When Jason Reitman isn’t putting on script readings at the LACMA, like The Big Lebowski and Reservoir Dogs, or looking slightly bewildered in gigantic photographs (like he does in ’The Paramount Picture,’) he also directs feature films. And having half as many Academy Award Best Director nominations as he does movies, it’s probably safe to say that the young filmmaker shouldn’t quit his day job. The good news is, Reitman’s vacation is over as he returns to work on Labor Day.
The director’s fifth feature, once again at Paramount, has gone into production with shooting just starting in Massachusetts. Written and directed by Reitman and based on Joyce Maynard’s novel of the same name, Labor Day stars Oscar winner Kate Winlset and nominee Josh Brolin. The film is about 13-year-old Henry Wheeler, his reclusive single mother Adele and their long Labor Day weekend stuck with a mysterious drifter named Frank Chambers. Brolin is playing Chambers with Winslet as the divorced shut-in and mother of Gattlin Griffith’s Henry.
While out shopping for back to school supplies, the mother and son run into a bleeding Chambers who manages to convince the pair, mostly the impressionable young boy struggling with his new role as man of the house, to help him. They soon discover that their helpless house guest is actually an escaped convict but it’s too late, they’re now stuck with him for the entire Labor Day weekend. A young boy in need of a father figure, a wounded mother and a possible anti-hero, do I sense some Stockholm Syndrome coming on? Produced by the same Academy Award nominated team behind Young Adult and Juno (Lianne Halfon and Russell Smith), Reitman’s Labor Day film also stars Tom Lipinski, Clark Gregg, Alexie Gilmore, Lucas Hedges and James Van Der Beek.
