When Jason Reitman began writing “Up in the Air” about six years ago, the economy was still going gangbusters. Then as the still-20-something-year-old writer-director was making “Thank You For Smoking” and then “Juno,” the American economy and global financial system went into freefall.
Suddenly that movie he was writing about a commitment-phobic executive who fired people for a living took on an immediate relevancy.
“When I started writing, we were in an economic boom, and it was a satire. As the economy changed, I realized it wasn’t so funny anymore,” said Reitman at Saturday’s press conference for the movie.
It is hard to imagine that this tightly-crafted comedy will not hit a cultural nerve, coming in the midst of so much economic hardship.