- [Announcer] Support for "Overheard" with Evan Smith comes from HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy; Claire and Carl Stuart; Christine and Philip Dial; and the Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication: ellergroup.com.

- I'm Evan Smith.

He's an Academy Award-nominated director whose credits include "Thank You for Smoking," "Juno," and "Up in the Air."

His latest film is "Saturday Night."

He's Jason Reitman.

This is "Overheard."

A platform and a voice is a powerful thing.

You really turned the conversation around about what leadership should be about.

Are we blowing this?

Are we doing the thing we shouldn't be doing by giving in to the attention junkie?

As an industry, we have an obligation to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold everybody else.

Thank you.

This is "Overheard."

(audience applauding) Jason Reitman, good to see you.

Thank you for coming back.

- It's lovely to be back.

- Thank you.

And congratulations on this film.

I really liked this movie.

- You act surprised.

(audience laughing) No, here's why I say it the way that I say it.

You know, "Saturday Night Live" is like everybody's thing.

Everybody feels very individually a certain way about this, I think.

So many of us grew up watching that show.

So many of us have a very personal relationship with it.

And if someone is making a movie about something that you feel connected to in some way, it's a little sort of tenuous.

- Yeah, it's kind of like a sports team that's been around for over 50 years.

You can kind of speak to any generation, and they'll point to an era and go, "Well, that clearly was their best era."

- Of course.

- And I think people feel that way about "Saturday Night Live."

They'll point to whoever was on when they were in high school and say, "Well, that was the cast."

- Right, that was my cast.

- No, they'll say that was the cast.

- Yeah, that was my era joke.

(Jason laughs) What I think is great among the many things about this movie is that it is not a positive or a negative portrayal of this show.

It is a very neutral portrayal, I think.

- That's interesting.

I don't think anyone has a negative opinion about "Saturday Night Live."

- Except every critic at some point over the last 50 years, when they call it Saturday Night Dead, right?

Every time there's a period where they think it's not funny, the critics kind of come after it.

- I think we all get old.

We all think, you know, the music these days is too loud.

I mean, look, that happens to all of us.

But look, I mean, the truth is "Saturday Night Live" has had a consistent series of geniuses come through as their cast, as their writers, their cast has gone, I mean, Lorne Michaels has found more movie stars than probably any other person on the planet, more than David O. Selznick.

- Absolutely right.

Yeah.

- And same with the writers.

The writers that come out of that group are geniuses.

- Conan O'Brien, John Mulaney, right?

Many who actually go from being writers to being on the show.

Tina Faye is a good example.

Right.

So I know the answer to this, but I'm gonna ask you like I don't: How did this movie come about?

This was your idea, was it not?

You had the idea some time ago for a movie about this show.

- Yeah, you know, I've been wanting to make a movie that took place in real time.

And that is to say that this is a movie that starts at 10:00 PM and ends at 11:30 PM.

- It's about literally the 90 minutes before the first show ever.

- Yeah, so you can guess what the closing line in the movie is.

- Right.

Yes.

But we don't have to say it.

But they can guess.

- It's kind of fun.

It's kind of fun to be able to spoil it.

It's an unspoilable movie.

The closing line in the movie is: Live from New York.

It's Saturday night.

- Oh, of course.

- And it's the 90 minutes leading up to the first time anyone ever said that.

And that thrilled me, because I grew up on movie sets.

My father was a director.

And my father's name was Ivan Reitman.

- Your father is one of the great directors of my lifetime and of the modern era.

- Yeah, he directed "Ghostbusters" and he directed- - We all miss him.

- Yeah.

"Twins."

And he produced "Animal House."

- He was involved with, I think he was a producer on "Stripes."

- He directed "Stripes."

- And directed "Stripes."

- Directed "Dave."

I mean, he added to the culture, which meant for me that I grew up on movie sets.

You know, as a kid, my dad and I would wake up at the crack of dawn and show up on set, and I would see 100 people coming off the trucks, and they would build a movie on a daily basis.

And so I was surrounded by people who told stories every day, who created dreams.

And it's like, that life is a circus life, you know?

You wake up early.

It's long days, and every day you do something new.

You do something that's never been done before.

And I think the reason I wanted to tell the story is SNL does that on a weekly basis.

They start the week having no idea what they're gonna make.

And by Saturday, they put on a 90-minute extravaganza and they do it live.

- Yeah, and to the point that you made about your dad and being on sets, it's not just that you got to see that experience over the years play out.

But in the case of this very specific thing, we're talking about "Saturday Night Live," many of the key people from the early days were on those sets.

- Yeah, no, and these were people- - John Belushi was in "Animal House."

Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd were in "Ghostbusters."

- Yeah.

- You know, Bill Murray was in "Stripes."

Like, these are people who actually you have a relationship with.

- No, they were at my bar mitzvah.

- In a literal sense, right, yeah.

- And so I know them.

I know them as human beings.

And it was really interesting for me to think about who were they five minutes before they became stars.

You know, when I asked Dan Aykroyd what was going through your mind before SNL went live for the first time, he literally just said, "Well, you know, I was thinking I still got a snowplow up in Toronto, so I got a job waiting for me."

- Right, if this doesn't work out.

- Yeah, and their heads were all over the places.

And the more that, you know, I interviewed, I had to try to do your job for the first time, which was be a journalist and interview every human being I could find that was in the building that night: actors, writers, people, the crew- - And how eager were they to tell their stories?

- Quite, you know.

- They were.

- Well, particularly as you go through the crew, 'cause I think people like Lorne Michaels and Dan Aykroyd are constantly being interviewed.

But to speak to members of Billy Preston's band or to speak to the art department, to speak to the costumes folks, you know, the people who actually built this show.

And I think they could tell I was earnestly interested in representing them, about the entirety of the people who were on the show.

- That show does not happen without the hard work of a lot of people.

- Oh.

- And, you know, here in the 50th anniversary of the show's launch where there are documentaries literally about the show over those 50 years, we're seeing some of those behind-the-scenes people in real time for the first time tell stories.

And they're as interesting as the cast (faintly speaking).

- When I was a kid and I would watch SNL, they would do these things, tell me if you remember this, they'd do these bumpers where they'd finish a sketch, and then just for a moment, the camera would show the crew moving around the set.

You would hear someone go, and we need this actor to get to the stage left.

Three, two- - There's still a little bit of that.

Right, yeah.

- And just for a few moments you would see behind the scenes.

And I would always go, "Wait, who were they?

I want to know more about them."

Who is this crew that, you know, they do a table read on Wednesday of about four hours of sketches, and then they pick which ones are going on the show.

And at that moment, as most people in New York are going to sleep, there's a mill in Brooklyn that's making sets.

- Making sets.

- And they're painting on Thursday.

And there's, you know, seamstresses who are taking, they're taking whole cloth and they're starting to build costumes.

And sometimes they find out on a Saturday.

You know, these days, if someone in politics does a press conference on a Saturday, they're already trying to figure out, all right, how are we gonna rebuild that costume for tonight?

- Right, yeah, because they have to pivot in the moment.

They have to react to the news.

So the 90-minute constructs, the way that you decided to do this film, was there ever a thought in your mind of doing this differently?

Or was that always the plan?

- No, in fact, my first horrible idea was I was gonna do the entire movie in one shot.

So it was gonna be an actual 90-minute shot: no stitches, no hidden edits, start to finish.

And my thought was every day we'd shoot the entire movie, and then the next morning we'd all watch it together, give each other notes, and then go shoot the entire movie again.

And do that until we got it right.

And then my father, who was still alive at the time, said that's a horrible idea (laughs).

(audience laughing) And most smart people in my life agree.

- Am I not wrong?

It's been done?

- Only a couple of times.

There was a German movie called "Victoria," which is amazing.

- So the 90-minute thing is one thing about this film that I came away thinking, really interesting and different from how some other people would've approached it.

But the other is, except in a couple of cases, you've cast largely unknowns, unknowns to most of us who watch movies.

I mean, obviously, you know, Matthew Reese is in it as George Carlin from "The Americans," guy we know from "The Americans."

Nicholas Braun from "Succession" actually has two parts: he's Jim Henson and he's also Andy Kaufman.

- J.K. Simmons, who you know, is in it.

Who was in "Juno," John Baptiste.

But the main players.

- Got it, when we come down to the original seven- - The cast, and even the actor who plays Lorne Michaels, I had not seen before.

- Well, look, I thought of this idea, which was 90 minutes till showtime with SNL, the first time they ever pulled us off a lot, this is a good idea.

And anyone I would tell this idea, they would be like, that's a great idea.

And then the first thing they'd say is: "But it's impossible to cast."

And they're right.

It's a really hard movie to cast because we have such distinct ideas in our head of what these people looked and felt like.

We all remember Gilda Radner.

We all remember John Belushi.

All remember- - We all remember Chevy Chase.

- Chevy Chase.

And then there's all these other people who were in the building that night.

What a lot of people forget is that people like Jim Henson were on the show on night one.

Andy Kaufman is on the show night one.

You know, Billy Preston, Janis Ian.

So there's a lot of faces that we know.

And I think I figured out pretty quickly with my casting director that, one, it's a lot better if the actor who's playing them are not people we already recognize.

It's not like, oh, there's Ryan Gosling playing Chevy Chase.

- Because you can't help but think it's Ryan Gosling.

- Yeah, exactly.

And also, the trick was when actors started auditioning for the movie, they would often emulate the sketches that we know them by, which is to say a heightened version of it.

It's Dan Aykroyd doing the Bass-O-Matic sketch, as opposed to Dan Aykroyd is- - It's parody.

- Yeah, exactly.

A human being.

And what was really running through, you know, the veins of all these actors is the anxiety of whether they could pull it off.

And so it's about finding- - Which, by the way, matches the anxiety of whether they could pull it off on the actual first show.

- Yeah, exactly.

- Right.

I think that's absolutely perfect.

I mean, I thought they were all great.

I mean, this is really where I want to go with this, is you made a decision that turned out really well.

- Again, shock, surprise, zero- - I'm usually surprised.

- I'm 10 movies in.

I mean, come on, at some point you have to have some confidence in me.

- You've done this before.

I should have faith.

You know who I loved?

I loved the guy who played Garrett Morris.

- (laughs) Somehow pulled it off.

- Somehow pulled it off.

- On the poster (laughs).

(audience laughing) - I'm just gonna get eaten alive for the remainder of this show, aren't I.

The guy who played Garrett Morris, who just won an Emmy - Yeah, Lamar Morris.

- for the last season of "Fargo."

- Yeah.

He's brilliant.

- Right.

He was absolutely terrific.

And he conveyed Garrett Morris', which if you've read about those early days of the show, feeling a little bit lost or dislocated.

Feeling like an outsider.

Yeah.

- Like an outsider.

He did a terrific job of conveying that.

- Yeah, you know, I think, at the end of the day, we had to identify...

This is a movie that introduces you to 20 main characters right at the top of the film.

You're thrown, you know, into "30 Rock."

And we're giving you character after character, and you're trying to keep track of all these different plot lines that are happening.

And you're just over the shoulder of Lorne Michaels as he goes from floor to floor and tries to pull the show off.

And we needed to identify really just like one idea for each actor, so when you saw them, you knew where they were.

And, you know, for Garrett Morris, he was trying to figure out who he was.

He was going through a crisis of identity, not only as the only Black actor in an all-white cast, but also as someone who was older than the rest of the cast, someone who went to Juilliard and wasn't a sketch comedian.

- He was a real artist.

- And then, you know, Chevy Chase.

You know, the one idea was an ego needs to be humbled.

And so with each character, we were able to boil it down to one idea.

And that's what I would work with the actors on.

- Amazing.

So before we move on to the situation in Hollywood and filmmaking generally, which I really do want to talk about, I want to talk about Lorne Michaels.

Because at the end of the day, after 50 years, the star of the show has always been and is Lorne Michaels on some levels, right?

Lorne Michaels really is the daddy.

- Yeah, I mean, if you talk about, you know, I can't remember the name of the Greek ship where they, you know, you take out, you switch out every single piece, is it still the same ship?

And SNL is that, except for Lorne Michaels.

He's the one piece of the ship that's never been replaced.

- Yeah, how involved was he, in your mind, in essentially blessing how this came together?

Because in theory he had to sort of say grace over it.

Maybe not literally sign off on it, but you couldn't do it without Lorne Michaels kind of being (faintly speaking).

- If Lorne didn't want this movie to exist- - It would not have existed.

- It would not exist.

And it was the first call, first conversation, first interview.

And I've known Lorne for a little while.

Lorne was very gracious and allowed me to be a guest writer.

- Right, you wrote that Death by Chocolates sketch.

- Yeah, exactly, right after "Juno" my agent asked me: "What do you want to do next?"

And I said, "Well, I've had a dream since I was a little kid to be a writer at SNL."

And he did let me write for a week.

It was one of the greatest weeks of my life.

So Lorne gave us his blessing, and then we were off to the races.

- Amazing.

Well, it's a great movie.

And I don't know that people have appreciated it as much as I have or as they should.

And congratulations on that.

- Well, I think they're similarly nervous.

- They're all like, "I can't believe this is good.

I'm shocked."

(Jason laughs) So "Thank You for Smoking" was your first... Was that your first film?

- That was my first film.

- And that was in 2000 and... - Five.

- Five.

So we're 20 years at this point.

- You blink your eyes.

- How has Hollywood, in your mind, materially changed?

What is different about the way you approach the work that you do, beyond the fact that you're a known quantity?

- Yeah.

- But even then, I suspect, because your last name was Reitman, like, you were not not a known quantity.

Like, people understood that you had a history in the business, as the family business, right?

- Well, you know, it's funny, you and I have been joking about, you know, your questioning of my abilities (laughs).

- My complete lack of confidence in you.

- But I think that probably was my case coming in, I think, as the son of a famous director.

I mean, if you hear that the son of somebody wants to do anything- - Nepo baby.

- Yeah, and I think there's kind of a presumption that they are a spoiled brat who's never worked a day in their life, who probably doesn't know how to do anything and probably has an alcohol or a drug problem.

I mean, like, that's the idea going in.

So kind of there's a pretty low bar in that, that people presume that I'm gonna be an idiot who doesn't know how to anything.

So in a weird way, I only have to do kind of a modicum of decency.

- Right, well, it's like a low curb to step over.

- Yeah, you know, if I could fold my own clothes, people are like, "Huh, nicely done."

- So one difference is that today, obviously, you're a known quantity, right?

Is it harder to get movies made today, generally speaking- - And this is where it's at.

I mean, jokes aside, I think the big difference is how and where we watch things.

- Right.

Distribution.

- That's the real difference.

Yeah, and exhibition, and our relationship with movie theaters, our relationship with our phones, our relationship with streaming.

The rise of brilliant television.

And why we go to the movies.

And going to the movie theater is very important to me.

And not only personally for me, but I think it's important culturally, and it's something I believe in.

- Do you think it's important that people see your movies in the theater?

I'm gonna cop to this.

I saw it on streaming.

- How dare you.

No.

(audience laughing) - But do you think that somehow the experience for me was less as a consequence of watching it on streaming?

- I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why.

And look, you know, I know the moment my movies are available on airplanes, 'cause that's when I get all the text messages.

(Evan laughs) But this is what I'd say, is I think Hollywood has done a disservice in telling people that the importance of going to a movie theater is the size of the screen and the quality of the sound.

'Cause the truth is that we all actually have good screen and sound at home now.

You know, you can go to the Walmart and you can get it- - [Evan] Price point has come down.

- You can get a big television.

That's not the point.

And I love watching things at home.

So it's not that either.

There's very few places that we all come together as a group and watch things and experience them collectively, no matter who we are, no matter what we believe in, no matter where we're from.

And we're becoming more and more and more divided.

And obviously, I'm sure you've talked about this to death, the fact that- - But it's true.

- That said, there is a moment in a movie theater when a group of people who don't know each other, who could believe cosmically different things, they watch a comedy and they all laugh together.

Or they watch a horror film and they all jump together.

And it's a moment that we feel this bond.

And when a great movie ends, you look to the person sitting next to you, whether you know them or not, and you just have eye contact, like, "Oh, can't believe we just went through that."

And your face is still red from laughing.

Or your heartbeat's still going from, you know, the jump scares of a horror film, and we feel connected.

I really think that movie theaters and studios and us, the storytellers, have a job to do in convincing people, come back out, it's actually worth it.

- But of course, Jason, the alternative to this is that with the greater number of distribution channels, presumably there's more opportunity to take an idea and actually see it realized, right?

And the way that television is the new movies, like, terrible phrasing, but you know that's the concept, it seems like you have a lot more platforms or a lot more, you know, venues for you to tell the kinds of stories you want.

- Yes and no, but I still want to make movies for movie theaters.

- Yeah, you're an old-fashioned guy.

- Oh man.

There are the existing amount of movie theaters; we're not building a lot more right now, and there's only so many screens.

And often they're all taken by, you know, one Spider-Man movie.

So there isn't as much opportunity.

And look, when "Juno" came out, everyone went to see that in the movie theaters.

If "Juno" came out today, I think a lot of people would say: Alright, probably watch it at home.

What's the story about?

Pregnant teenage girl?

I think I could probably watch that at home.

And you'd miss out on that experience of laughing with a group of people, crying with a group of people.

And it's cathartic.

I think it's important.

- Yeah.

Leaving aside the question of how we watch movies, do you find that the studios are still as receptive to the kinds of movies that you want to make?

- Oh, absolutely not (laughs).

(audience laughing) No.

Look, I think, you know, we've gone through over a decade of Marvel.

And the truth is that Marvel and Star Wars made some great films, and there's a reason why people went to see them.

But look, in any business, you go after what you trust and what economically is viable.

And that really works.

It's a lot scarier.

Even though one of my movies is much less expensive, it's a lot scarier to bet on something where you just don't know how it's gonna go.

- We have a couple of minutes left.

I want to come back to actually something that we talked about.

I didn't know we were gonna talk about this at the beginning, but I want to come back to it, and that's your dad.

- Mm-hmm.

- He was truly a singular figure in entertainment.

And, you know, I'm almost 60 in my life as I think about the period of time in which I came of age as a moviegoer, as a movie watcher.

He was a very important figure.

So I want to understand what you learned from him - Everything.

- about making movies.

Like what material things do you think about today, that the experience of having observed him or talking movies with him, as I'm sure you did endlessly, what'd you learn?

- You got 10 days?

I mean, I'm the son of an extraordinary man.

Yeah, you are.

- In every way.

All the ways that you just described, but plus much more.

You know, my father was four years old when his family, who had survived the Holocaust, escaped under the floorboards of a boat from, you know, communist Czechoslovakia.

They went up to Danube River to Vienna, and then finally immigrated to Canada.

My father, you know, had to learn English and learned to be a storyteller.

And, you know, my grandparents had a dry cleaner they lived at the top of.

And my father went on to be one of the greatest directors of all time.

And, you know, I grew up in Beverly Hills and a much different childhood.

- Yeah, it's a long way from communist Czechoslovakia.

- Yeah.

- It's also a long way from the 51st state: Canada.

Right?

- How dare you.

(audience laughing) As a Canadian, I say how dare you.

Look, one of the hardest things to tell your child is you could do a better job.

- Yep.

- As a parent, all you ever want to say, my daughter's 18 years old, all I ever want to say is you're the best.

You're great.

I'm so proud of you.

It's really hard to say I think you have more work to do.

And my father, while making all these films and while being as successful as he was, still found the time to tell me you have more work to do.

And he was hard on me.

- He pushed you.

- Yeah.

In a way that I did not appreciate as a teenager.

- Right, but you look back on it and you think (faintly speaking).

- You know, he said to me once, you know, I realized at 16 that you could write, and at that point I was gonna treat you like a real writer.

- [Evan] Oh wow.

What a thing to say.

- Yeah, the first time I gave him the script for "Up in the Air," which is probably the best thing I've ever written, and went on to get, you know, nominated for best screenplay, he read the script, he looked at me, he said, "A movie needs a plot."

(all laughing) - Is that right?

He said that to you?

- Literally, that was his response.

- That's a sick burn.

- And when he passed, and by the way, my dad and I, it's not that my dad was shy of affection.

My dad and I spoke almost every single day, told each other how much we loved each other constantly.

He was really warm.

But when he passed, I went through his office, I was going through his archives, I was going through all his paperwork.

I'm finding all these scripts that have all these handwritten notes on 'em.

So I'm finding scripts of other writers, and also I'm finding scripts of my own.

And he kept every single script of mine, you know?

And I'm looking through the notes on other writers, and there's fair criticism.

And on mine it's brutal.

- Brutal.

- It's just twice as much.

And at first you go, "Come on, this is your son."

But then what I realized is that his great gift in life as an artist was getting the best out of others.

That's what you're trying to do as a director.

you're trying to inspire someone.

You could see something great in him.

You just want him to be the best version.

And that's why I think actors in his movies were the best you ever saw of them.

Bill Murray, never better than when he was with my dad.

Dan Aykroyd, never better than when he was with my dad.

Arnold Schwarzenegger.

You know what Arnold's first film that grossed a hundred million dollars was?

It was not any of those action films.

It was "Twins."

- It was "Twins."

- Yeah.

And what he wanted out of me was the best version of me.

And I'll never be able to thank him enough for that.

- That's amazing.

So I asked you what you're doing next, and you're like, eh, and you're like, "Always Ghostbusters," is what you said, right?

- (laughs) Yeah.

- It is gonna be with you forever.

- Yeah, and look, you know, it'll sound funny, but like any kid, you know, I ran away from like what my father did as much as any other person.

And the first, you know, 10 times my dad asked, "You don't want to join the 'Ghostbusters' business?"

I'd be like, "No, that's your thing."

I'm gonna make my own movies.

And then I made a "Ghostbusters" movie.

And it was extraordinary, 'cause I got to make that movie with my dad.

I got to tour the world with my father, be in theaters where I'd introduce him and say, "Ladies and gentlemen, Ivan Reitman."

And they would just stand, and then they would clap and he would cry.

And it was amazing.

And when he passed, something unexpected happened, which is I became the steward of Ghostbusters.

It became my job to look over this franchise.

And that doesn't just mean write or direct movies; that means there's a animated television show.

There are toys.

There's a comic book.

- Why do you think it's had so much, why it's so pervasive culturally?

- I've thought about this a lot, as you can imagine.

And I think it's a few things.

One, it's a brilliant film, just hands down.

- Holds up, by the way.

If you go back and watch the first one today, it holds up.

- It's genius.

- Two, the logo.

Sony has done studies on the logo.

It's as recognizable worldwide as McDonald's and as Coca-Cola.

You can show that Ghostbuster's logo anywhere in the world, they know what it is.

- Amazing.

- They know it more than any other franchise.

The Ghostbuster's logo with no words, you know it before you would know Indiana Jones.

The song.

The song was the number one hit worldwide.

There are countries where people know that song and continue to dance to it, and they don't know there's a movie that's attached to it, 'cause the movie never opened there.

Also, and most importantly, in a strange way, it's not a comedy.

It is a horror science fiction film that happens to star three of the most brilliant comedians of all time.

And that's why it worked, is you went in thinking you were watching a comedy, and all of a sudden the library ghost comes up and the terror dogs come up and it scares the pants off of you.

And it's that mix of genre, that thing that makes you want to share it with your kids.

It's the first horror film a lot of kids ever saw.

Because at seven years old, you may not be ready for "A Nightmare on Elm Street," - But you're ready for that.

- but you're gonna try "Ghostbusters."

And you go like this the first time, and you go like this the next time, and finally you're watching it.

It's an indelible franchise.

And the characters, the ghosts, you can recognize the ghosts from their silhouette.

Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, all you have to see is the silhouette and you know what it is.

- It's amazing to think about it.

Alright.

We're out of time.

Take care of Ghostbusters.

(Jason laughs) Please.

And take care of yourself.

Jason Reitman, thank you very much.

- Thank you very much.

- Nice to be with you today.

(audience applauding) We'd love to have you join us in the studio.

Visit our website at austinpbs.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

- You have to learn that voice nagging in the back of your head that wants to be on the page.

It's not something to be ashamed of.

And you have to start practicing writing in that voice, and come to say I love you to your voice the way that you need to say I love you to the person in the mirror.

Because the truth is that's what the rest of us are waiting for.

We don't need another Quentin Tarantino.

We already have him.

- [Announcer] Support for "Overheard" with Evan Smith comes from HillCo Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy; Claire and Carl Stuart; Christine and Philip Dial; and the Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication: ellergroup.com.

(whimsical flute music)