Director Jason Reitman’s Love Letter to ‘Saturday Night’

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).

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