THE CONJUROR (REMEMBERING IVAN REITMAN)

 

During the making of 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife,' Ivan Reitman sat beside his son Jason on set while he directed it.

Some filmmakers would find that off putting - especially if they were rebooting material created by their parents.

Jason Reitman, however, enjoyed such a close relationship with his dad, he wasn't fazed.

"You got to remember, when growing up, I would sit next to my dad (on set), so there was something already pretty natural and familiar about us sitting next to one another at the monitor," he told the journalist Hadley Freeman in an interview in the Guardian last November.

"And this was lovely because I had the world's foremost 'Ghostbusters' expert sitting next to me and the person I trust most on Earth 

"No kid wants to take notes from their parents in general but never does a director have someone they trust as much as I trust my dad, somebody's who just looking out for them - and that made me feel incredibly safe."

Ivan was fiercely proud of the career that Jason forged as a director.

However he had plenty of reasons to be proud of his own career and not just as the director of the original 'Ghostbusters'.

Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Komarno in Slovakia in 1946, his mother Klara was a survivor of Auschwitz and his father Ladislav fought in the Czech resistance against the Nazis.

Unhappy with life under Communist rule, they emigrated to Canada when he was four, settling in Toronto where his father got a job in a dry cleaners, then opened his own and eventually built his own dry cleaning franchise.

Ladislav also started to invest in land around Toronto, with Ivan later donating some of it to the city's world renowned film festival.

Ivan attended Oakwood Collegiate where his first love was music.

He was a member of a singing group, the Twintone Four - going on to study music at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

However he also started to dabble in filmmaking while at McMaster, making a number of short films including the comedy 'Orientation' in 1968.

This opened the door to a job as a producer at CITY-TV in Toronto where his friend and future collaborator Dan Aykroyd worked as an announcer.

Unfortunately Ivan was fired after a year.

In 1971, he made his feature directorial debut with 'Foxy Lady' - a Canadian romcom with Alan Gordon and Sylvia Fiegel which was notable for giving Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin their screen debuts.

His next feature was the 1973 Canadian grindhouse comedy 'Cannibal Girls' with Levy and Martin playing a couple whose car breaks down in a small town in Ontario where they learn of a gruesome local legend which then comes to life.

Levy and Martin would win Best Actor and Actress awards when Reitman took the film to the Stiges Film Festival in Spain and it would be re-released 27 years later after a screening in the South by Southwest Film Conference in Austin, Texas.

Reitman also drifted into theatrical production and teamed up with future movie director David Cronenberg and Howard Shore on the musical 'Spellbound' at the Royal Theatre in Toronto in 1973 with the magician Doug Henning and Jennifer Dale.

The show transferred to Broadway but  Reitman oversaw its overhaul into 'The Magic Show' with music and lyrics by Steven Schwarz and Henning joined by a cast that included Cheryl Danes and David Ogden Stiers.

It ran for four years and 1,920 performances, with Henning and the director Grover Dale picking up Tony nominations.

Ivan embarked, however, on a career as a movie producer - teaming up with Cronenberg on his horror movies 'Screamers' in 1975 and 'Rabid' in 1977.

In 1975, he produced an off-Broadway production of 'The National Lampoon Show' with a host of up and coming comedy stars including John Belushi, Bill and Brian Doyle Murray, Gilda Radner and Harold Ramis.

He recalled: "I made the mistake of thinking I could be creatively helpful and had the temerity to say: 'Hey, why don't you..' and Bill immediately came over and put his arm around me, took me over to where the coats were hanging, grabbed my scarf, wrapped it dangerously tightly around my neck and said: 'Hey man, thank you for dropping in'.

"He ushered me out of the room without any force but he had a force within him."

Despite this encounter, it would be the beginning of a fruitful friendship that would see them collaborate on four films.

Ivan married Genevieve Robert in 1976, who converted to Judaism and with whom he would have two daughters Catherine and Caroline and Jason who was his only son.

Catherine would go on to work as the creator, writer and executive producer of the CBC sitcom 'Workin' Moms'.

In 1978, Reitman produced John Landis' groundbreaking fraternity comedy 'National Lampoon's Animal House' with Belushi, Peter Reigert, Kevin Bacon, Tim Mathewson, Verna Bloom, Tom Hulce, Karen Allen and Donald Sutherland.

A huge hit with cinema audiences, Landis' film was credited with starting a trend towards bawdy, gross out comedy paving the way for 'Porky's,' 'Police Academy' and eventually the 'American Pie' movies.

Itching to direct his own movie, Reitman made his debut with the Canadian comedy 'Meatballs' in 1979, a well received summer camp comedy with Bill Murray in the lead as the camp counsellor Trip Harrison.

Also starring Harvey Atkin and Kate Lynch, it was a huge hit in Canada and did well in the US where it was also well received by the critics.

It would spawn three sequels in 1984, 1986 and 1992 - none of which involved Reitman nor his lead man.

His next directorial outing was the military comedy 'Stripes' in 1981 in which Murray played a slacker who loses his job, girlfriend, apartment and car and persuades his friend to join the Army with him.

Also starring John Candy, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates and Sean Young, the film again traded off Murray's brand of sarcasm and was a hit with audiences and critics.

Originally intended for Cheech and Chong, Reitman turned to Murray and Ramis after the LA duo insisted on having more creative control.

That year he produced Gerald Potterton's animated adult science fiction anthology feature 'Heavy Metal' which featured a voice cast that included John Candy, Harold Ramis, Susan Roman, John Vernon and Eugene Levy.

While Poterton's film made a modest profit, it received mixed reviews.

There was an executive producer gig on the 1983 Space Western 'Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone' which was directed by Lamont Johnson and starred Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson and Michael Ironside.

Panned by the critics, it flopped in cinemas but found an audience on home video.

Reitman's next project, however, would be the film that would cement his reputation as a comedy director capable of combining humour with blockbuster special effects.

Originally conceived by Dan Ackroyd as a project for him and John Belushi following their cult turn in John Landis' 'The Blues Brothers', 'Ghostbusters' originally had their two characters travelling through space to take on supernatural forces.

Convinced by Reitman's work on 'Animal House' and 'Stripes,' he convinced his fellow Canadian citizen to direct and Eddie Murphy was also approached about starring.

Deeming the original concept too serious in tone and too costly, Ivan in the wake of Belushi's death persuaded Ackroyd to recruit Harold Ramis instead to work on the script and make it more realistic with a New York setting.

Bill Murray was brought on board after Reitman successfully pitched the concept to Columbia Pictures, with Sigourney Weaver, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and Rick Moranis joining a cast that included Ackroyd and Ramis.

With Murray, Ackroyd, Ramis and Hudson playing Peter Venkman, Ray Stanz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore, a comedy sci-fi franchise was born.

It was praised by critics but was also a huge hit with audiences in the US and around the world, turning Murray in particular into a star.

Generating $280 million in box office takings on a budget of $30 million, 'Ghostbusters' was the first film since 'Star Wars' to generate huge spin-off merchandise sales.

It remains the most adored of the four 'Ghostbusters' films.

Reitman would direct the 1989 sequel 'Ghostbusters II' and brought back most of the cast.

But while it became the seventh highest grossing movie of the year with a box office take of $215 million, it was regarded as a lacklustre retread of the previous film.

Nevertheless, Ivan Reitman and Columbia were keen for a third outing and various attempts were made to pull it off.

Murray, however, wasn't so keen to reprise the role of Peter Venkman and without their leading man, the project ran into the ground.

When Ramis died on 2014, he abandoned his efforts - selling the rights to the franchise to Columbia and handing over responsibility instead to Paul Feig who directed an all female reboot in 2016 which performed decently in cinemas despite a backlash from some fans and critics.

His son Jason had become an acclaimed Oscar nominated director and screenwriter in his own right with comedy dramas like 'Juno,' 'Young Adult,' 'Up on the Air' and 'Tully'.

When he was approached to develop a reboot featuring cameos from the three surviving 'Ghostbusters,' Ivan was coaxed into coming on board as the producer and even doubled for Ramis's Egon Spengler in one scene.

Regarded as the second best of the four films in the franchise, 'Ghostbusters Afterlife' performed well on its release in 2021 despite COVID restrictions in cinemas across the globe.

Proud of his son's career and pleased to be working alongside him, he told the Guardian: "The movie is a lovely combination of our two sensibilities.

"It has the style of what Jason has developed in his directorial life, coupled with the fantastical storytelling that represents the original 'Ghostbusters'.

"I'm just delighted to be involved."

Between the first two 'Ghostbusters' films, Reitman found himself directing Robert Redford, Daryl Hannah, Debra Winger, Brian Dennehy and Terence Stamp in the 1986 comedy thriller 'Legal Eagles' about an assistant District Attorney whose career is derailed by a scandal involving a performance artist.

While the critics hated it, the film performed well in cinemas.

He also made the comedy smash 'Twins' in 1988 which enabled the biggest action movie star of the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger to branch into humour. 

Starring alongside Danny De Vito as unlikely brothers separated at birth, the movie was a huge hit despite lukewarm reviews.

Throughout the 1980s, Ivan toyed with making a Batman movie with Murray in the lead role.

At one stage 'The Batman' had David Niven linked to it as Alfred Pennyworth, William Holden as Commissioner James Gordon and David Bowie as The Joker.

But after several rewrites, he left the project - making way for 'Gremlins' director Joe Dante who also failed to bring the project to the big screen.

After the release of 'Ghostbusters II,' he would team up again with Arnold Schwarzenegger for another comedy 'Kindergarten Cop' in 1990 in which the Austrian born star played an undercover cop posing as a nursery school teacher.

It was another massive box office hit despite attracting sniffy reviews.

In 1992, Reitman co-produced Brian Levant's phenomenally successful St Bernard dog comedy 'Beethoven' with Charles Grodin, Bonnie Hunt, Dean Jones, Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt  and its sequel 'Beethoven's 2nd' a year later.

He produced director Roger Spottiswoode's Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty comedy 'Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot' which made $70 milion despite being torn to shreds by film critics.

The following year he directed one of his best received comedies 'Dave' - a US political satire in which Kevin Kline played a man called in to double for a philandering US President after he suffers a stroke while in flagrante.

Reuniting with Sigourney Weaver, it was a commercial and critical success and boasted a smart script by Gary Ross and a cast that included Ben Kingsley, Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn, Charles Grodin and Ving Rhames.

Reitman worked with Schwarzenegger, Danny de Vito, Emma Thompson and Frank Langella on another amiable comedy 'Junior' in 1994, in which the action hero played a pregnant man.

It was a box office hit despite mixed reviews.

In 1996, he again dabbled in the world of superheroes, embarking on plans to make a 'Wonder Woman' film but again, it came to nothing after three years work on the project.

He also produced that year Joe Pytka's hit Loony Tunes basketball comedy 'Space Jam' with Michael Jordan, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Tweetie Pie, Sylvester the Cat, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe Le Pew, Tasmanian Devil, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Bill Murray, Wayne Knight and the voice of Danny de Vito.

A year later, Ivan co-produced the Betty Thomas directed Howard Stern film 'Private Parts' with Allison Janney, Mary McCormack and Paul Giamatti which traded off the radio personality's provocative brand of humour and performed respectably at the box office.

He directed Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Julia Louis-Drefyus and Nastassja Kinski in the 1997 comedy 'Father's Day' about a woman who enlists two former boyfriends to trace a missing teenage boy in the belief that he is their son.

A remake of Frances Veber's 1983 comedy 'Les Comperes' with Gerard Depardieu, it ended Reitman's run of box office hits and took a critical hammering.

Box office honour was restored with the 1998 action adventure comedy 'Six Days, Seven Nights' with Harrison Ford, Anne Heche and David Schwimmer, which like a lot of his comedies drew audiences despite the critics dismissal of it as amiable fluff.

He produced Todd Philips' 2000 comedy hit 'Road Trip' with Tom Green and Seann William Scott.

Reitman was among a host of directors that year including Terry Gilliam, Rob Reiner, M Night Shyalaman, Wolfgang Petersen, Peter Weir and Alan Parker who were touted as possible directors of the first Harry Potter movie, 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'.

In the end, the gig went to the 'Home Alone' and 'Mrs Doubtfire' director Chris Columbus.

2001 saw him dive back into the realm of sci-fi comedy, directing David Duchovny, Julianne Moore and Seann William Scott in 'Evolution' about the discovery of extraterrestrial beings in a meteorite that crashes to Earth in the Arizona desert.

A modest hit, critics inevitably claimed Ivan was trying to remake 'Ghostbusters' but it inspired an animated series which aired on Fox Kids.

He teamed up again with Todd Phillips to executive produce his hit 2003 comedy 'Old School' with Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson about three disillusioned, thirtysomething friends who relive their high school years to help overcome their depression.

Reitman produced Jeff Schaeffer's 2004 sex comedy 'Euro Trip' with Scott Mechlowicz, Michelle Trachtenberg and Jacob Pitts which flopped at the box office after it drew mostly negative reviews.

He was an executive producer on Mike Clattenburg's 2006 Canadian comedy 'Trailer Park Boys: The Movie' - a spin-off of a popular sitcom and sequel to a 1999 movie.

In the face of negative reviews, however, Clattenburg's film stuttered at the box office.

That year he directed the superhero comedy 'My Super Ex Girlfriend' with Uma Thurman, Luke Wilson, Anna Farris, Rainn Wilson, Wanda Sykes and Eddie Izzard.

The reviews were unenthusiastic but not damning but again Reitman delivered a profitable film.

In 2009, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition of his contribution to the film industry as a director and a producer and his promotion of Canadian cinema.

He was especially proud that year to produce his son's critically lauded comedy drama 'Up in the Air' with George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick which earned him his only Oscar nomination for Best Picture alongside Jason.

2009 also saw him produce the maverick Canadian director Atom Egoyan's indie erotic thriller 'Chloe' with Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried which underwhelmed critics and barely made its budget back.

Reitman travelled to the place of his birth in Slovakia in 2011 to receive the Mayor's Prize in Komarno in recognition of his stellar career.

Ivan also directed Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher in the 2011 romcom 'No Strings Attached' with Kevin Kline and Cary Elwes - another hit movie with audiences that didn't wow or offend the critics.

He was a producer on Sacha Gervasi's well received 2012 biopic 'Hitchcock' with Anthony Hopkins as Alfred Hitchcock, Helen Mirren as his wife, Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh, Danny Huston, Toni Collette, Jessica Biel, Michael Stuhlbarg and James D'Arcy.

His last directorial outing was the 2014 sports drama 'Draft Day' with Kevin Costner, Jennifer Garner, Chadwick Boseman, Denis Leary, Frank Langella, Ellen Burstyn and Sam Elliott.

Warmly received by most critics, it barely surpassed its $25 million budget in ticket sales.

As a producer, he helped Seth Gordon turn 'Baywatch' into a movie with Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron in 2017.

During his career he was also a prolific  executive producer, working on Chen Kaige's 2002 erotic thriller 'Killimg Me Softly,' DJ Caruso's 2007 psychological thriller 'Disturbia' with Shia LaBeouf, Thor Fruedenthal's 2009 family film 'Hotel for Dogs' with Lisa Kudrow and Don Cheadle and Malcolm D Lee's 2021 sequel 'Space Jam: A New Legacy'.

Throughout his career, Reitman was philosophical about its ups and downs but never let the disappointments blunt his love of the movies.

When Jason was left licking his wounds over the disappointing reception for his 2013 drama 'Labor Day' with Kate Winslet and his 2014 comedy drama 'Men, Women and Children' with Rosemarie DeWitt, Jennifer Garner, Adam Sandler, Ansel Elgort and Timothee Chalamet, he gave his son this advice.

"You will be surprised by your greatest success and your greatest failure. You can't decide them in advance.

"Your only regret will be not making more movies, so just keep telling stories."

In a 50 year career that's exactly what Ivan Reitman did.

Hollywood has lost a great conjuror whose telling of those stories gave audiences a lot of pleasure.

(Ivan Reitman passed away at the age of 75 on February 12, 2022)