Book vs. Movie: Up in the Air
By Russ Bickerstaff
December 25, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
And in this corner: the Movie. A 112-year-old kid born in France to a guy named Lumiere and raised primarily in Hollywood by his uncle Charlie "the Tramp" Chaplin. This young upstart has quickly made a huge impact on society, rapidly becoming the most financially lucrative form of storytelling in the modern world.
Both square off in the ring again as Box Office Prophets presents another round of Book vs. Movie.
Up in the Air
Some time ago, Walter Kirn was making small talk with a man on a plane bound for Los Angeles. He'd asked the man where he was from. The man told him that he wasn't actually from anywhere. He kept his belongings in a storage locker and spent 300 days out of the year on the road. The man told Kirn that there were a lot of people like him. Like any good author, Kirn saw an idea for a novel and promptly wrote Up In The Air - the story of a professional man who spent his life in airports and hotels. The book was a success. Years later, filmmaker Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking, Juno) uses the book as a launching point for a film with a decidedly different plot. The film has met with a great deal of acclaim. How do the two compare?
The Book
Walter Kirn sets up a reasonably interesting first-person narrative from the start. The gentleman in question is Ryan Bingham - a man who lives his life on the road traveling from place to place as a "career transition counselor" - a man who is paid to tell people they've been fired and do so in a way that allows them to best navigate to their next job. Bingham is caught in the perpetual journey of his employment with no real sense of direction beyond two higher priorities: potentially getting hired by a secretive corporation called MythTech and the potential sale of a business allegory book - the type of thing business executive types find inspirational. Among other things, Bingham sees himself as a potential business guru making his fortunes on the executive inspirational lecture circuit.
The story lacks any real sense of direction. There are numerous stresses on Bingham, but there's no real sense of organization to it all. And, in a way this works - the aimlessness of the narrative matches the aimlessness of Bingham's journey. The problem is that the narrative itself is pretty lifeless. We get a vivid picture of Bingham's intellectual landscape, but it's not a very interesting place. There are occasionally crisp little bits of description and clever little turns of phrase, but none of the sparkling little elements ever resolve into anything terribly profound. The narrative never develops enough perspective to offer any kind of insight into the nature of the modern nomadic executive lifestyle or the larger corporate culture it fits into.
Throughout the novel we are exposed to the perspective of Ryan Bingham - a man who Kirn seems to be attempting to paint as a charmingly cold individual with flaws and emotions hidden underneath that make him endearing. Kirn doesn't do a terribly good job of making Bingham the kind of traveling companion one feels terribly interested in spending 300 pages with. The novel works well as a book to be read on planes, busses or any other form of mass transit because Bingham feels like some mildly offensive guy whose cell phone conversation you're overhearing on a flight from one place to the next. He's not the kind of guy you'd want to hang out with once you got off the plane. This really shouldn't be a problem, though. Any halfway decent narrative can overcome the abrasiveness of the main character.
The cold lifelessness of a white-collar figure from a first person perspective was captured with much more appeal in a much more vivid and brilliantly realized novel in Brett Easton Ellis' American Psycho from 1991. (It's a far better book than its admittedly competent film adaptation in 2001.) Ellis' protagonist Patrick Bateman has a cold charm about him that dissolves into a staggeringly interesting depiction of mental collapse in pinstripes. Bingham travels a similar route by the end of Up In The Air, but it isn't a particularly coherent journey for him and his psychological make-up ultimately feels like a tacked-on subplot.
As for the nomadic nature of the modern executive, that subject matter was captured much more brilliantly in the travel segments of Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel Fight Club (which was turned into a 1999 David Fincher film that was surprisingly every bit as good.) Palahniuk's very concise observations on corporate travel sparkle with insight spoken through the mouth of Tyler Durden. In 300 pages of travel, Bingham never manages the level of insight Durden achieves in the brief span of the book that focuses on his journeys.
There are probably better examples of novels with more accomplished first-person perspective novels with a male protagonist than Fight Club and American Psycho, It is interesting to note, however, that though both of those novels were turned into fairly decent films, neither film managed to improve significantly on the novels they were based on. Though it may not have been a terribly accomplished novel, Kirn's Up In The Air could serve as a really good initial study for a far better film written and directed by Jason Reitman.
The Movie
From the beginning, it's pretty clear that the film does a much better job of making Bingham likable than the book does. Much of the success of this is due to George Clooney's performance in the role. Clooney has a respectable pragmatism about him that carries a remarkable amount of charm. The book never really establishes why Bingham is as good as he is at what he does. Clooney's performance in the role artfully renders the spirit behind the intellect of the character and that goes a long way towards making him the type of guy you don't mind spending a couple of hours in the theatre with.
The character of Bingham has been changed a bit. He's no longer writing a business allegory that he's trying to publish, but he IS aspiring to be a motivational speaker, complete with a book based on his seminar. The backpack motif fits in well with the cinematic visual of the characters constant travels. Director Jason Reitman has gone to great length to capture the visual reality of life on the road complete with brand names, plane interiors and numerous location shoots in quite a few different airports all over the country.
The visual appeal of the film is quite effective and some of the dialogue is remarkably witty, but Reitman's greatest accomplishment with the adaptation of Up In The Air was knowing he had to change the story in order to make it a satisfying trip to the movies. Reitman cut the entire MythTech end of the story. The big central conflict- the ultimate goal of working for a company that is far enough of ahead of the cutting edge to be almost completely anonymous is a quaint one, but not particularly compelling. Reitman has moved the central conflict of the story to one casts Bingham in a far more sympathetic light.
In the film, the company Bingham works for is in the process of shifting its operations so that people working for its clients companies get fired via webcam, thus eliminating the expense of the constant travel that makes the job so appealing to Bingham. Suddenly he's in a place not entirely unlike the one he puts other people in. The company's change in policy comes courtesy of an attractive young woman (a thoroughly charming Anna Kendrick) who is assigned to follow Bingham around, learning the basic elements of the job that she is trying to revolutionize. The dynamic between Clooney and Kendrick can be a bit cute in places, but the chemistry between the two of them brings a humanity to Bingham's job that helps keep it from feeling cold and emotionless.
Reitman adds in a couple of other major subplots that are only marginally drawn from aspects of the book. In one, he is falling in love with a woman who has a similar lifestyle (played by Vera Farmiga) and doesn't know quite how to deal with the idea of actually becoming involved in someone else emotionally. In another, his sister is getting married and he may need to go to northern Wisconsin in February to attend her wedding - a prospect that brings him ever closer to the prospect of having to deal with all of that interpersonal emotional baggage that he's been avoiding all this time in the air.
Sappy sentimental moments aside, this is an exceedingly enjoyable film - further evidence that Jason Reitman is beginning to become some weird approximation of the Frank Capra of his generation. One of the most ingenious bits here is Reitman's decision to tie the story in with the contemporary financial crisis. The film features people reacting to their job loss at the hands of Clooney and Kendrick. Aside from a couple of actors in key clips, the fired employees were actual people who have recently been laid off. They responded to an ad and were asked to speak to the camera what they wish they would've said to the person who fired them. This brings an interesting visceral reality to the film that adds profoundly to the human dimension of an exceedingly good film.
The Verdict
The book is an exhaustive, scattered study of the psyche of the modern executive traveler, but lacks enough coherence to make for a very compelling or insightful story. The film based on it is a far more engaging and cohesive look at the nature of business and personal relations in today's tenuous financial and emotional economy. Filmmaker Jason Reitman has taken an admittedly enjoyable book that is deeply flawed and turned it into a cohesive and insightful film.