Jason Reitman

What were your first conversations about how to play Bingham? Jason Reitman: Our first conversation wasn't about what the script meant -- there was an understanding of what we were making the movie about. Our first conversation was really, "When do you want to start? When do you want to stop? How many takes do you like doing?" It was just kind of a quick understanding of how do you actually like to make movies -- the process. Not about the film's tone? George Clooney: When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best.

'Live Read,' directed by Jason Reitman Where: Bing Theater, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. When: Thurs., 7:30 p.m. Price: $10 for general public; $7 for LACMA members, seniors (62-plus), and students with valid ID; $5 for LACMA Film Club, Film Independent and New York Times Film Club members.

FOR a salty comedy about a pregnant teen, "Juno" enjoyed a painless birth. "It was a perfect shoot," says director Jason Reitman in a room at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, still buzzing with energy from the Oscar nominees' luncheon he'd just attended downstairs. "We needed snow to shoot winter, and out of nowhere -- this never happens in Vancouver in the middle of March -- it just dumped snow for a day. This is a film that has just been blessed from moment one all the way until now.

Director Jason Reitman is promising some colorful stage directions when he and a group of actors perform a live, onstage reading of "Shampoo," the 1975 film that starred Warren Beatty as a promiscuous Beverly Hills hairdresser, on Thursday. "That will be the funny part. I will be reading all the sex scenes," Reitman laughs. "So I will be announcing every thrust. " Reitman's "Live Read" program has had instant sellouts since the series began last October as part of the new Film Independent program of classic and contemporary film at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Once a month, Reitman presents a cinema favorite with a different cast of actors cold-reading the famous scripts.

Jason Reitman, director and screenwriter of "Up in the Air," has listed his Beverly Hills home for sale at $1,595,000, the Multiple Listing Service shows. The redone contemporary house, built in 1962, features walls of glass, vaulted ceilings and terrazzo and hardwood floors. The single-story, 2,459-square-foot home has a media/family room, three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Glass panels enclose the swimming pool. Before Reitman, 33, was nominated for an Oscar for directing the 2009 film, he directed "Juno" (2007)

Jason Reitman is the first to tell you that he's an "aisle." He prefers sitting in an aisle seat on an airplane, which is relevant because his new film, "Up in the Air," in theaters Friday, is shot extensively on planes and in airports. It details the life of urbane corporate-downsizing expert Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who flies around the country firing people and studiously avoiding human connection. For Reitman, an aisle is never just an aisle or a preference for legroom but an actual psychological tag, which he describes as "selfish."

It takes an army to make a movie, hundreds of cast members and extras, miles of cable, tanker trucks of coffee . . . lights, cameras, cranes. Now try getting that all past the Transportation Security Administration, as the filmmakers did for "Up in the Air," the new release about a love affair with flying, in theaters nationwide on Christmas Day. "The hardest part, by far, was crowd control," says director Jason Reitman. "It'd be going OK, and then everyone would stop to try to get a look at George Clooney."

"Up in the Air" makes it look easy. Not just in its casual and apparently effortless excellence, but in its ability to blend entertainment and insight, comedy and poignancy, even drama and reality, things that are difficult by themselves but a whole lot harder in combination. This film does all that and never seems to break a sweat. Credit for this coup goes to writer-director Jason Reitman, who made Walter Kirn's novel his own, using it as the jumping off point for a bittersweet look at the life and times of a happy road warrior, beautifully played by George Clooney, who willingly spends so much of his life on airplanes that he's not exaggerating when he says "to know me you have to fly with me."

In the West Hollywood offices of Jason Reitman's production company Hard C, the power is out and the Internet is on the fritz. Reitman and his longtime producing partner Daniel Dubiecki -- whose latest offspring, "Juno," an offbeat comedy about teen pregnancy, will screen Monday night as AFI Fest's centerpiece gala -- are passing the time by indulging in a conversation about who brings the feminine energy to their relationship. "I would have taken full credit for that," Dubiecki says. "Yeah?

It's as inescapable as any law of physics: To be a movie director, you must first direct a movie. But being a movie director and becoming one are two fundamentally dissimilar things, as the filmmaking participants in the Envelope Roundtable made clear. For nearly two hours, five of the year's most celebrated filmmakers gathered together at The Times discussed the challenges -- and rewards -- of making distinctive and often highly personal movies, even as the studios grow all the more interested in presold sequels, remakes and adaptations of board games.

Jason Reitman, director of the recently released comedy "Young Adult," has sold his Beverly Hills home for $1.475 million, the Multiple Listing Service shows. The redone contemporary house, built in 1962, features walls of glass and vaulted ceilings. The single-story, 2,459-square-foot home includes a media/family room, three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Glass panels enclose the swimming pool. Reitman, 34, was nominated for Oscars for directing "Up in the Air" (2009) and "Juno" (2007)

When it's done right, as it is in "Young Adult," there is something absolutely mesmerizing about watching a train wreck unfold on screen. When the wreck in question is a narcissistic beauty played to scheming, sour, downward-spiraling perfection by Charlize Theron, cringing is definitely called for, but so is laughter. In fact that's exactly the reaction director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody are going for. Paired up for the first time since their 2007 knockout punch "Juno," the two ironists have switched sides in a sense.

It was the last day of a speedy, 30-day shoot for Jason Reitman's "Young Adult" and the crew was ready to escape the cutting cold of suburban New York last November. But Reitman wasn't yet satisfied, even though all the scene he was shooting required was that his star, Charlize Theron, pull an audiocassette out of a bag and stick it into her car's tape player. Theron was playing the unstable ghost writer Mavis Gary, and the tape was a talisman of a life she once led that had vanished along with her youth, leaving Mavis a sad, 37-year-old singleton.

Much like her character in the new film "Young Adult," Charlize Theron is a stalker. While the film's Mavis goes after an old boyfriend, Theron has begun targeting interesting directors willing to see beyond her striking beauty. After having taken on challenging roles in the past only to have them disappoint in the execution, the 36-year-old actress now looks to work with visionaries at the helm of her films. She sought out Jason Reitman at last year's Academy Awards, where the writer-director had been nominated for his George Clooney-starring "Up in the Air," Theron's favorite film of 2009.

Loopy on a powerful cocktail of Zithromax and DayQuil to fight an infection that's making him cough like a "fat Doc Holliday," Patton Oswalt is on a tear. Bouncing from the merits of podcasting to the taboos of Comic-Con, the 42-year-old comedian is a veritable human Wikipedia, tossing thoughtful film and book references into every topic he touches. Flu medicine notwithstanding, it's a thinking man's stream-of-consciousness conversation. What makes it all so much fun is that Oswalt is doing the exact thing he's supposed to be doing.

Jason Reitman, director and screenwriter of "Up in the Air," has listed his Beverly Hills home for sale at $1,595,000, the Multiple Listing Service shows. The redone contemporary house, built in 1962, features walls of glass, vaulted ceilings and terrazzo and hardwood floors. The single-story, 2,459-square-foot home has a media/family room, three bedrooms and three bathrooms. Glass panels enclose the swimming pool. Before Reitman, 33, was nominated for an Oscar for directing the 2009 film, he directed "Juno" (2007)

A veteran performer from the age of 12, when her turn in a Broadway production of "High Society" earned her a Tony Award nomination in 1998, Anna Kendrick has steadily built an impressive résumé on film with confident, eye-catching performances in such indies as "Camp" and "Rocket Science," both of which earned her Independent Spirit Award nominations. Her profile rose considerably with a supporting turn as Jessica Stanley in "Twilight" and its sequel "New Moon," but it's Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air" that has critics and audiences taking full notice of Kendrick's talents.

In this interview series, we ask some famous free-thinkers to recast the Oscars in their own image. Welcome, please, Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award winner Oscar Nuñez of "The Office." Q: Oscar, who's going to win the Oscar this year? A: I think (and hope) that Jeff Bridges, Christoph Waltz, Mo'Nique and Sandra Bullock all win. And I think "Avatar" will win, of course. Mr. Cameron revolutionized filmmaking; he turned the entire industry on its head, leveled the playing field, then burned it to the ground.

Filmmaker Jason Reitman took some time out of his hectic award season schedule (for his Oscar-nominated "Up in the Air") to take over programming at the New Beverly Cinema beginning Friday. The writer-director is also on tap to appear at the revival theater -- schedule permitting -- to introduce his faves. Screening Friday and Saturday is a Matthew Broderick double bill: John Hughes' "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" from 1986 and Alexander Payne's razor-sharp 1999 satire, "Election."