Americans used to fixating on Hollywood are now mainlining politics as well, which gives “Dave” the look of a sure thing. Sen. Alan Simpson, who appears in a cameo, says that he and Bill Clinton agree that the movie “kind of gives you a warm feeling.” If the electorate seconds that emotion, the film could jump-start the credibility of a director not famous for his subtlety. Reitman’s first success came as a producer, with 1978’s “Animal House.” By 1985 he had directed three consecutive hits: “Meatballs,” “Stripes” and that beloved exercise in exorcism, “Ghostbusters,” which made $220 million and popularized the verb “to slime.”
Reitman’s movies almost always storm the box office, but if you’re remaking “Wild Strawberries,” who you gonna call? The director is in his bungalow on the lot of Universal Pictures’ wearing a baggy Armani suit and white high-top sneakers. “I basically make grand entertainments,” he says. “I hate pretentious films, and I hate pretentious filmmaking.” Actor-writer Harold Ramis once told Premiere magazine: “They didn’t bring ‘The Last Emperor’ to Ivan, and if they did, it would have taken 102 minutes and it would have had a big chase at the end.”
Reitman’s childhood was decidedly like a movie, although not the sort of movie he would make. The director, who is 46, was born in Czechoslovakia. His mother is an Auschwitz survivor; his father was an underground resistance fighter. In 1951 he and his family fled the Communist government by hiding away in a tugboat, and they eventually settled in Toronto. Early on, Reitman produced some of David Cronenberg’s low-budget movies and made some low-budget movies of his own. (“Cannibal Girls” comes to mind.) In 1975 he tapped into a comedy mother lode by producing an off-Broadway revue called “The National Lampoon Show,” which featured unknowns named Harold Ramis, John Belushi and Bill Murray.
On the studio lot, Reitman is just a golfcart ride away from Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, making the place a sort of Valley of the Box Office Kings. Spielberg is the only household name, at least partly because E.T. couldn’t do talk shows. Zemeckis’s “Back to the Future” series did far more for Michael J. Fox’s name recognition than it did for his own. And while Reitman’s early films made Bill Murray a movie star, the director labored in well-compensated obscurity. Gary Ross, who wrote the screenplay for “Dave,” says of Reitman, “What’s important to him is directing, not engaging in a cult of personality, not being a celebrity director. He has his priorities in order.”
In the early ’80s, however, the perception was that Murray was carrying Reitman’s movies, and that must have rankled a bit. After the muddled “Legal Eagles,” in 1986, the director took on Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had yet to squat-thrust a comedy. The message was clear: Reitman could make anyone funny. “Twins” and “Kindergarten Cop,” which grossed $112 million and $91 million respectively, were not the work of an auteur. But they proved Reitman a canny businessman-one of the first directors to persuade topflight stars to trade their salaries for a profit percentage. And they succeeded in transforming a colossal action hero into a viable comic.
They succeeded to such a degree, in fact, that when Reitman was casting the presidential role for “Dave,” Warner Brothers threw in their surreal two cents. “They said, ‘How about Arnold Schwarzenegger?’” Reitman remembers. “I thought they were joking, but they were serious. I said, ‘There might be a conflict there, with an Austrian being president.’ They said, ‘We can explain that’.” The director’s own choice for the role was the notoriously picky Kevin Kline, who he feared would turn the part down because, as Reitman puts it, “his nickname is Kevin Decline.” Reitman flew to Atlanta and lobbied the actor in person. In the end, reason prevailed: Kline accepted. Schwarzenegger contributed a cameo, along with more than two dozen other celebrities, pundits and politicos.
“Dave” is savvier than Reitman’s earlier work, but he denies that the film is a calculated stab at legitimacy. “I don’t think this is about me trying to be a grown-up,” says the director, who now lives in Beverly Hills, Calif., with his three children and his wife of 23 years, Genevieve Robert. “This is about me becoming a grown-up. There’s been a changing of the guard in the executive branch that really speaks to our babyboom generation. We have grown up into that power and that responsibility.”
President Clinton did not attend last week’s premiere in Washington, reportedly because his handlers think he has spent enough time hangin’ with Hollywood. That’s ironic, of course, because “Dave” makes it clear who the real celebrities are. Reitman showed up for the business-dress bash, as did Kline and his First Lady, Sigourney Weaver. And where did they turn for a photo op? Dee Dee Myers.
