By Bert Osborne

For the AJC

The main thing, director Jason Reitman insists, is to publicize his new film “Up in the Air.” If, in the process, he’s required to travel to some of the world’s most exciting cities, well, one of the fringe benefits is accumulating all those frequent-flier miles.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), the movie’s protagonist, could relate to that.

He’s a “hired gun” who’s constantly crisscrossing the country, coolly firing unsuspecting employees. Lacking any real friends, detached from any close romantic or family relationships, he may need to get a life. In the meantime, he’s more concerned about hitting the 10-million-mile mark with his favorite airline.

Reitman, 32, the son of director Ivan Reitman, has a short but unblemished track record that also includes the critical and popular hits “Thank You For Smoking” and “Juno.” During a recent interview he spoke about his continued success with “Up in the Air.”

Q: How serious are you about your own frequent-flier status?

A: Very. I’m averaging 100,000 miles a year now. I think when Walter [Kirn] wrote the book, he meant it ironically, but I saw a guy who really understood me. (He laughs.) The fact that the story was about a man who collected air miles obviously spoke to me, but it’s also about a man who basically tries on an experimental lifestyle, where he has nothing and nobody in his life. That’s something I’ve often fantasized about, and the more I talk to people, the more I realize that everybody has fantasized about that idea to some degree, unplugging from the world like that.

Q: Was there ever any doubt you’d become a director like your father?

A: In high school, the idea made me nervous. Why would I want to live in my father’s shadow, or, worse, experience failure on such a public level? My first thought was pre-med. No one ever challenges why you want to become a doctor, but it was my father who actually advised me against it. He’s probably the first dad ever to say, “Don’t be a doctor. Be a filmmaker.”

Q: You haven’t had to deal with public failure yet. Are you still nervous about living in his shadow?

A: No. It’s pretty clear at this point that I’m a different kind of director. Will I ever have the sort of success my father had with “Ghostbusters” or “Stripes”? It doesn’t matter, because I don’t make the same type of broad comedy. Nobody’s calling “Up in the Air” my “Ghostbusters,” you know? There’s no way to compare our films, so it’s OK if I never touch his success. That’s not my ambition. I just want to make great movies.

Q: Does anything connect your three films?

A: I guess there’s something about the value of family and community that seems to come up in all of them. I like tricky characters — a tobacco lobbyist, a pregnant teenager, a guy who fires people for a living — and I’m attracted to the idea of humanizing them.

Q: As great as Aaron Eckhart (in “Smoking”) and Ellen Page (in “Juno”) were, they’re no George Clooney. Is there any difference working with someone who has his sort of clout?

A: It gave me a lot more control, from a studio point of view. To a certain extent, they had enough confidence in him as a movie star to leave me alone to make my movie. Besides being a really great guy, George is known for doing films for the right reasons. He immediately adds class to a project. He happens to be an Oscar-nominated director in his own right, too, so he’s conscientious of directing and aware of what I’m trying to accomplish on a daily basis.

Q: What do you want audiences to take away from “Up in the Air”?

A: The last thing I want to do is make a message movie. I want to make movies that can be interpreted either way. Certainly with “Smoking,” liberals thought it was their movie, and conservatives thought it was theirs. “Juno” had a similar effect. I had both pro-lifers and pro-choicers thanking me for it. With “Up in the Air,” at the end of the day everyone can relate to searching for a purpose in your life. I love the idea of movies as a mirror you can see yourself in. I like asking questions in my films, and then letting people find their own questions inside of them.