Spike Jonze And Jason Reitman Profiled; New York Times Quotes /Film

There have been a couple great filmmaker profiles released over the last 24 hours that I've wanted to recommend, one of which even mentions and quotes /Film. First up is a 7-page New York Times profile on Spike Jonze, which is framed using the struggle with Warner Bros over the big screen adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are, and how the internet and blogs (like /Film) helped the filmmaker retain his vision.

Here is the excerpt of our mention:

Peter Sciretta and David Chen, editors at Slashfilm.com, were so excited by the footage that instead of sitting down to type the usual post, they just turned on their video camera, stood in front of it and gushed. "I'm actually getting chills right now just thinking about the film," Chen said, looking a little embarrassed. "It was really one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen."

Sciretta, wearing a "Ghostbusters" T-shirt, agreed. "It's so insanely crazy and awesome and so untraditional," he said. "It feels like a movie that was written by a child who knew what he was doing but had never seen a movie before." The fact that Sciretta's compliment would sound in another context like a criticism is telling: people who hate the movie will probably say that the story was poorly crafted, and people who love it will praise its childlike quality.

It's an honor to be quoted in the New York Times, but if I had known that the "national newspaper of record" was going to pull a quote from a video blog that we quickly recorded during the madness that is Comic-Con, I probably would have tried to be a bit more eloquent. Also, I love how they reference the fact that I was wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt, a subtle way of insinuating that I'm a fanboy blogger. I'll take it. :)

The majority of the article is not about WTWTA, the conflicts with studio heads, or internet support, but instead about Spike's career up until now. I highly recommend you read the whole epic New York Times article, as it's a great profile.

And speaking of great profiles, Anthony Breznican of USA Today has written a good piece on director Jason Reitman, whose film Up in the Air will premiere later this month at the Toronto International Film Festival, and is already receiving a bit of Oscar hype. Here is a short excerpts:

"All of us have things to say and we just don't know how. Movies are kind of my way of dealing with my inner questions," Reitman says. Kirn's book affected him because of the self-imposed isolation of the main character. "Are we an island or not? That's the simple, classic version of it. More than the value of being connected to the world, what is your responsibility to be connected to the rest of the world?"

The article is more about the film than the filmmaker, but is tstill a good read. Check out the full article on USAToday.com.