre wants to protect people from their own decisions. I have a problem with authority (laughs) -- that is a common theme across my short films and my feature.

Cinematical: The production notes mention you made the decision to shift the focus of the story to Nick’s relationship with his son. Why was this important to you from the standpoint of developing the story?

JR: There's a line where Heather Holloway says, "What does your son think of what you do?" You can choose your friends, your wife, you can even distance yourself from your parents, but I can’t imagine that you could let your child’s disapproval run off your back. A lot of times he's a satire of a human being -- Joey makes him a human; if Joey can like Nick, we can like Nick. In that sense it was based on that.

Cinematical: Did your relationship with your own father affect your point of view on the Nick-Joey relationship at all?

JR: Yeah. My dad and I are very close.

Cinematical: The rights to Christopher Buckley’s book sat on a shelf gathering dust at Icon for almost a decade -- no one seemed to know what to do with it. What did you bring to the project that no one else did?

JR: They were trying to make a different type of film. When you're working at a company on a studio lot and trying to make a studio film, you don’t always realize the innate gift of the material. They were saying “how do we turn this into a big studio comedy.” Mel Gibson was supposed to be Naylor, which in 1992 -- when they bought the rights -- made it a $50-60 million deal.

Citizen Ruth had come out and I said, "This film needs to be like Citizen Ruth but for smoking. Let’s make the film for $5 million." That weekend I wrote 25 pages, the first act. And they loved it -- they said this is what we’re looking for. They hired me for scale, I went out and wrote it, they loved it. Mel Gibson even called me. I thought, within a year I’ll be shooting it for sure. And then ... no one wanted to touch it. No one could really get over how much was already in it -- over $1 million in writing that was never going to see the screen. And it was unapologetic. If I was willing to make it like Liar, Liar, where he realizes at the end he’s a bad guy, I could have made it, but I wasn’t willing to do that.

Cinematical: How did you happen to connect with David Sacks (the film's producer)?

JR: Cory Ackerman met David Sacks and gave him my screenplay. He had sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion, had moved to LA and was looking for a film to produce -- and he loved my screenplay. And I found myself in a great position, with a producer for my film with cash in hand. Then I go back to Warner and Icon -- (shakes his head and sighs) -- it took over a year to get them to let go of the property.

Cinematical: That must have been incredibly frustrating.

JR: I was fortunate to have a good upbringing, a good financial upbringing, so I can make the kind of movies I want to. And then to be held up because Warner doesn’t want to let go of it even though they don’t want to make it. Yeah. It was frustrating beyond words.

Cinematical: A lot of first-time feature directors make mediocre films. What allowed you to make such a successful film in your feature debut?

JR: 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.

Cinematical: You were working as a production assistant on your dad's films at, what ...13?

JR: You’re not a production assistant unless someone is treating you like shit, and no one did that to me. If the boss' son is there, he’s never going to be able to really do the job the way a normal person would. I think it’s a mistake for young filmmakers to just buy digital equipment and shoot a feature. Make short films first, make your mistakes and learn from them. By the time I got to directing, I’d learned so much -- if I’d made this film five years ago it would have been a much less polished film.

Cinematical: You had a fantastic cast for your film; were you nervous about directing those actors?

JR: Oh, man. When I think of directing Robert Duvall or Sam (Elliot) -- it’s like something I watched someone else do. My mom gave me the best advice I had: Get your first shot in an hour and the crew will respect you. I did. And she was right.