Episode 488 - Jason Reitman
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters what the fuckadelics what the fuckaholics what the fuck knuckles huh where'd that one come from what the fuck'll bury fins all right then this is mark maron this is wtf good morning good evening
Marc:Good afternoon.
Marc:How's everything going?
Marc:How are you doing on the treadmill, on your run, in your car, in your cubicle?
Marc:How is it?
Marc:How is it for you today?
Marc:Is it okay?
Marc:All it needs to be is okay.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Okay is good enough.
Marc:Let that be your slogan.
Marc:You want to be happy?
Marc:Fine.
Marc:But if you can be okay, I think you got more going for you.
Marc:Okay is good enough.
Marc:Is good enough enough?
Marc:Sometimes.
Marc:Is happy a lot to ask for?
Marc:No.
Marc:But is it a lot to expect all the time?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Hey, first of all, if I could tell you, my paperback, the paperback of Attempting Normal is now available where you enjoy buying paperbacks.
Marc:I love the cover.
Marc:If you didn't get the hardcover, the paperback's nice.
Marc:It's exciting.
Marc:If you see me somewhere, I'll sign it for you.
Marc:Some people are talking about maybe making a poster of that cover.
Marc:Maybe the publishing house will make a poster of that cover and we can get hold of some of those.
Marc:But Attempting Normal now available in paperback at bookstores, booksellers of all kinds now.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:What else have I got to tell you?
Marc:It's a weird week, friends.
Marc:I mean, we had a strange coincidence occur.
Marc:I had been wanting to talk to Jason Reitman for a while.
Marc:I enjoy his films.
Marc:He's made many great movies, in my opinion.
Marc:He did Juno.
Marc:He did Thank You for Smoking.
Marc:He did Up in the Air.
Marc:Did not see his last one, Labor Day, but I enjoy his films.
Marc:And as many of you know, he is the son of Ivan Reitman, the producer of Animal House, the director of Ghostbusters, Stripes, Meatballs, Dave.
Marc:He's got a new film that I watched called Draft Day.
Marc:I watched a screener of that.
Marc:He's one of the biggest directors.
Marc:And Jason is a director in his own right and Ivan's son.
Marc:So...
Marc:I have Jason booked for weeks, months perhaps, to come talk to me.
Marc:And then out of nowhere, we get the opportunity to interview Ivan.
Marc:So I figure let's do Father and Son Week.
Marc:Why not do that?
Marc:It's not something I can do.
Marc:I used to be able to do it.
Marc:But it was a thrill to talk to Jason because his father is who he is.
Marc:But Jason has defined himself in his own right.
Marc:But also has a pretty tremendous...
Marc:relationship with his father you know his father is a director he's a director uh and you know he was up against a lot of challenges being the son of a of a of a big director you know their nepotism does not necessarily go over well amongst people there could have been the possibility for a stink on on jason you know coming into directing but he really cut his own path and i love his movies and his father and he actually worked on up in the air together which i talked more about with ivan
Marc:Which you'll hear on Thursday.
Marc:So Jason and I, Jason Reitman and I had a lovely conversation and it's relevant to me because, you know, his father was able to teach him a lot.
Marc:His father executed a certain amount of patience and enabled him to do what he would like to do with his life.
Marc:I'm not saying my father didn't do that, but he learned beautiful gems of wisdom and professionalism and craft from his father.
Marc:Now, I didn't expect that from my father.
Marc:My father's a doctor.
Marc:So it wasn't like he could pull me out into the garage and say, let me show you how to do knee surgery.
Marc:Go get that kid with a limp.
Marc:So that was not that is not the issue.
Marc:The issue is at this juncture in my life, my father is it seems like he's relentlessly furious at me and unable to to forgive me for for something that it was really my my right to do, which was incorporate him into my life story in my television show for two episodes and in my book for maybe three chapters.
Marc:you know, as a person in my life.
Marc:He didn't like the way he was represented and he made it entirely about him to the point where, you know, he called me and told me to go fuck myself and that he would never forgive me and fuck you.
Marc:And he hung up on me.
Marc:It was recently.
Marc:So, and knowing that he's not, you know,
Marc:You know, he's consumed with anger.
Marc:He's old.
Marc:His wife did not go the way he wanted it to.
Marc:You know, there's part of me that, you know, believes that, you know, I should be compassionate.
Marc:But there's another part of me that had to deal with somebody who is relatively unstable or absent and erratic my entire life.
Marc:And, you know, I have to deal with that anger.
Marc:Now, I can let it go.
Marc:But the weird thing is, is that they can activate it almost immediately.
Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, what I have to do, you know, the challenge for me and the reason why, you know, when I talk to someone like Jason, it's not so much jealousy, but I envy the relationship he had with his father.
Marc:I believe my father was, you know, reluctantly supportive, but ultimately supportive of what he what I did.
Marc:He didn't really have that much choice.
Marc:You know, I think he got a kick out of it.
Marc:But until it became about him and I thought it was relatively respectful, at the very least honest.
Marc:My characterization of him, he was he's unable to contain his fury.
Marc:So that's where I'm at.
Marc:So now I am in this weird position where, you know, I don't I don't think that the relationship is salvageable.
Marc:I don't think that, you know, he is capable of forgiving me.
Marc:And, you know, and I unloaded on him last week because, you know, he told me to fuck off.
Marc:So I have to figure out how to let that go.
Marc:And, you know, when I talk to somebody like Jason about his relationship with his father, now I got to make a list, you know, because obviously my father and I are probably not going to be able to repair our relationship because it's too toxic.
Marc:And I don't believe it.
Marc:And I just have to sort of detach and attempt compassion for a guy that's not well.
Marc:So now I got to make a list of all the good things that I got from my father.
Marc:You know, there's a list of bad things.
Marc:I got that list, you know, and I'm not happy about them.
Marc:I'm not happy when I see my inner Barry come out.
Marc:I'm not happy when I see, you know, behavior that was destructive and abusive in my life emit from my brain and my mouth and my body.
Marc:It's like a demonic possession, right?
Marc:to have that element of your father in you.
Marc:To have all the negative shit that you got from your father in you, it's like being possessed by the demon that is your dad.
Marc:So now I got to look at all the good stuff I got from him.
Marc:Charisma, a little bit of charm.
Marc:He's relatively witty.
Marc:He's curious.
Marc:He's engaged.
Marc:And just sort of like put that on the column next to the bad shit and go, all right, let's choose the good shit and let's have compassion for the bad shit.
Marc:Let's have some forgiveness for the bad shit.
Marc:Because quite honestly, I don't think that I'm going to be able to forgive myself or stop the behaviors if I don't say like, all right, that's him.
Marc:Now let me be me.
Marc:Because I'll tell you, man, as soon as you engage your old man on the level, using the horrible tools he gave you, all the bad shit that you got from your dad, when you turn it on them, oddly, they shut up.
Marc:and they take it because you know why it's like they could say you know you're fucked up just like me but there's got to be some point in there where they're like you know my kid just you know tore me a new asshole for 20 minutes that's my boy he learned it from me
Marc:It's sick shit.
Marc:But today, today I'm going to try to have some compassion for my old man and let bygones be bygones and never talk to him again.
Marc:It's painful to have problems with your aging parents.
Marc:And for God's sakes, for your own sake, try to be compassionate.
Marc:Try to be forgiving because you don't want to carry that nail in your heart.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Someone get me the back of a hammer.
Marc:Could someone get me the back of a soul hammer so I can pull this fucking thing out?
Marc:Let's talk to Jason Reitman.
Marc:And on Thursday, we talked to his father, Ivan Reitman.
Marc:But now we're talking to the younger Reitman.
Marc:I turn to a guitar.
Marc:Let's talk about music today.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Whatever you want.
Marc:It is meditative for me.
Marc:It's something that I'm not a guy that practices for hours.
Marc:But I do like today.
Marc:I had a fight with the girl this morning.
Marc:And I needed to sort of clear my head.
Marc:And I put on some old Peter Green Fleetwood Mac.
Marc:And I played blues.
Guest:Music and I felt better like I feel better the guitars are great for getting over a woman or getting over a fight I think that's what they're made for that's why they're shaped like a woman Is it is that what you decided yeah?
Guest:Honestly, it's shaped like a woman and you hold it you hold it never really I never really you can't you don't hold the piano that's right I never really thought about even hold I don't trip there is another instrument they hold the same way with the guitar you you hold it and you press it against your body and
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And you know what your guitar feels like, whereas it feels different from a foreign guitar.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:When you go into a guitar shop and you pick up a new guitar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's almost like holding a new woman for a moment.
Marc:It is.
Guest:It's exciting and like this thing elicit about it.
Guest:And then maybe you will take her home.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And then what happens if you start playing the new guitar too much?
Guest:You almost look in the guitar.
Guest:The old guitar.
Marc:The old guitar.
Marc:And you feel bad.
Guest:You're like, I better pick up that old guitar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not being good to her.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:And it's also, but there's also, there's a cock component as well.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it's like, you got both things going there.
Marc:You got male and female.
Guest:I imagine sometimes, like I have a nice Martin.
Guest:You do?
Guest:That was my first grown up guitar.
Guest:But then I also have like shitty guitars.
Guest:I got, you know, I got a like $200 classic guitar that's like Czech and weird.
Guest:But I played a lot.
Guest:It's fun to play.
Guest:And I imagine my Martin looking at the Czech guitar.
Guest:What are you doing?
What?
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:Like the same way girls look at other girls sometimes and go, why is he with like, what is the fuck?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Why do I work so hard to look like this if that's what he's going to wind up with?
Guest:That cheap whore.
Guest:I have my dad's guitar from when he was a kid.
Marc:Was he a guitar player?
Guest:Yeah, if you can believe it, my father went to college on a music scholarship.
Guest:He was in a band, they were called the Twin Tone Four.
Guest:They were a folk group with a pair of identical twins, a gal and my father.
Guest:And my dad played acoustic guitar and he had this guild that I have now that is 50 years old.
Marc:How does it sound?
Guest:It sounds pretty good.
Guest:It smells better than it sounds.
Guest:You ever pick up an old guitar and you smell the hole?
Marc:That old wood?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it smells great.
Guest:It looks great.
Guest:I should put new strings on it.
Guest:It has old strings on it.
Marc:Have you gotten it tweaked?
Marc:Is the action good?
Guest:The neck is fairly bent.
Guest:There was a hole that I had.
Guest:There's one hole that's kind of nice.
Guest:There's another hole that needed to be fixed.
Guest:I got it fixed down at McCabe's.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Down in Santa Monica.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's fun to get a guitar fix.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Marc:Like you're restoring it.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:What I love about that one is more imagining my father holding it.
Guest:My father held that guitar before I was a figment in his imagination, before being a filmmaker was a figment in his imagination.
Guest:So my father went to college and was a music major and then started a film club.
Guest:And that's how he begins...
Guest:Sorry, I'm not even sure.
Guest:Are you going?
Guest:Do you want to go?
Guest:Do you want to start this or are we started?
Marc:Oh, no, we're done.
Guest:We're started.
Marc:Yeah, we're good.
Marc:Good.
Marc:All right, cool.
Marc:But it's interesting to know that the evolution of the creative spirit, especially from somebody who's your father or relative, that early on, that his creativity was what was driving him.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that there was never this, you don't have this story where it's like, well, my father was a lawyer.
Marc:At some point, he decided that he was going to be an artist.
Guest:Well, his story of becoming an artist is actually quite great.
Marc:I'm going to talk to him, you know.
Guest:And it says, you're going to talk to him?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, when?
Marc:I think tomorrow.
Guest:Am I just the pre-interview for him?
Marc:No, it happened coincidentally.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, it was the weirdest thing.
Marc:That's fantastic.
Marc:We've had you on the books for weeks.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So out of nowhere, they're like, well, Ivan Reitman might do this.
Marc:I'm like, that'd be great.
Marc:I'm going to talk to his son.
Marc:I'm going to steal every one of his stories.
Guest:You're going to hijack it?
Guest:Everything he's going to go, he's like, well, it's funny you should mention.
Guest:You're like, I've already heard that.
Guest:Do you have anything else?
Marc:Your son's already covered that.
Marc:I heard about your guild.
Marc:When did you buy that guild guitar?
Guest:Oh, only ask him about music.
Guest:That'd be great.
Guest:He now has an ovation, a big round back ovation, but he barely gets into that.
Guest:But it's fun.
Guest:When he does, I mean, it's that thing.
Guest:And anyone who's played guitar, you can go away for a year or two, and still you'll pick it up, and there'll be certain muscle memory that your left hand will still remember, your right hand will still remember.
Guest:And I see that.
Guest:And I know it's old for him.
Guest:I know it's decades old now, but I still see his singers go to hit things and then miss things and get frustrated.
Marc:Was he good?
Marc:Like, was he a picker?
Marc:Was he a strummer?
Guest:He wasn't a picker, but I think he was good.
Guest:I think he got really into different tunings and different chord structure.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, I think... Well, again, I mean, so he was doing this in the late 60s.
Guest:So those guys that you were talking about, those folk musicians... Llewyn Davis time.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So...
Guest:I think that's what influenced the style of his play.
Marc:That's amazing, because alternate tunings are baffling to me.
Marc:Completely baffling.
Marc:I've tried it with a slide, like the Open D, I think, that some guy taught me.
Marc:And it's really fun to do, but I don't have the focus to sort of commit to sort of evolving.
Marc:I can evolve with licks.
Marc:I can learn new licks when I hear them, and freezing and stuff.
Marc:I've gotten some growth there.
Marc:But the idea of sitting down and practicing two hours a day.
Guest:Do you speak any other languages?
Guest:No.
Marc:I think it's similar.
Marc:Do you?
Guest:Well, yeah, I speak a little bit of French because I learned it in school and my mom's French Canadian.
Guest:But I think in English.
Guest:I talk in English.
Guest:I struggle to work with people who don't speak English perfectly.
Guest:And it is my language is what I rely on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And when it comes to guitar, I rely on a classic tuning.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And also, like, with language, it's almost mathematics to me.
Marc:I'm not sure my grammar is that great in general.
Marc:I mean, as a writer, I'm not sure.
Marc:Like, I think the reason I couldn't wrap my brain around language is that tenses are relatively unimportant to me.
Marc:I have a poetic sensibility.
Marc:If I can get what I need to get across, across, I'm fine.
Marc:But when you put it down on paper and you got to sit and figure out, you know, tenses, pronouns, you know, as is, was, all that shit.
Marc:Like, there's some things that just aren't clear to me.
Marc:I bet it's more important to you than you let on.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:And maybe classical tense is not as important to you, but you wouldn't be a comedian and you wouldn't be interested in doing what you're doing right now if words were important to you.
Guest:Words are important.
Guest:Grammar is tricky.
Guest:Yeah, but you're just using grammar in an innovative way.
Guest:I mean, the way you attack people, the way you make people.
Guest:I mean, look, your job and my job are similar in that our job are to manipulate people, to get people to do things that they don't want to do involuntarily.
Guest:Is that it?
Guest:You have more confidence, so you go into the room with the people and do it right to them.
Guest:I have less confidence, so I hide away in a cave.
Guest:I make my film, and then I show it to people, and I'm not even in the room when it happens to them.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, the difference there is whether it's manipulative.
Marc:An element of what I do is, like, please accept me.
Marc:at least you have the distance to go like my movie but if you're not telling the truth are you saying accept me or are you saying accept this version that i'll present well no it's a i do tell the truth and and it's like i sort of defy them i think there's a there's a lot of sort of like you still like me now i mean do you understand me it's my struggle to be understood and accepted is is is what my creativity is compelled by
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Now, do you identify yourself as the person on stage as a 100% match to who you are in real life?
Marc:Close.
Marc:It's close.
Marc:You know, there are things that, you know, over time I've grown to realize, like, that's not entertaining.
Marc:You know?
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I'm sorry.
Guest:Did you come here to laugh and be entertained?
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:You missed the point.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Bitterness, sadness, inability to make a decision.
Marc:Those aren't entertaining ideas.
Guest:How long did it take to get there?
Marc:To figure that stuff out.
Guest:Yeah, and to be yourself on stage and to recognize how important it was.
Marc:Like 20 years, 24 years for it to really settle in.
Marc:It wasn't until I sort of realized that...
Marc:the way i thought and you know the way i put myself out in the world through this podcast was something that people that some people liked like i don't think i don't think i was ever you know in it to entertain as much as i was to express myself right i never thought like you know i'm a song and dance man i thought this was the stage where i could get ideas across and and and sort of work through my own shit and find myself that was the that was the the the drive
Guest:And a big part of it was, I'm going to challenge them and see if they come back.
Guest:I'm going to be as aggressive as possible.
Guest:It was for a while.
Guest:Do you still love me now?
Marc:It was for a while.
Marc:It was for a while.
Marc:And that was in all my relationships.
Marc:But that's just like manifesting historical family drama.
Marc:So do you think you would do that romantically?
Marc:No.
Marc:No, I really think I didn't know how to do it any other way.
Marc:And I couldn't quite understand.
Marc:I didn't understand that bitterness was not something that everybody had.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, I really thought that like you guys, if you just dig deeper, you've been gypped.
Marc:There's an existential charade going on.
Marc:Why is it that some people don't have bitterness?
Marc:Because it's useless.
Marc:It's just self-pity.
Marc:I mean, and like if you really make an argument, you're defending self-pity.
Marc:It's a wasted thing.
Guest:You saw this study.
Guest:They studied each nation or many nations trying to figure out who was the happiest country.
Guest:And I think it was either the Danish or the Swedish.
Guest:And they tried to drill into why they were happy.
Guest:And the best answer they could come up with was their expectations were lower.
Marc:Well, I think there's not necessarily less competitive.
Marc:There's less maybe hanging on the idea of status and financial or otherwise in their culture.
Marc:There's no reason you can't accept life if you're relatively comfortable.
Marc:But if you're hard on yourself or your desires are unfulfilled, I think we live in a culture that compels us.
Marc:to be successful in many different ways and be competitive.
Marc:And if you don't do that, you think like, why can't I fucking do that?
Marc:Or why am I losing?
Marc:Or my life isn't worth a shit because I can't get this or that.
Guest:Did that help you or hurt you though?
Guest:What?
Guest:All these things that you just talked about.
Guest:The understanding of that?
Guest:No, I think growing up in a nation where these were kind of the prescribed ideas and these are the things that drove you
Guest:At the end of the day, are you happy you grew up here?
Guest:I mean, did you need to live in a competitive environment to become the person you are?
Marc:No, I'm not thrilled that I grew up with... Do you wish you were Swedish?
Marc:Yeah, maybe a little bit.
Marc:Had a little bit of that in me.
Marc:I don't think my problems are innately with the culture as much as they are with my own individual upbringing.
Marc:You know, obviously, America is a very exciting place, and there's a lot of things that happened here that are great, creatively and otherwise.
Marc:And, you know, there was a freedom here to do what I wanted to do once you find your way.
Marc:But I do find that now as you get older and I mean, you must experience it as well.
Marc:I mean, you're directing movies that, you know, when you, when you finish a movie, when you finally done gone through all the hoops to get that movie done, it's got to perform.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I strangely don't care about that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, really.
Marc:During the making of it or in retrospect?
Guest:Never.
Guest:And I think that's probably the result of a few things.
Guest:I think that's probably the result of one being the son of a director who was so successful that I knew moment one going into this job...
Guest:I would never have success like my father.
Guest:Not even an inch of it.
Guest:The sum total of all my films will never gross Ghostbusters.
Guest:You gave up before you even started.
Marc:That fight anyway.
Guest:I think even more importantly, I grew up in a house where my father checked the grosses every weekend.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was important to him.
Guest:And in that simple thing that every son does where they want to be different and have something of their own that is not their father's, my journey was I'm not going to care about how much money I make.
Guest:Somehow I have to care about something else.
Marc:Which was what?
Guest:Um, probably acceptance and, you know, similar things that you were talking about.
Guest:I think I was very aware early on that I had a chip on my shoulder as far as people presuming that I probably had nothing to offer because I grew up in Beverly Hills, the son of a famous director.
Marc:In the shadow of show business.
Guest:Yeah, and growing up just really, really lucky.
Guest:I mean, lucky kind of on every front.
Guest:Not only were my parents successful, and not only were they artists, and not only did I grow up in a beautiful home, that I grew up also in a family that stayed together in a city where families never stay together, and my parents were both...
Guest:kind of thoughtful to their approach of parenting me and really cared about my happiness and were involved in my life.
Guest:So I've been lucky my entire life.
Marc:So that's the chip you had on your shoulder?
Marc:I think my chip was that... Fighting against people's interpretation of who you were?
Guest:The presumption that, yeah, I was just going to be kind of a spoiled brat with a drug or alcohol problem who had no business making movies, who had nothing to say, and got everything for nothing.
Guest:So I was like...
Guest:No, fuck you.
Guest:I'm going to make a great film.
Marc:I'm going to be a good guy and make a good movie.
Guest:And I'm going to try to go to Sundance.
Guest:I'm going to try to go to these film festivals.
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:I think that really fueled a lot of making short films and making my first few features was fuck you.
Guest:I can actually make one of these things.
Guest:That's a great thing to be fueled by.
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:No, but I mean, look, I just asked you the same question, and your response was, I wish I grew up in Sweden.
Guest:So we could say, hey, it's that energy that gets us cooking.
Guest:But frankly, I was very fortunate.
Guest:My first three movies were all well-received, and two of them made a ton of money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Up in the Air and Thank You for Smoking made money.
Guest:I like that movie.
Guest:We made for $5 million and it grossed plenty more than that.
Guest:And I'm not as angry as I probably was 10 years ago.
Guest:Certainly not as angry as I was when I was writing Thank You for Smoking.
Guest:So, you know, my reasons are changing for why I make movies.
Marc:Well, I mean, I think also as you get older and you do build up your own confidence and your own vision for how you make movies, because I mean, you know, up in the air certainly is a stylized movie and it's uniquely yours.
Marc:And it was shot in a very specific way.
Marc:Like, I bet you I could watch, you know, another movie you make and know that it was stylistically yours.
Marc:That's not nothing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:I think my films stylistically are kind of hard to nail down.
Guest:I mean, Young Adult and Up in the Air look really different.
Marc:But Up in the Air, and let me see if I can really think about it.
Marc:Well, Thank You for Smoking was pretty... It was satire.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that has a different tone because you have to balance the characters that are in there and make sure they don't get too broad for the comedy of something like that.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's interesting.
Guest:I think at the end of the day, those are the form of the movies.
Guest:And I'm less interested in form.
Guest:I just made Labor Day, which, again, looks and feels- I have it.
Marc:I apologize.
Marc:I have it.
Marc:I'm going to watch it.
Guest:That's okay.
Guest:No one's seen it.
Guest:Why?
Guest:You know, I'll tell you why.
Guest:Why?
Guest:I'll tell you why.
Guest:We're going to work back in a minute.
Guest:I learned a few lessons on Labor Day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is actually a pretty good movie.
Marc:It's got great actors in it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:You know what the weird thing is?
Marc:I get the screeners, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm going through the screeners, and I hit Labor Day.
Marc:I'm like, no one said anything about it.
Marc:I've not heard anything about this movie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's got Josh Brolin in it.
Marc:How could it be bad?
Marc:And I was compelled to, and I just didn't get to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's a whole is a bunch of reasons I wanted to make it.
Guest:But the form wasn't one of them.
Guest:I didn't I was interested in making a timepiece.
Guest:I wasn't interested in making a love story.
Guest:There was just some innate stuff.
Guest:And I think that goes for all of them.
Guest:Juno, it's not like I wanted to make a movie about teen pregnancy.
Guest:It's not like I wanted.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:And I didn't mean to trivialize it by, you know, by talking about about style or what the movie, you know, or tone of the movie.
Marc:But I mean, I didn't take it as trivial.
Guest:Trivializing?
Guest:No, I think a lot of filmmakers pursue things because of style.
Guest:I've talked to directors before who would say, I really want to make a Western, and that's just never entered my head for a second.
Marc:Well, I think Juno's hard to define, and I think that's what made it such a great movie and a precious movie.
Marc:And precious is a good word.
Marc:Because what you're dealing with is that the way the dialogue was structured was tricky because it operated at a very clip pace and all the characters were very forthright and there was a rhythm to the actual dialogue of the movie that you honored.
Marc:And whether it was the reality frame of it didn't really matter because the characters were so engaging and full of humanity that it would have been hard to categorize that movie as anything other than it is a unique piece of film.
Marc:I mean, it's not a teen pregnancy movie.
Guest:It's a family movie.
Guest:I made that movie for one scene.
Guest:There's a scene towards the end where...
Guest:Juno shows up at Jason Bateman's house.
Guest:Alan Page shows up at Jason Bateman's house.
Guest:They wind up in his basement and they start slow dancing.
Guest:And you wonder for a moment if Bateman is taking a pass at her, this girl who's underage and holding the unborn child, carrying the unborn child that he and his wife are supposed to adopt.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's icky and uncomfortable.
Guest:And she wanted so much to be an adult and taken seriously.
Guest:And he doesn't want to grow up and is terrified of becoming a father.
Guest:And all that stuff plays through this weird sexual icky moment.
Guest:And that I liked.
Guest:And that
Marc:When you read it, that was what you decided?
Guest:Oh, that was it.
Guest:I want to direct this movie for this moment.
Guest:I need to direct that scene.
Guest:In the same way that Up in the Air is a movie about a guy showing up at a woman's door.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:That's the movie.
Guest:It's the whole magic trick.
Guest:I mean, sometimes I'm sure you've had...
Guest:stories that you tell on stage where you work for 20 minutes then it's all leading up to one idea and one moment because you're and you're taking the audience through a lot of places and often you're using uh all sorts of motifs that the audience is used to seeing in a movie and you're just that's right come along with me fall into this come through that um start to feel these things laugh at this become emotional at that just so you can get them to a point um
Guest:where it's not only George arriving at Vera's door, everyone is arriving at Vera's door.
Guest:And it's not just Juno walking down into Jason's basement.
Guest:It's everyone is going down into that basement so that when he puts his hand on her hip as they're dancing, and it's just slightly in an inappropriate place, everyone feels that.
Guest:And that's the moment where the audience is either in her head or his head or both heads.
Guest:And you have to look at the screen almost like it's a mirror
Guest:and start interpreting all this crap that you're dealing with.
Marc:So you, in your mind, you put together a film to build up to the integrity of these poetic moments that are maybe a minute long.
Guest:I mean, and everything that's going to stay with them for the days after.
Guest:So, I mean, it is a magic trick.
Guest:I mean, so if you talk to a magician about, all right, so you developed this whole magic trick just so you could go ta-da.
Guest:Well, it's like, yeah, part of it is the joy of being able to do the magic trick.
Guest:um i remember i uh i got to meet david blaine once and and uh and i was asking him questions about how he became a magician what he likes doing now i mean he's obviously you know one of the world's greatest magicians everybody knows it and i find him a little annoying well because you don't like his persona but at the end of the day he's a he's an impressive okay magician i'm glad you said it was persona you're telling me there's a pretty good guy under there somewhere
Guest:Well, I think there's... Look, you meet tons of people, and you talk to a lot of impressive people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a persona kind of involved in everybody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he found something that worked.
Guest:He's been very successful at it.
Guest:It's done very well for him.
Guest:And underneath it all, there's a guy who worked really hard to be a great magician.
Guest:But I asked him, take away all the other stuff.
Yeah.
Guest:How much joy do you get out of the ta-da moment?
Guest:And he said he didn't really care about it.
Guest:He's done it so much that now it's the craft of getting there and how often.
Guest:I would imagine it's like a joke that you've told so many times.
Guest:Well, yeah, well, the actual getting of the laugh.
Guest:is not the big payoff.
Guest:Is incidental.
Guest:So there is a passion for, so it's not just about that minute, even though that's probably why I make the movie in the first place.
Guest:And I judge my success by whether it worked in that moment.
Guest:There is also a joy of, can I become a skillful enough filmmaker to pull off all these things to get there?
Guest:So to tell the story in a way and use music in a way and get the type of performances and cut it together so that I have you through all these complicated moves to get you to that moment.
Guest:But why do I say yes and why do I devote my life and sacrifice so many things in my personal life so that that moment can happen?
Guest:It's that.
Guest:And that's what sets those movies apart from the ones that I don't make.
Marc:But the thing is that there's no way.
Marc:I mean, I understand your attraction to that moment in making the movie.
Marc:But to create and sort of explore the psychology of...
Marc:Of that Clooney character throughout the movie that you know would appear to be avoiding something or dead or inside or somewhat Insulated emotionally and how you do that visually and I mean you can't trivialize any of that I mean that's I'm not trivializing I guess I make that that's all just part of the work and but how do you think about that stuff?
Marc:I understand you're leading up to this moment, but when you make decisions about you know him standing in front of that board yeah, and
Marc:I mean, is that innate or do you storyboard?
Guest:I'll take it back to your earlier question about when we were talking about word choice.
Guest:And you said that you don't care for grammar or that it's not important to you.
Guest:And I think that grammar is really important to you.
Guest:You're using it in your own way.
Guest:Word choice is a tool.
Guest:It's a really important tool.
Guest:And depending on the word, and I've seen comedians discuss this to death before on, you know, I switch the joke.
Guest:I switch this one word and all of a sudden it works.
Guest:That's a timing thing.
Guest:Or just I used the wrong word or I used the wrong number or I changed the fruit in the joke and now it kills.
Guest:And so I think being a director involves lots of practice of making thousands of decisions a day and seeing how they play out.
Guest:And the first time you go to direct something, you make 10,000 decisions on that first day of your first short film and you make 90% of them wrong.
Guest:And you think you know what you're doing because you've read a lot and you've seen a bunch of movies and you think you know what a movie is and maybe you've worked on set in various capacities.
Guest:But the truth is, until you've been on set and every decision lands at your feet and you have to decide from costumes to the location to the performance to everything.
Guest:I mean, when you look on a screen at the end of the day, the director said, you know, everything you're seeing, everything you're hearing, everything you're feeling, a director said yes or no or that one or three of them or whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think you get so practiced at making those decisions.
Guest:It's like having a guitar in your arms and you're good enough where you're not thinking about it.
Guest:Your fingers are going where they need to.
Guest:So when I think about that scene that you brought up, the end of Up in the Air, he's standing there looking at the big board.
Guest:Was there a moment where I sat down at a table and said, oh, I have to figure out this scene where he's, you know, making this big decision?
Guest:What kind of big board will it be?
Guest:No.
Guest:I saw it in my head.
Guest:I had a feeling for it.
Guest:I articulated that to the people that I work with.
Guest:They start to come back with stuff.
Guest:And I look at the suit.
Guest:That's maybe the right suit or the wrong suit.
Guest:Or that's the wrong travel bag.
Guest:Or that the board needs to be larger and we need to be lower and we need to be on a 35, not a 40 mil.
Guest:And, like, it just...
Marc:until you feel it i'm now having feelings about that moment at the door what are your feelings well i remember because i watched a movie several times you know because i you know i watched in the theater and then i wanted other people to watch because i love the movie you live on the road you know what it is to to uh to live in hotels and live in the air and your closest people are your seat mates and that kind of stuff a little bit i i you know i i don't i you know it took me a long time to accept it you know like it's still sort of like oh fuck
Marc:You know, like he embraced it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And, you know, because he preferred it that way.
Marc:But like, I remember having conversations about that moment because I was like, you know, fuck her.
Marc:That, you know, that like my gut reaction was that, you know, like this guy finally opened his heart and it was a sham because he didn't, you know, follow his, like there's road rules and he was a victim of road rules.
Marc:Like he romanticized something that should have been understood.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I was mad at her.
Marc:Do you still feel that?
Marc:A little bit because of what I've gone through personally in relationships is that, you know, there is fantasy and there is, you know, road rules.
Marc:But, you know, at some point, I think I had I don't know if it was a fault with you.
Marc:It was like if they had spent as much time together that was suggested in the film, the fact that none of them, none of their lives.
Marc:you know, other than his.
Marc:Like, you know, that he sort of felt that, you know, she should come with him to this thing and that thing.
Marc:That in all that time, the question of what her life was didn't come up.
Marc:So if it did come up, she lied.
Guest:Right?
Guest:My guess, my understanding, and I don't usually think a lot about what happens offscreen to my characters, is that they had an understanding about what their relationship was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if you...
Guest:if you presume something of someone, you don't think to ask, do you have a husband or do you have, do you have children or do you have a different life back where you live?
Guest:After a certain point, you got to ask that shit.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:They also didn't see each other that much.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:All right.
Guest:You know, I'm not, I'm not attacking the narrative.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:I think these are two people who really only shared a life on the road, whose only life was through these fleeting moments where they could live this fantasy.
Guest:And what they established at the beginning of their relationship was this is all they actually wanted in life.
Guest:And...
Guest:And that was the beauty to their relationship.
Guest:I think that's what... He's the guy... In my opinion, he's the guy who played outside the rules, not her.
Guest:He's the guy who asked for something that they never agreed upon, not her.
Marc:Well, I get that, but this is a person... In my mind, this is a person that, once she goes in that car to the airport, consciously takes her two rings off.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Or one, depending on... Whatever.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And engages in this thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What if she's a woman who doesn't wear a ring?
Guest:Like a man.
Guest:No, no, no, but I think that's actually a really important point.
Guest:There's guys I know who wear rings and there's guys who don't.
Guest:But he wasn't living a lie.
Guest:He was not lying.
Guest:He was only lying when he showed up at her door asking for something that was not true to their relationship.
Guest:Okay, fine.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Like, they had agreed upon... He was lying because he fell in love, is what you're saying.
Guest:He's lying because he asked for, or he demanded love.
Guest:Because he felt it.
Guest:He misread it.
Guest:She was too good.
Guest:She would have said that love is what they experience in their relationship, meeting at hotels and having these moments and living in the moment and not being locked down by other, you know, all that bullshit is what she would say.
Marc:Well, that's fine.
Marc:But then, you know, it's like, who are you really?
Marc:Like, who are we really?
Marc:I think that's a great question.
Guest:No, I do.
Guest:And that's kind of what I'm asking the audience.
Guest:And look, I don't have all the answers here.
Guest:I mean, I think there's a lot of filmmakers who make movies because they say, I have the answer.
Guest:This is it.
Marc:No, I appreciate that.
Guest:I think it's better to go that way.
Guest:The example is Michael Moore in the documentary sense.
Guest:But even in narrative film, there's filmmakers where you feel Oliver Stone is saying, no, this is the truth.
Guest:This is the answer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm boggled.
Guest:I mean, I make movies because I have questions that I want to ask, and I don't know the answers.
Guest:And I usually leave the characters at the end in a place of I don't know.
Guest:They don't know.
Guest:And presumably the audience doesn't know either.
Guest:But here's a new way of thinking about it.
Marc:No.
Marc:And I appreciate that.
Marc:I think that like, you know, problem solving or going on a journey through art and through expression without having those answers is probably the way to go.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I don't think that controlling... Depending on what you do.
Guest:What you want to do.
Guest:I mean, if you want to just make money and make people laugh or make people odd, then you make other movies.
Guest:I have nothing against that.
Marc:Yeah, but you're dealing with the imperfections of the human spirit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And the challenges of the human spirit.
Marc:At least it's the stuff that worries me day to day.
Marc:Well, yeah, but even Juno, the challenge of the human spirit in that... One of the amazing things about that movie was the acceptance of her family.
Marc:You know, despite, you know, what would you agree?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what you would think would be, you know, a really problematic thing that, you know, whether it was, you know, within those characters, I think it was it was grounded.
Marc:But, you know, would that be the story in most cases?
Marc:You know, probably not.
Marc:No.
Marc:But for the comedy and for.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, there's no reason to know.
Marc:But I think that was one of the great things about, you know, there was a lot of heart in that movie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it made sense.
Marc:It was not sappy.
Marc:It wasn't saccharine.
Marc:And it could have tipped that way if you didn't handle it.
Guest:Do you feel split by heart and cynicism, personally?
Marc:No, I'm sort of a softie with it.
Marc:I don't mind being jerked around.
Marc:In my real life, I find that there's a constant struggle.
Marc:I'm a difficult man.
Guest:But you don't think of yourself as cynical, though?
Marc:I'm not cynical.
Marc:I'm stubborn.
Marc:You know, I keep trying.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You know, I do try.
Marc:But I think the thing that gets me is old patterns.
Marc:And to break old patterns of stubbornness or defensiveness is tricky.
Marc:To open your heart is tricky, which is maybe why for me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's also like, you know, you gotta get past your own bullshit.
Marc:I mean, yeah, it's innately scary, but how many layers, how does that fear represent itself in you?
Marc:How complicated is that fear?
Marc:How do you know when you're being honest about your heart?
Marc:You know, how many layers of guardedness is there?
Marc:I'm always surprised.
Marc:You?
Guest:Oh, of course.
Guest:No, it's the scariest thing to... No, it's the scariest thing to do.
Guest:Are you married?
Guest:I was.
Guest:How long did that last?
Guest:I was married seven years.
Guest:We were together 10 years.
Guest:You got kids?
Guest:I have a daughter, yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:And is everything getting along all right?
Guest:Yeah, we actually do get along pretty well.
Guest:Kind of have to after a point, don't you?
Guest:Well, I think we did the work before our divorce to ensure that we would get along after the divorce.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, see, that's responsible and commendable.
Guest:Well, I think we both love our daughter, and I think that's key to it.
Guest:So how are you in approaching relationship now?
Yeah.
Guest:I'm still figuring it out.
Guest:I mean, my story's weird.
Guest:In brief, when I was 16, I started dating someone who was 10 years older than me, and I moved in with her while I was still in high school, and I stayed with her for seven years.
Guest:So from 16 to 23, I'm with one woman who goes from 26 to... 36.
Guest:36.
Guest:No, 26 to 33.
Guest:We were together for seven years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we broke up and I moved into an apartment, fell in love with my next door neighbor and married her.
Guest:And I was with her for 10 years.
Guest:How long in between?
Guest:No, I moved into an apartment and I started dating my next door neighbor.
Guest:Immediately.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you're a little fucked up.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, clearly, but otherwise, what would I have to say?
Guest:Why would I make movies?
Guest:But yeah, I've been trying to figure out dating, yeah, since then.
Marc:So when you were, okay, let's go back professionally and otherwise.
Marc:So you grew up in Beverly Hills, Ivan Reitman's your dad.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so you're on set probably as long- Every second I can.
Marc:As long as you can remember, as far back as you can remember.
Guest:I have photos of me as a baby on the set of Animal House.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you grew up on set?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:If it was the summer, I was there every day.
Guest:If it was during the school year, like Ghostbusters, I would go to New York once a month and spend a week there.
Marc:So you spend time, you're watching and interacting with John Belushi, Bill Murray, Ackroyd, and all these people that were in your father's movies.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And you're seeing how comedy works.
Marc:You know, fundamentally.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're seeing how the repetition of film works.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And how, you know, the sort of like, you know, draining process.
Marc:And then it's a job.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's a job that people do.
Guest:Like, it's not just this piece of magic that happens.
Marc:And your father's friendly to you and he's supportive and he loves having you around.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's sweet.
Marc:You have what?
Marc:You have two sisters, right?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Are they there too?
Guest:Yeah, I have one sister who's three years younger than me.
Guest:One of them is on TV, right?
Guest:Yeah, her name's Catherine Reitman.
Guest:She's very, very funny.
Guest:And then I have a sister who's 12 years younger than me, and she's a nurse, and she just had her first baby.
Guest:And Catherine just had her first baby.
Guest:They're both new parents.
Marc:All right, so you knew early on that you wanted to do this.
Guest:Yeah, I knew from moment one, and I think there was a general understanding of kind of anyone around me, anyone were my parents, that I was going to be a director.
Guest:That was kind of the intention since I was like a very, very small child just hanging around set all the time.
Marc:And what were the conversations you would have with your father, you know, once that became a serious...
Guest:You can do whatever you want.
Guest:And then the most serious conversation that we got into happened when I went to college.
Guest:Because right around 16 or 17, I got very intimidated by the idea of being a director.
Guest:I think that was the moment that I became really aware of the perception of who I would be if I was trying to be a director.
Guest:And I thought, if I fail, I'll be failing on a very public level.
Marc:What prompted that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think I just felt the attitude or something.
Guest:And it scared me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I went to college.
Guest:I went pre-med.
Guest:And I thought I'd be a doctor.
Guest:And because no one questions why you become a doctor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And my father visited me at school.
Guest:Where'd you go?
Guest:At first, a school called Skidmore, which is in upstate New York.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:That's a good school.
Guest:And he's like, what are you doing?
Guest:And I told him the truth.
Guest:I told him, you know, I'm really scared of being a director.
Guest:and he told me a story from his own childhood.
Guest:Do you have time for a story?
Guest:I don't want to waste time.
Marc:Sure, of course.
Marc:No, I like it.
Guest:I like it.
Guest:Of course I have time.
Guest:I've got nothing but time.
Guest:When my father was 17, he had gone to Montreal, and just some background, my grandparents were Holocaust survivors who came to Canada with nothing, and my grandfather ran a dry cleaner and then a car wash.
Guest:Did you know them?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:I knew both of them.
Guest:And my father went to Montreal and found these submarine sandwich shops in Montreal that were really successful, and they weren't in Toronto.
Guest:And he came back to Toronto and said to my grandparents, look, you have to give me the seed money to open up one of these places.
Guest:We'll make a fortune there.
Guest:They got lines going around the block out there.
Guest:There's nothing like that here.
Guest:And my grandfather's response was, look, I'm sure these sandwiches are really good.
Guest:And if we scraped the money together, we could make a lot of money.
Guest:And your mother and I would be really proud of you.
Guest:But you need to find something that has magic in it for you.
Guest:And it was off of that conversation that my father went to college on a music scholarship and started a film club and became one of the most successful directors of all time.
Guest:And he told me the story and said, look, there's no more noble a profession in the world than being a doctor.
Guest:And if you became a doctor, your mother and I would be...
Guest:Over the moon would be so proud of you, but I don't think it's actually in your heart.
Guest:I think you're doing it because you're scared, and you need to find something that has magic in it for you.
Guest:And I think you're a storyteller, and you should stop being so scared of that.
Guest:Did you cry?
Guest:It was a big moment.
Guest:It's making me cry.
Guest:I mean, I know the diner we were in.
Guest:I know the rest of the table we were at.
Guest:I've gone back to the diner to get a menu from there to give it to my father.
Guest:I mean, that's a...
Guest:That's the reason I became a director, and I literally came back to LA, and I went to USC, and the head of admissions had no time to sit down with me, so I walked her to her car, and on the way to her car, was convincing her to let me into the school.
Guest:Semester started three days later, and she let me into school.
Guest:I ended with, help me come home.
Guest:I really pushed hard.
Marc:Do you think that maybe the name Reitman might have helped you a little in that particular degree?
Guest:Yeah, it probably did.
Guest:I was a pretty good hustler.
Guest:I'd like to think my disingenuous hustling had something to do with it.
Guest:But yeah, probably.
Guest:But I was an English major there.
Guest:And I started making short films the following year.
Guest:I made a short film called Operation.
Guest:It was a comedy about kidney stealing.
Guest:And it got into Sundance.
Marc:How short is short?
Guest:It was 16 minutes.
Guest:So comedy was the first thing.
Marc:You had an understanding of comedy.
Guest:Yeah, I liked dark comedy.
Guest:And I made five short films, and each one got better, and each one did better.
Guest:They got into more festivals.
Guest:They won more awards.
Guest:So you had a knack for it.
Guest:Yeah, and I built a name for myself in this kind of indie film community.
Guest:I was only playing film festivals.
Guest:It was pretty far away from what my father was doing, and I had no interest in making studio films.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because your father sort of changed the game for film comedy for everybody.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Even before the movies, I mean, he was directing this show called The National Lampoon Show, which... Oh, he did that with the radio show?
Guest:No, it was a live sketch show that was not Lemmings.
Guest:It was called The National Lampoon Comedy Show.
Guest:It predated SNL.
Guest:It had Belushi and it had Bill Murray and it had Harold Ramis in it and Gilda was in it and...
Guest:Yeah, he directed that.
Marc:And it was a live show.
Marc:It was a live show.
Marc:Was that in Canada or New York?
Marc:I think it was a traveling show.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:So he knew all them early on.
Guest:That's how Bill Murray winds up in Meatballs.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And that's how my father's relationship with Harold Ramis starts.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's sad that he passed away.
Marc:It is sad that he passed away.
Marc:Are we close with that family?
Guest:No, it wasn't that close.
Guest:I mean, again, I knew Harold Ramis as a co-worker of my father during a time period of me being like two years old to 11 years old.
Guest:And then shortly thereafter, I think Harold moved to Chicago.
Guest:I mean, it's not as though I spent time with him.
Guest:When I say it's sad, I'm saying this, I think, the way that most people feel.
Guest:But I say that as a film fan, as someone who knows his movies and loved Groundhog Day and loved him as an actor.
Marc:Yeah, it's interesting, because between him and your father, those were the ones.
Guest:They made a lot of important movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And John Hughes, I think, really defined what it was to be funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so you go into this, so you make your short films.
Marc:Now, when you're doing that, are you like, Dad, what do you think?
Marc:Oh, of course.
Marc:Can we go down to the editing bay?
Marc:What kind of equipment?
Guest:Not come down to the editing bay, just how much trouble am I in?
Marc:Yeah, for this, oh, as a filmmaker, with this piece.
Guest:Yeah, and he's such an exceptional producer.
Guest:I think it may be his greatest gift.
Guest:I think if you look at his work, it's not only what he's done as a director, it's what he's done as a producer.
Guest:He's able to get the best out of people.
Guest:And if you talk to writers who have worked with him,
Guest:That is always what they say.
Guest:They say it's one of the most difficult experiences, one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had.
Guest:And no one has ever made me a better version of myself.
Marc:And that's a gift as a son who wants to be a filmmaker that that's really like his particular.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it's tough.
Guest:I mean, it's aggravating when anyone's saying this isn't because he I mean, from moment one.
Guest:We never made a verbal decision, but somehow this decision happened that when he approached my work, he was going to approach it 100% the way as though I were a writer working for him that came in with something.
Guest:So put the baggage aside, the father-son thing.
Guest:And there's no point to giving a compliment.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's no use.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's just, this is bad.
Guest:This is killing you.
Guest:You're five pages too long.
Guest:You're five minutes too long.
Guest:I don't know what you're thinking this scene is doing for you right now.
Guest:Why are you fighting for something that's horrible?
Guest:I mean, it's just going to make you look like a bad director.
Marc:So he helped your understanding of narrative and story and what it should and shouldn't be.
Marc:And how to be ruthless.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also economical.
Guest:Yeah, but I think...
Guest:being economical is something that I think is easy to understand I think being ruthless with your work is a more complicated idea and is a tougher lesson uh and and that means like cutting off a limb saying like you know god damn it that scene was the that I thought that was the best thing about this movie taking something that you love and treating it like something you could butcher and that's that's really tough yeah I have that experience in relationships
Guest:well you had a choice you could be successful or you could be in love that's right you made one choice yeah too many times all right so you do the shorts how many did you do like like did you like what's the i made five of them and uh uh three of them played sundance and one was particularly successful won a lot of awards which one it's called in god we trust yeah
Guest:And and off of that, I got an agent.
Guest:I got people saying, you know, do you want to do you want to direct these broad comedies?
Guest:And I only wanted to make thank you for smoking.
Guest:I had read the book.
Guest:I fell in love with the book.
Guest:I had this clear idea that if I made this as my first movie, it would identify who I was going to be as a filmmaker.
Marc:And also as somebody who, you know, that's a very specific kind of comedy.
Guest:Well, yeah, no, I remember the example I always use is Dude Where's My Car came to me twice.
Guest:And that was a really hard decision because, I mean, it's easy to laugh about, but at the same time, Dude Where's My Car was a studio film.
Guest:This was an opportunity to get paid to direct, direct on a featured film crew with real crew, with real actors.
Guest:It was going to be in theaters.
Guest:My movie would come out.
Guest:It would have a DVD.
Guest:I could go buy a ticket to my movie.
Guest:All the things, all the ephemera of being a filmmaker that one dreams about was available in directing that movie.
Guest:But it would mean...
Guest:From their point on, that's who I'd be, and I would make more movies like that.
Marc:And to turn that corner... Well, not only would you make more movies like that, if you pulled that off, you would be stuck in that system.
Guest:Yeah, it's strangely easier to suggest, I want to make Thank You for Smoking, have never made a movie, rather than say, I want to make Thank You for Smoking, having made three broad comedies.
Guest:Yeah, they'd be like, why?
Guest:Particularly with actors.
Guest:Because at the end of the day, actors make movies.
Guest:So the whole thing is, can you put yourself in a position where an actor says, I want to work with you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I want to work with you on that specifically.
Guest:And having only made some short films, it's, I've written this script.
Guest:Thank you for smoking.
Guest:I've had some success in the film festival world.
Guest:Do you want to come with me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Versus, I made those broad comedies that you know that were very successful, but I generally direct kind of silly stuff.
Guest:Do you trust me with this political satire?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they go, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I see what your sense of humor is.
Guest:Yeah, how are you going to do this?
Guest:And how do you turn them?
Marc:Well, when you looked at that material, when you resonated so deeply with that book, I mean, what was the through line?
Marc:How did you see, even when you talk about those moments up in the air and the moment in Juno,
Marc:What was that for you?
Guest:With thank you for smoking, it was more that I just didn't see anything wrong with him.
Guest:I thought there was something lovely that he was a lobbyist for big tobacco.
Guest:I believe the argument that he uses at one point with his son where he says, you know, everyone deserves a defense in court.
Guest:Well, so do big corporations.
Guest:And I actually kind of buy that as an argument.
Guest:And again, I grew up... I was in high school in the 90s, which was a moment where...
Guest:Everything was scary and nothing was safe.
Guest:And it was hammered into our heads.
Guest:The tobacco was evil.
Guest:And at a certain point, I just thought, I get it.
Guest:Cigarettes are dangerous.
Guest:I'm not going to smoke.
Guest:Just fuck off already.
Guest:And the nanny state really frustrates me.
Guest:And I read this book and I said, oh, finally, somebody has a sense of humor about cigarettes.
Guest:It could have been, frankly, about...
Guest:It could have been about alcohol.
Guest:It could have been about guns.
Marc:There's so many subjects that- You were able to integrate that in a bit?
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:The gun lobby?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was already in the book.
Guest:I mean, the book is written by Christopher Buckley, who is one of our best satirists, and it was brilliantly funny.
Guest:And I'm nowhere as funny as that book.
Guest:I'm not really a funny guy.
Guest:I don't think that's the job.
Guest:I think the job is kind of-
Guest:understanding story and what's humorous and you know as you can see it I mean nothing about any of my approach to anything I've done has been oh well that's funny I think I'll be able to get people to laugh with that I think it's in you it's got to be in you I think there's an instant you know it's funny my father said a week before I keep on saying my father said my father told me a week before I started shooting Thank You For Smoking first movie he called me up and to like for like the last advice call like you're going to make your first movie right
Guest:And the big thing that he hit on, which has stayed with me to this day, and I think is not only good advice for any artist, it's good for anything, is when you're on set, don't worry about what's funny.
Guest:Don't worry about what's dramatic.
Guest:Your barometer for what is funny will never be strong, but your barometer for truth...
Guest:is very strong.
Guest:You know when someone's fucking with you.
Guest:You know when someone's full of shit.
Guest:And when you watch something, you know when it feels false.
Guest:And your job as a director is to figure out why does this feel false?
Guest:Is it because we're starting in the middle of a scene and needed an intro?
Guest:Or the opposite?
Guest:Is it because they're sitting down instead of standing up?
Guest:Is it because he's on the phone?
Guest:Is it because she says this one word?
Guest:She would never actually say that word.
Guest:I think so often is the case that when you're watching your work...
Guest:And there's a sign that doesn't work in it.
Guest:It's not because it's not funny enough.
Guest:I mean, you need to make it funnier.
Guest:It's because it's just not truthful.
Guest:It's not right.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:Because that's like, you know, the difference between hearing that and just trusting your intuition.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:It's fully supporting what you're looking for and it gives it a framework to sort of understand, to go to when something's not working as opposed to looking at the script or maybe if they took a beat here, they took a beat there.
Marc:Maybe it's just not reading as truth.
Guest:And then it becomes part of your approach to everything.
Guest:So you have a conversation with someone on your crew or someone in your cast.
Guest:You're not talking to them about how to make it funnier.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're talking to them about how to make this moment more honest.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because inevitably, if they do make it more honest, it will be funnier.
Guest:Okay, so that movie worked out.
Marc:I thought it was a very successful satire.
Guest:Yeah, it's funny.
Guest:I look at that movie now and I struggle with it because I see the mistakes in it and it's my first movie and I see the things that I was trying to do that sometimes I miss the mark.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:I think just...
Guest:Sometimes the structure of the story or the shooting or it's just, you know, lens choices and things that I just know.
Guest:Oh, or the way I directed an actor.
Guest:Certain things feel arch in a way that I want them to feel more real now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there's an appreciation for that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm very grateful for it.
Guest:But at the same time, I look at it and see the things I'd want to tweak.
Marc:All right, so then with Juno, the lessons that you took from, what was your application there outside of that moment?
Guest:It's hard to identify the application because it is subtle stuff.
Guest:It's like trying to identify how your guitar playing got better over the years, your ability to just hold the frets in a certain way and your ability to kind of hold the body in strong.
Guest:We build confidence.
Guest:Yeah, but your instincts just become better.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Again, I'll relate it back to this.
Guest:You have a scene.
Guest:The purpose of the scene is not actually for the characters to get somewhere because the characters don't exist.
Guest:They're fictitious.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So the purpose is to manipulate an audience to get them to feel something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're getting them to feel all these points along the way.
Guest:So you get better at being very detailed on what decisions to make that will, in the end, get the audience to feel something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:in the same way that in a comedy routine you get better at, for instance, I remember early on, let's just take laughter.
Guest:You want someone to laugh.
Guest:You want to make a joke, you want to get them to laugh.
Guest:When you're a child, all you want is any kind of laugh.
Guest:Just, you get them to laugh, great, I succeeded.
Guest:And then it's, how fast can I get them to laugh?
Guest:How long can I, how hard can I get them to laugh?
Guest:And then it becomes, can I laugh at something that makes them uncomfortable?
Right.
Guest:Can I get them to laugh just in the smallest way at something that's really personal?
Guest:Can I get them to laugh at something they don't believe in?
Guest:It becomes, how can I get more and more articulated what I'm getting them to feel?
Guest:So how you do that is all instinctual and comes from making thousands of micro midair decisions.
Marc:And also taking chances.
Marc:Like, you know, you got to push.
Marc:Like, you know, if something if you're like, oh, that's really dicey.
Marc:Do you feel like that?
Guest:See, I don't feel it.
Guest:Do you feel like you're taking chances when you go out there?
Guest:Do you just feel like this is what I do?
Marc:Well, I feel like this is what I do.
Marc:But I do know sometimes that, you know, that if I'm going to present something that is fundamentally maybe morally questionable.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Or it's going to be challenging.
Marc:Like I need them to know one way or the other that I have resolved around it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, it's not like I know that like I know when an audience is going to be like, oh, geez.
Guest:Like I know that.
Guest:For whatever reason, I have a blind spot.
Guest:I mean, if you look at them, I made a movie about the head lobby.
Guest:I heroized the head lobbyist for Big Tobacco.
Guest:I heroized teenage pregnancy.
Guest:I heroized a guy whose suggestion is that life should be led alone and fires people for a living.
Guest:And never once did I think, boy, this might be tricky for an audience to get their heads around.
Marc:No, but what you sought was the humanity in those characters.
Marc:You may not have put it that way.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't consciously think about that.
Guest:For me, I just thought of them as interesting, romantic, compassionate leads.
Marc:You've humanized these fundamentally challenging personalities and situations.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right, but I guess it's because in real life I think of them that way.
Guest:I never constantly think, boy, I'm taking a chance.
Guest:There's a new project.
Guest:I'm adapting a book right now that came in.
Guest:It was written by the author of The Descendants, and she has a new book.
Guest:It's fantastic.
Guest:And at the beginning of the book, at the beginning of the movie, a woman has lost her 20-year-old son to an avalanche.
Guest:And it's a movie about going through grief.
Guest:And there's a lot of comedy in it, actually.
Guest:Grief is hilarious.
Marc:And I remember my producer, Helen, saying... How you process grief, you know, is... Yeah.
Guest:You need... Oh, and the ownership that other people take over your grief.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So...
Guest:This was kind of a no-brainer.
Guest:I read the book.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:I was like, I want to adapt this.
Guest:I want to direct this.
Guest:But I remember my producer, Helen, and my father at different points saying, it's going to be a little challenging making a movie where, you know, a woman loses her son on, you know, on page one.
Guest:And that didn't occur to me.
Guest:Like, that didn't.
Guest:I was like, oh, that didn't.
Guest:What was your first question?
Guest:Like, why?
Guest:No, I had to stop and go, oh, I see what you're saying.
Guest:People may not want to instinctually see a movie where a woman loses her child at the beginning of the movie.
Guest:For me, that's an opportunity for really an interesting story.
Guest:I'd be much more challenged to come up with a reason to go see a Marvel movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That where I'm like, why would you want to see a movie about, you know, people wearing weird shit, you know, getting on spacecraft.
Marc:Right, because those are mythological narratives.
Marc:I mean, what you're dealing with is, you know, a gut punch of humanity right at the beginning.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And so that sets the stage.
Marc:And now I'm in.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The tone is set and it's something that no one can avoid, loss.
Right.
Guest:Right, and it's something everyone relates to and isn't discussed about in the way that we want to discuss it.
Guest:But that's because people are in profound denial.
Yeah.
Marc:About their mortality in general.
Guest:Right, but these are things that, you know, I don't know.
Guest:It's selfish, but I don't think selflessly about my movies in a way that perhaps I should.
Marc:No, don't.
Marc:I mean, you know, you're fighting a fight that this blind spot you have...
Marc:is compelling you to challenge yourself and to challenge an audience, even though you don't think of it that way.
Marc:It's like it's whatever your father said that was passed down from your grandfather.
Marc:That's the magic that compels you creatively.
Guest:That would be great if my father said.
Guest:Now, when I talked about magic, this is not what I have in mind.
Marc:This is not the magic.
Marc:Well, let's talk about Young Adult.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Your relationship with it.
Marc:That's a Diablo Cody script.
Marc:Yeah, definitely.
Marc:And you like her.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I had her a long time ago.
Marc:Yeah, she's great.
Marc:She's so smart.
Marc:So what was it about that story, essentially?
Guest:Oh, same thing.
Guest:I mean, this is a woman.
Guest:I mean, all right.
Guest:So, again, the one scene, the reason.
Yeah.
Guest:There's a few, but there's one really, which is the main character of a young adult, Mavis, has gone through this movie trying to ruin a marriage.
Guest:That is the conceit of the film.
Guest:Your hero is trying to ruin a marriage.
Guest:And at the moment that she realizes... But these are tragic heroes.
Guest:These are... Yeah, I guess so.
Marc:Some of them, they're categorically anti-heroes.
Guest:If you believe in the idea that people are tragic or not tragic, rather than we're all complicated, we all go after fucked up shit, we have desires, some of them are right, some of them are wrong, we don't categorize them within ourselves, and I guess I don't for characters.
Guest:So she's... Do I have friends who are... Sorry, am I as guilty of wanting things that are as bad as Mavis?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And sometimes I go after them.
Guest:Sometimes I don't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I have my good days and my bad days.
Guest:I mean, who the hell doesn't?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So she's trying to ruin a marriage.
Guest:She finds out that this is not going to work, that she's not going to be successful.
Guest:And she actually comes to a realization that she needs to find something truer in her life and something real and be close to people that she cares about and all these things.
Guest:And she spends a night with Patton Oswalt's character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're the only, they have a unique and beautiful bond.
Guest:There's something, there's an ugliness inside each of them that connects with each other.
Guest:And they have true love.
Guest:And she wakes up the following morning.
Guest:And this should be the moment that she goes on with the rest of her life and everything is great.
Guest:And Patton Oswalt's sister, a character we barely know, played beautifully by Colette Wolfe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we make a 5% change.
Guest:You know, we go to the organic section of the grocery, but we don't make full life changes.
Guest:We make these tiny changes and that's fine.
Guest:But it's a mistake to believe that we make changes the way characters in movies often do.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And so you were fighting that.
Guest:Oh, I loved that.
Guest:I loved, I loved, and Charlize got it immediately and knew what we were doing.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:She really is.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:She's so sharp.
Guest:At first, I mean, first, second time I met her, the first joke she ever told me, she's like, hey, Jason, what's worse than a paper cut?
Guest:And I said, what?
Guest:And she goes, AIDS.
Guest:I was like, I love you.
Guest:I was just like, I was in.
Guest:I was like, you get it.
Guest:You get the joke.
Guest:You get what we're doing here.
Guest:And she was just, and she and Patton got along amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:Well, all right, so now let's go back to your personal life.
Marc:So you're 16.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you start dating this woman who's, what, 10 years younger?
Marc:Older.
Marc:10 years older.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it becomes very serious.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your father says what?
Guest:It's interesting.
Guest:I think there's a moment where your son is dating a 26-year-old, just 10 years old, and then we're like, oh, way to go.
Guest:There's a moment.
Guest:He went on a date.
Guest:That's kind of fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then it gets serious, and I move in with her while I'm still in high school.
Guest:And I think my father, I only know this kind of having conversations after the fact.
Guest:And my father felt very divided about what to do.
Guest:He didn't want to push me towards her.
Guest:And he knew if he really put his foot down, because I'm a stubborn guy.
Guest:I mean, I'm, you know, and particularly at that time.
Guest:Cynical?
Guest:yeah I'm a little bit cynical although I have a big heart I'm sensitive I think if he had pushed really hard on me I would have ran to her and maybe fucked up my life
Guest:And yet he couldn't sit there and go, this is a great idea.
Guest:You should spend all this time with an older woman and miss out on all the things you're supposed to learn right now.
Guest:I didn't try pot until I was 30.
Guest:There's a lot of things that I never just did because...
Guest:I was with this woman who would have thought it was silly if I wanted to go to a frat party.
Guest:That wasn't the life I was living.
Marc:So you're judging yourself against her as opposed to your contemporaries that she had been through.
Guest:I only spent time with her.
Guest:I literally never went to a single party in high school.
Guest:Never went to a party in college.
Guest:What did your mother think?
Guest:She hated her.
Guest:I mean, they both did.
Guest:They both thought that this is a woman who was stealing their son's childhood.
Guest:And at the same time, I was stubborn and I was smart.
Guest:And if you'd come to me to argue about it, it wasn't like you were going to win me over.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would have gotten angrier and ran further.
Guest:And my father talked to me about it.
Guest:He would talk to his friends and try to figure out what the right thing was to do.
Guest:And I presented him with a very difficult situation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it wasn't drugs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at the same time, didn't really drink till I was 30.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Never tried.
Guest:You weren't being a criminal.
Guest:Never tried drugs.
Guest:Wasn't smoking.
Guest:Wasn't a criminal.
Guest:Did great in school.
Guest:Got into all the colleges I applied to.
Guest:Like, you know, I moved into a third.
Guest:I got a job.
Guest:Like, it was just like...
Marc:So on some level, in retrospect, you might have been taking care of yourself in some weird way.
Guest:This is what I know.
Guest:I probably wouldn't be a director if that didn't happen.
Guest:I spent all this time trying to figure out this woman who was 10 years older than me, who had her own issues.
Guest:And all my films are about trying to figure out women as well.
Guest:And it starts with her.
Guest:And she prevented me from kind of being a fuck-up.
Guest:And going to parties and just getting into stupid stuff and going to college.
Marc:Forced you to be an adult in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, she's the woman who took me to see Citizen Ruth and said, Alexander Payne, he's going to be important.
Guest:You've got to remember his name.
Guest:He's going to be important to you.
Guest:And she was absolutely right.
Guest:So she grew me up.
Guest:She taught me a lot.
Guest:She kept me from being a screw up.
Guest:And at the same time, it took a lot for me.
Guest:Yeah, and was she in the business?
Guest:No.
Guest:And do you still?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:No way.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I should have left her a lot earlier than I did, but I was scared.
Guest:I was scared to leave.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So this is going to be your whole conversation with my dad now.
Guest:I'm just realizing.
Guest:Why didn't you get involved in your sexism?
Marc:Nobie, I think you're right.
Marc:What the hell are they going to do?
Guest:Yeah, it's not as easy as drugs.
Guest:Not to say that drugs are easy, but it's not as there isn't a put him in rehab or make sure he's not on that stuff.
Guest:And also they're going to blame her.
Guest:Yeah, and I'm sitting there going, I'm in love.
Guest:I'm happy.
Guest:She's not screwing anything up.
Guest:I'm keeping everything above board.
Guest:So unless you go, we're calling the cops.
Guest:This is statutory rape.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They could have done that.
Guest:They could have done that, but then what do you do?
Guest:Now, your parents put your girlfriend in jail.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:What's your relationship with your parents?
Guest:And instead, my mother and my father and I are really close.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I suppose they did the right thing and the only thing they could do.
Marc:And if you honestly believe that, it sounds like somehow or another this woman enabled you to maybe grow up sooner than you might have needed to, but she probably saved you a lot of fucking aggravation.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, all the mistakes I should have made, I didn't make.
Guest:And developed that, and also pushed me and kind of, I got angry at the time, I got competitive, and that probably is part of what got me in a room writing.
Marc:And do you find that, like, the anger thing, you know, you have the anger thing.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And you say that a lot of your initial projects were the fuck you thing.
Marc:Now, how did that, did that, that played out with her, too?
Marc:You guys fight a lot?
Guest:No, I'm not.
Guest:I'm so scared of fighting that I go into a room and I write.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:I remember, I remember, it's gonna make no sense, but I remember thinking, I need to write a script so good that I can leave her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It doesn't make any sense, but that's what I thought.
Guest:And I would sit there and watch movies that were great and would piss me off.
Guest:They were so good.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, like American Beauty or Good Will Hunting.
Guest:I mean, at the time, they were really modern movies.
Guest:Later on, it became older ones.
Guest:So you didn't think you could leave?
Guest:Yeah, I can't make sense out of that thought.
Guest:I know the feeling.
Guest:But that's what the thought that was in my head.
Guest:And it certainly wasn't.
Guest:Now, if I was having issues with someone I was with romantically, I would talk to them about it.
Guest:And I would be a little, I'd still be scared, but I'd be at least confident enough to push the fear aside and open up and talk to them about it.
Guest:At the time, I didn't know how to do any of that.
Guest:And I just, I was scared.
Marc:No thank you note?
Marc:You never sent it?
Guest:And she was 10 years older than me also.
Guest:So at the end of the day, I was going to lose any fight.
Guest:You're 20, she's 30.
Guest:She's got, she has a huge advantage psychologically.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, she's got, you know, it's like.
Marc:You're in over your head, but it like.
Marc:Completely.
Marc:But it defines you.
Marc:And I wanted to be taken seriously and she took me seriously.
Marc:I'm supportive of that relationship.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:well you know it got me here and you know I think about all the all the people who
Guest:all the young people I knew who were in similar situations, the sons or daughters of people who had been very successful, and the ways that so many of them have stumbled, and I feel very lucky that whatever has happened, happened in the way that it did.
Marc:And you and your father are tight.
Marc:Really tight.
Marc:And he's a tremendous resource, and now you're producing, I imagine that as well, that language.
Marc:He's very helpful in it as well.
Guest:Yeah, but I'm just, I'm nowhere, I can't produce the way he does.
Guest:No, I'm just saying it's good.
Guest:It's... I'm just... Yeah, I'm just fortunate.
Marc:You insist on drawing this wide.
Marc:Yeah, but I'm not... I'm nowhere near his... No.
Guest:Look, I think there's things that I do better than him, but I know the things that he does a lot better than me.
Guest:What do you do better than him?
Guest:Fingerpicking at the guitar?
Guest:No.
Guest:I think...
Guest:I think there's a type of scene that I know how to do, that I know how to do well.
Guest:It's that scene at the end of Young Adult.
Guest:I don't think my father would know what to do with that scene.
Guest:But that comes from also where we grew up.
Guest:Again, so my father...
Guest:My father is born on the border of Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
Guest:The parents are Holocaust survivors.
Guest:They have to escape when he's four years old because of anti-Semitism.
Guest:My grandfather pays off a boat owner to pull up the floorboards of his boat and they hide under the floorboards.
Guest:And he arrives in Canada and just wants to make people fucking happy.
Guest:And that's his movies.
Guest:You go into his movie, and you come out a better person, a happier person than when you walked in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that is the result of someone who shows up, an immigrant in Canada, not knowing a single word of English.
Guest:With Holocaust survivors.
Guest:It's just like, please, just love me.
Guest:And I grew up lucky.
Guest:I grew up in Beverly Hills.
Guest:Sure, I'm fortunate enough to say, I'm going to make movies with unhappy endings where we heroize these horrible people.
Guest:It's a lot easier to do that when you're not worried about...
Guest:Where your next dollar is going to come from and where you kind of already live in a very nice place.
Marc:So, yeah.
Marc:So, I don't know that he would even think to do that at the end of a movie.
Guest:No.
Guest:Why would you do that?
Guest:The best way I've ever been able to articulate it is this.
Guest:My father wants to take your favorite song and play it better than you've ever heard.
Guest:I want to take your least favorite song and play it so good that you like it.
Marc:I think that's great.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me, man.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I had no idea what to expect, but that was a pleasure.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:Look forward, folks.
Marc:Look forward to hearing Ivan Reitman's take on some of the things Jason talked about and just feeling the relationship between the two and the two different conversations.
Marc:I was fascinated by it, and it made me wish I had a better relationship with my dad.
Marc:Go to WTFPod for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Get a little justcoffee.coop.
Marc:Get the WTF plan.
Marc:I got a little bit on the back end of that.
Marc:And, you know, poke around.
Marc:Get the app.
Marc:Do what you got to do, man.
Marc:Do what you got to do.
Marc:Boomer lives!