Jason Reitman interview

Jason Reitman, writer/director of Thank You For Not Smoking, is interviewed by Dylan Callaghan for The Writers Guild of America, west.

Are you very disciplined when it comes to writing?

I'm very undisciplined. I never really write treatments, I just start writing. I'll get to page 60, realize I should be at page 40, cut it back, keep on writing, get to page 80, realize I should be at 60 [and] cut it back. I write a lot. I usually write three times as much as I need. If I think of a scene and it's not where I'm at with the script, I'll write the scene by itself. The film finds itself.

Do you find treatments and outlines stifle you?

Yeah, if I do that I tend to overthink. Often I don't know where the story needs to go when I start writing. I don't mean to sound airy-fairy, but I find that a film decides what it wants to and needs to be. It happens in the writing and the shooting and the cutting.