We're Watching: Jason Reitman vs. Jamie Stuart

Eric Kohn, my dear friend/colleague/Guy-I-steal-Bison-Grass-Vodka-from, made a sly reference that Jason Reitman's slide show set to The Clash from the Up in the Air press tour was equal to  Jamie Stuart's own in-depth meta coverage of the New York Film Festival and Sundance, which was in conjunction with Filmmaker Magazine.

Reitman, of course, is beloved by the press for his ability to be charming and--I'm not sure. Because he made Juno? Either way, Roger Ebert found his pie chart and admitted prior knowledge of it may have made him freeze up during their interview.  For other press stops, Reitman would tout the pie chart around like a sandwich board in what can only be some sense of fucking with the press.

I am fine with this treatment. Reitman's right: a majority of people thrown into a junket or interview with a director will inevitably ask the same questions, especially for someone relatively new to the scene who is best known for two "mini-major" films that were responsible for huge buzz. After all, all types of press are animals at press junkets. You'll find the same at any press opportunity from politics to sports, but the film junkets have a more blood-thirsty mentality that's evolved over the years.

It even insires the occasional "I Went to Junket X and lived" piece, which every writer is allowed to engage in at least once but not more than five times per career. For two of the best, I point you to Andrew O'Hehir at the first Lord of the Rings event and The Onion A.V. Club at the Idle Hands junket. Boy, that felt like Déjà vu!

Back to the point at hand: in the olden days, a junket would be in midtown Manhattan, fly outlets in, put them up at a hotel for two nights, feed them in the morning and then parade the talent out to sit at a table to take the most inane questions you could ever imagine. A personal favorite of mine is, while in college, I attended a junket for The Wind That Shakes The Barley and a fellow attendeee remarked Cillian Murphy hated being asked about Batman and Red Eye. The moment he entered, a Russian reporter asked, "Tell me, is your role in new Batman the same as you being Irish serial killer in this film?"

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="426" caption="Jamie Stuart's NYFF 41 (2003)"][/caption]

So, you know, I get it. Junkets are boring affairs that lead us to exclaim "EXCLUSIVE" in headlines. It's the nature of our unfortunate beast. But there are shining examples of creativity when it comes to the art and presentation of the interview. That's where Jamie Stuart comes in.

On a point of disclosure, I am friendly with him and he has incriminating video of me outside of a Brooklyn bar. Stuart's video series are more in line with how a filmmaker would cover and explore an event like the New York Film Festival. In his series, which covers the festival from 2003 to 2008, the city is immersed in this uptown spectacle that covers Lincoln Center.

The difference in intent is clear: Reitman is our hip and satirical eye to the press that is so desperate for content, the second it's online it'll become retweeted, embedded and linked to like the second coming of screaming Twilight fangirls.

But he point remains, if a journalist was invited to a junket and did something akin to Reitman, he'd be blacklisted by the publicist, studio and would be a speck of dust in the eye of the machine.

Hence why Jamie Stuart's pieces overcome the simpleness of sticking your thumb into someone's eye. NYFF45 starts with Wes Anderson and delves into what makes these filmmakers react and how they handle the situations of a festival. Reitman made a tongue-in-cheek response to doing press, something which he will continue to be forced to do as he takes on a larger profile. He's also the clear result of a media environment that is hyper aware. But in no way is this comparable to narrative journalism or would it ever fly if a journalist was to send the video slide show to a publicist.

It's inappropriate to compare these two as directors and editors when it comes to the coverage of press and the film industry.

Poor Jason never had a chance.