Quotes by Jason Reitman

“We were about 30 minutes into our screening when I noticed a scene was missing. I assure you it was a projectionist, not Tom Cruise.”

“The film has less to do with smoking and more to do with parenting .”

“We were sitting there in shock. And I turned to other people who had worked on the film, and we were completely confused. But the audience didnt seem to notice or care.”

“There were a couple of thousand people who saw the film at Sundance without the Katie Holmes sex scene. I implore all of them to now go back and see the movie with the Katie Holmes sex scene.”

“This is a movie more about spin and talk and lobbying than it is about cigarettes.”

“Id like Hard C to be a modern day National Lampoon -- a name that is immediately recognized as a standard for unique subversive comedy.”

“I didnt want it to be another one of those movies. I could have made it five years ago if I had changed the ending.”

“For some reason, tobacco really makes people mad. Its not like other issues of vice. I dont know exactly why, but I can feel it, and I think thats why the book works so well.”

“Aarons the guy you follow into battle. Hes broad, hes got a strong chin ? a mans-man kind of persona. Very few actors ... can say subversive things and come off charming. Robert Redford and Paul Newman were guys who could do that.”

“You know that guy who could get any girl? Thats me, on crack.”

[With comedy and wanting to make people laugh,] when youre a child, all you want is ANY kind of laugh. You get them to laugh, and great! - youve succeeded. And then its How FAST can I get them to laugh? How LONG can I get them to laugh?, How HARD can I get them to laugh?. And then it becomes: Can I laugh at something that makes them uncomfortable?, Can I get them to laugh at something that challenges their beliefs?

When my father was 17, he went to Montreal and found these submarine sandwich shops that were really successful, and werent in Toronto [his home town]. So he went to my grandparents and said: Look, you have to give me the seed money to open up one of these places. Well make a fortune. Theyve got lines going round the block. Theres nothing like that here. And my grandfathers response was: Look, Im sure these sandwiches are really good, and if we scraped the money together we could make a lot of money and your mother and I would be really proud of you, but you need to find something that has *magic* in it for you. It was off of that conversation that my father went to college on a music scholarship, started a film club and became one of the most successful directors of all time.

I hear the way people talk about the children of famous people. Theyre not treated very well. The presumptions are usually quite awful. So I tried to establish myself with a couple of movies. After Juno I thought: I think Ive defined myself enough as my own director that Id love to work with my father.

Ive been very, very lucky in my career, in my life - from day one. When aspiring directors say, Whats your advice? first I say, Be born the son of a famous director. Its invaluable.

Filmmaking is a completely imperfect art form that takes years and, over those years, the movie tells you what it is. Mistakes happen, accidents happen and true great films are the results of those mistakes and the decisions that those directors make during those moments.

I hate movies that tell people what to think. Im proud that Democrats thought Thank You For Smoking was their film and Republicans thought it was theirs. Im proud that pro-choice people thought Juno was their film and pro-life people thought it was theirs.

Well, Toronto, I consider to be the birthplace of my films. Ive made three films and this is the third one to premiere here in the same theater on the same day at the same time - they are my audience. Theyre the people that I think about while Im writing, directing, and editing. I specifically make movies for them.

Can you design a Rorschach test thats going to make everyone feel something every time - and that looks like a Rorschach test? Its easy to show a picture of a kitten or a car accident. The question is, how abstract can you get and still get the audience to feel something when they dont know whats happening to them?

Im equally guilty of using technology - I Twitter, I text people, I chat. But I think theres something strangely insidious about it that it makes us think were closer when in fact were not seeing each other, were not connecting.

Its funny, I can sit through the worst horror film ever made but even a quite good romantic comedy can drive me nuts.