A passage from today's NYT article on Up in the Air director Jason Reitman:
By the time the script was finished and shooting was being set, Mr. Reitman realized that job loss, merely a motif in the script, was something he had to come at more directly. He decided to hold an open casting call for the recently fired in St. Louis and Detroit. Kevin Pilla, a father of four from St. Louis, was cast after he received an untenable relocation offer from his employer, an electronics distribution company.
“It gave me a chance to relive the moment and say all of the things that I wanted to say at the time,” Mr. Pilla said. He did not move and now has a job, but it took 19 brutal months, a kind of rolling agony that is etched into the performances of the nonactors who are part of the film.
“The second they heard the language of firing, you could just see it,” Mr. Reitman said. “Their eyes would turn, their posture would change, their face would go sallow. One girl broke into hives. It just happened, and they would be in the moment.”
