'Thank You' for hanging in there, Mr. Poster Boy

I AM CERTAIN that one day I, like so many others, will finish writing the Very Good American Novel and have it published.

It is my dream, it is my desire -- to see it displayed in bookstore windows and in newspaper and magazine ads, and, at the same time, to watch my bank account swell to the status of not- embarrassing.

Although the writing often becomes stalled because of one excuse or another, the Very Good American Novel will come to pass.

It will because I want it to. And because Jason Reitman, my current role model, realized his dream despite running into a host of obstacles, one of which is named Mel Gibson.

Reitman, who helmed "Thank You for Smoking," is the poster boy for hanging in there.

Maybe poster man would be more accurate, since he's 28.

Because Reitman was willing to hang in there for five years, he nailed his first feature-film gig -- writing and directing the movie he has wanted to make ever since he finished reading Christopher Buckley's 1994 novel "Thank You for Smoking."

"The first time I spoke to Buckley I was nervous because I was talking to my favorite writer," Reitman says.

"I fell Replica Zenith Watches Bags Replica in love with the book in the late '90s."

Buckley's satire follows Nick Naylor, head lobbyist for Big Tobacco, as he travels across America putting a positive spin on huffing and puffing and debunking medical studies that say cigarettes can put you out.

The novel was a gift from a friend who told Reitman it was written for him. "I read the first line and said, 'OK, I love you.'"

He doesn't sound impetuous during our phone interview. Or loopy. Reitman sounds at ease, happy to be there, happy to be anywhere, as he recalls his obsession. "My life became about getting the gig," he says.

Enter Gibson.

The Oscar-winning director of "Braveheart" -- I still don't fathom that, but I didn't have a vote -- bought the rights to the book in the early'90s. He wanted to reshape it into a Mel Gibson comedy. "But the studio would not pay for a comedy that makes light of lung cancer," Reitman says.

Enter the dreamer.

One of Reitman's short films won him a commercial, which got him an agent, which opened doors previously closed to his adapting Buckley's novel.

"I pitched my heart out," he says. "I sold them on a kind of 'Citizen Ruth' version, a small dark comedy that explored the hysteria around cigarettes."

The studio fell for his pitch, hired him for scale, and he wrote the screenplay.

"I even got a call from Mel Gibson," Reitman says. "He dug it. He thought it was as ballsy as the book, and that's what he wanted. He felt the previous drafts (by others) were not as subversive as the book."

Happily-ever-after was put on hold for a few years. Studios refused to make the movie because it involved the all-powerful tobacco companies.

"At one point my dad said, 'You need to make a movie. If you don't make a movie soon, people will think something's wrong.'"

His father is producer-director Ivan Reitman, whose fat resume includes the "Ghostbusters" movies, "Stripes," "Dave" and "Kindergarten Cop." When he speaks, his son listens, but does not always heed.

"Films were coming in,
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