“Never mistake your location for your story. In Saturday Night, SNL is the location for a story about one generation ripping television out of the hands of another. It’s about— what does it feel like when a show comes together in real time? It’s a storytelling experience where you’re following twenty or thirty characters in real time for 90 straight minutes. I believe in the ride; it’s a piece of engineering, this film.”
-Jason Reitman, episode 388 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Since his directorial debut in 2006, Jason Reitman has made the kind of films they say Hollywood doesn’t make anymore.
Today, we sit to discuss his latest project Saturday Night (9:09), the influence of 1970s movies like Michael Ritchie’s The Candidate (12:46), and the details Reitman and his co-writer Gil Kenan collected from dozens of interviews leading up to production (17:45). Then, Jason describes the dynamic between Lorne Michaels and his father, the late director Ivan Reitman (21:55), his formative years at the movie theater (25:50), and the filmmakers that shaped his early work: Alexander Payne, Kevin Smith, Spike Jonze, and Richard Linklater (31:03).
On the back-half, we talk about Reitman’s debut film Thank You For Smoking (39:06), the collaborators that shaped Juno (42:50), his personal connection to Up in the Air (43:10), and lessons from making Young Adult (49:43) and Labor Day (51:08). To close, a story about fatherhood (53:00) and the joy of directing (58:58).
Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at sf@talkeasypod.com.
Show-notes:
- See Saturday Night in theaters nationwide.
- Find more of Jason’s films discussed today: Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air, Men, Women & Children, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
- Follow Jason on Instagram.
- For more episodes, hear our talks with Richard Linklater, Lulu Wang, Lee Daniels, Steven Soderbergh, and Francis Ford Coppola.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
Illustrations by Krishna Shenoi.
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