""Up in the Air,"" a film about Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who fires people for a living while in pursuit of reaching 10 million frequent flyer miles, is one of this Oscar season's most talked about films. It has been noted widely for addressing issues concerning the recession, particularly that of unemployment. However, many fail to recognize that before it became the latest critical and commercial success from writer/director Jason Reitman (""Juno,"" ""Thank You For Smoking""), it was a novel written in 2001 by Walter Kirn before 9/11, before the war in Iraq and before the financial collapse.
""Neither Jason nor I have special prophetic powers,"" Kirn said of his story's timeliness. ""It's just that we happened to identify the perpetual mania that lies at the heart of the American economy.""
Unlike the film, the book focuses more on Bingham's lofty goal and less on Bingham's profession as a corporate axman. Nonetheless, Kirn believes he hit upon an issue present in American life during the recession or otherwise.
""In Ryan Bingham's quest for miles, I had a metaphor for a quest for wealth that would never sustain itself. I think it will always be true in American life that we're going to chase these dreams and see them break up and have to deal with the consequences,"" Kirn said. ""It happened to be that the book and the movie hit at two times when that was happening.""
The difference of thematic focus between the novel and film is just one of many changes that occurred when adapting the book into a screenplay, a process in which Kirn said he ""did not want to interfere."" However, the cool, disconnected and disarmingly charismatic character of Ryan Bingham remained very much intact, a persona that Kirn based on a real person.
Kirn met the inspiration for his main character, appropriately, sitting next to him on a plane. ""I turned to him and asked him where he was from... and he said ‘I am from here, right here,'"" a line included in the novel and film.
Although Kirn was concerned at first with the casting of George Clooney for the role, he quickly took to the choice.
""In the first 10 seconds I thought ‘wait, he's older than the character in the book, he's far better-looking, and he's a lot smoother perhaps, in some ways,'"" Kirn said. ""But then I realized, having read Jason's script, that he was the only guy I knew of who could play a guy that fired people for a living who could keep the audience's interest and sympathy through sheer magnetism.""
Clooney has earned an Oscar nomination for his performance, just one of the six nominations the film garnered, including one for best picture and one for best adapted screenplay. While all of the awards season excitement has put Kirn firmly in the spotlight, ""Up in the Air"" is not Kirn's first book to be turned into a film. 2005's ""Thumbsucker"" was adapted from his autobiographical coming-of-age novel of the same name. However, Kirn said that ""Thumbsucker"" was a very different experience. ""It was a little more like putting on a school play; more intimate,"" he said.
While ""Up in the Air"" is not as directly autobiographical as ""Thumbsucker,"" Kirn claims that it is very much influenced by his upbringing in Minnesota, a place he described as, ""a little removed from the mainstream.""
""‘Up in the Air,' in the book and the movie, is set in kind of modest, Midwestern cities,"" Kirn said. ""One of the things at the book's and movie's soul is that it is set in places and amongst people who titans of culture treat sometimes as invisible.""
Although as an undergraduate, he transferred from the more local Macalester College, located in Minnesota, to Princeton University, his Midwestern roots have had more of an effect on his writing than his east coast, Ivy League experience.
""I had the Minnesota, F. Scott Fitzgerald kind of dream, that to become a real writer you had to go out east,"" Kirn said of his move to the east coast. ""But I only became a real writer once I embraced the place I came from.""
