WENN.
If there’s one thing you’ve got to give Jason Reitman, he knows hip. In Thank You For Smoking, he tackled cigarettes (the coolest way to corrode your respiratory system). In Juno, teen pregnancy (with the added bonus of kickstarting a new movement of particularly trendy pidgin). In Young Adult, delusions of granduer (extreme narcissism is far and away the most stylish psychological maladies one can uphold). And the director is stepping beyond the pages of his latest project to exhibit his proclivities for the fashion of the era: Reitman has taken to Twitter to cast a role for his new movie, Men, Women & Children. But in doing so, Reitman has inadvertently given us a glimpse into his Achilles heel. The filmmaker has spent so much time being cool, that he has apparently lost all touch with the world of nerdiness — there’s a crucial error in the piece of dialogue that Reitman tweeted on Tuesday highlighting the writer/director’s scientific blind spot.
Need help casting my film! Know a teen football player who’s a quiet thoughtful giant? See the attached script! pic.twitter.com/kIpG0rUco7
— Jason Reitman (@JasonReitman) October 22, 2013
Reitman tweeted a few lines of dialogue in hopes of casting Tim, described as “a 15 year old former football player … a gentle giant (over 6’2″), a quiet mountain, who speaks softly and to himself.” In his request to the world to help him seek someone befitting of this description, Reitman showcased a scene in which Tim meets another character, Brandy, and talks to her briefly about the writings of scientist Carl Sagan.
JasonReitman/Twitter
As you can see, introvert Tim refers to Carl Sagan’s book Little Blue Dot. But here’s the thing: Carl Sagan’s book is not titled Little Blue Dot. It’s Pale Blue Dot. And although this might be an intentional error made by Reitman’s character Tim, we feel as though a kid who “spends his time playing online games” might know his Sagan just a bit better than that. Perhaps a fellow hip enough to cast his movies via Twitter, to institute a worldwide wave of JunoSpeak, to name the heroine in his latest movie (Labor Day) Adele, might be out of his element with all this nerdy stuff like space and molecules.
But hey, early drafts are bound to have mistakes, and we’re still looking forward to the next project from the mind behind Thank You For Smoking, Juno, Up in the Air, and Young Adult. Maybe just farm out the geekier references to your dad from now on, Reitman (hey, there was a lot of science in Ghostbusters).
