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Features
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A Super Busy Schedule
It would have been nice if that Borat movie Ivan Reitman wanted to do with Sacha Baron Cohen some years ago had come together. But he’s not complaining.
Friday, December 22, 2006 at 6:00 PM
By Daniel Robert Epstein
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Jim Spellman/WireImage.com
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Reitman at the New York premiere
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Although Ivan Reitman turned 60 earlier this fall, the Czechlosovakian-born, Canadian-raised American film comedy guru remains as busy as ever. His first movie produced with partner Tom Pollock for Cold Spring Pictures, a $200 million Merrill Lynch-Société Générale funded offshoot of their Montecito Pictures, comes out next April. It’s a thriller comedy entitled Disturbia, toplined by fast-rising young talent Shia LaBeouf.
Then there’s the business of a new DVD edition of his third feature film Meatballs, also due to hit shelves in the springtime. While there will not be a surfeit of extras, Reitman says he is very happy with the Audio Commentary he just recorded with co-writer and producer Dan Goldberg.
Finally, there’s the Uma Thurman-Luke Wilson comedy My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which arrives on DVD this week after a summer theatrical release. While certainly a modest box office performer by Reitman’s gold carat standards, it’s a film he holds out high hopes for this second time around.
“I love New York and I think that My Super Ex-Girlfriend is very much a love letter to the city,” Reitman reveals. “I love shooting there and with My Super Ex-Girlfriend, I’ve now done four movies there.”
“The others were the two Ghostbusters and Legal Eagles,” he adds. “I tried to find different locations, a non-tourist Manhattan that offered some fresh perspectives on that city. I was trying to find that new millennium romantic New York the way Woody Allen did it in the 70’s and 80’s.”
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Jim Spellman/WireImage.com
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Co-star Luke Wilson
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One thing that has changed dramatically since Reitman last roamed the streets of Manhattan as a filmmaker is the level of security that blankets the city. In the 17 years that have transpired between Ghostbusters II and Girlfriend, the Big Apple has had a big bite taken out of it.
“We used to be able to close down major avenues fairly easily in those days and do all sorts of stuff,” Reitman recalls. “Access to certain major buildings is a lot harder. It takes more planning and more care and the city is even more dense than it used to be.”
On paper, the notion of Reitman’s first pure romantic comedy coming out in the dog days of summer seems like a sure-fire proposition. And while the filmmaker admits he was taken aback by his latest film’s lukewarm reception at the box office, he says part of it has to do with today’s very crowded marketplace. On that July 21st weekend, the eight other films opening opposite Girlfriend included Lady in the Water, Monster House and Clerks II.
“Audiences at the test screenings were very good; I think the reviews were generally good,” he says. “It’s just tough out there and I think sometimes if you get the wrong date and if your marketing material is presented the wrong way, it’s hard to get a good audience. I think that’s what happened here.”
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Mark Von Holden/WireImage.com
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A fearless comedienne
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“I don’t think our marketing material connected with an audience,” Reitman maintains. “I think there was a misconception of what the movie was about. Now that it has been playing on airplanes, people are calling me up and saying, ‘Wow, this is really terrific! I didn’t know this movie was like this at all.’ Unfortunately that’s part of the complexity of making movies today.”
Although Reitman is open to the idea of a comic book sequel to My Super Ex-Girlfriend, an idea that has in fact already been broached, he is clear about the stringent parameters that will be necessary for a sequel to the Will Ferrell breakout vehicle he produced back in 2003. And that’s despite the fact that he continues to actively work on a script for Old School Dos.
“I don’t think any of us would do it without Will [Ferrell],” Reitman says when asked about the actor’s pronouncement that he will do no sequels. “We’re still working on it though. We said for the longest time that we would never do another Ghostbusters and we finally did, but frankly we waited too long.”
“I think if you have a good script then there is something good that will happen. But we’re suffering no delusions about how difficult it will be.”
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Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage.com
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Son Jason, daughter-in-law Michele
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Reitman has seen this year’s comedy smash Borat twice already and says he is ready to see it again. This is of particular relevance in the filmmaker’s case because a number of years ago, he had several meetings in England with comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for the very purpose of making a Borat movie. All long before the character hit the pop culture radar.
“I think his new movie is spectacular and really exciting to watch,” Reitman enthuses. “It will certainly be very influential in terms of the comedy movies that are going to be made. That will be both good and bad, because people will not be able to do it as skillfully as he’s done it and people misunderstand what’s great about it.”
“You often get imitator films that don’t work,” he continues. “Like what happened after Animal House, Stripes and a couple of my other movies. There were an enormous amount of imitators that created bad movies and ruined the whole genre.”
Reitman is thrilled that the family comedy genes seem to have been passed on without dilution to son Jason. The latter’s first feature length effort, Thank You for Smoking, snagged a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. And in yet another sign of how things have changed, proud papa got the word via text message as he was landing in Toronto for some business meetings.
Reitman Sr. is no stranger to working with actresses who are perhaps better know for drama than comedy, at least coming into their first project with him. Folks like Sigourney Weaver (Ghostbusters) and Julianne Moore (Evolution), for instance. Girlfriend lead Uma Thurman fits into that general mould, although Reitman says she has a bit more of distinctive klutzy quality than her predecessors.
“There’s something a little bit goofy about her in real life, even though she’s one of the most gorgeous women you’ve ever met,” Reitman reveals. “She knows how to channel that goofiness into this role. She loved the script and jumped into the project very quickly. She’s absolutely fearless. She’s not afraid to look unattractive and-or do unattractive things.”
Although Girlfriend screenwriter Don Payne was holding down a full-time job with The Simpsons at the time of production, he did spend a couple of weeks on set at the beginning and another couple at the end. But it was to watch more than to rewrite, as Reitman says nary a word from the shooting script was changed.
| Reitman hasn’t directed an R-rated feature since Stripes, but with the success of Wedding Crashers and the aforementioned Borat, he expects the studios’ attitude towards that scarlet comedy letter will change somewhat. As far as the age-old question of why Canada produces so many funny American artists, Reitman has no quick answer.
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“I wish I knew why,” he muses. “My instinct was always that there was something as well in the way Chicago [home of Second City] always turned out funny people. There’s something about not quite being in the business that does this. Maybe there’s something about Canada being the second most important country in North America that creates the attitude required to create good comedy.”
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