Reitman left an indelible mark on Rudd, Rogen and the swath of actors, writers and directors raised on his catalogue, which includes “Meatballs,” “Twins” and “Ghostbusters.” As a producer, Reitman also had his hand in countless other classics, including “Animal House,” “Old School” and his son Jason’s “Up in the Air.”
There were buddy movies before Reitman, but nobody mastered them like he did. Reitman understood that those relationships were often the root of why comedy draws us in. They also don’t need to be formulaic. How else to explain Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito playing fraternal twins?
Reitman didn’t talk much about the specifics of his craft. In the rare moments he praised himself, he would say, “Nobody works harder.” In most interviews, he was generous in praising others and downright boring in explaining the art of what he did. If you didn’t know better, you’d have no clue that Reitman helped write and direct some of the sharpest lines in modern comedy.
He took his job seriously. We’ve been conditioned to see comedies as second class, to applaud the most successful comic actors, be they Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler, only when they finally do that dramatic turn. Reitman seemed to respect comedy as its own beast and never underestimated the challenges it presented. He never got offended when pressed about why he stuck to the genre.
“Drama’s pretty straightforward,” the director told Charlie Rose in 1994. “You tell the story in an intelligent way and you’re very careful with it and you’re done. You have to do that in a comedy as well, but on top of that you have to somehow move people enough to make them laugh. That’s a very tough emotion to get.”
Decode that, and Reitman seems to be saying he would use whatever tools were available to build a connection to the audience. And in that toolbox, the buddy relationship was his hammer and the nail.
Having Bill Murray also helped. In Reitman’s first comedy, 1979’s “Meatballs,” we see Murray’s counselor connecting with sad camper Rudy Gerner (Christopher Makepeace). In 1981’s “Stripes,” Murray’s wiseguy is back again as John Winger, except this time he’s matched with Harold Ramis’s Russell Ziskey, a bookish straight man who can also deliver a sarcastic jab. The dynamic returns in Reitman’s best comedy, “Ghostbusters,” with two brainiacs (Ramis’s Egon Spengler and Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz) playing off Murray’s boorishly adorable Peter Venkman.
There are thick books and college courses taught on Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman, but as the film world mourns Reitman, it’s worth noting how many careers were built on the shoulders of his buddyship. It can be seen in the best Will Ferrell movies — five with John C. Reilly, three with Mark Wahlberg — in the goofy games on Jimmy Fallon’s version of “The Tonight Show” and even in podcasts occupied by buddies. It’s not hard to see Reitman’s influence on Judd Apatow and Todd Phillips as well as Paul Feig, who created his own kind of buddy film with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock in “The Heat” and Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in “A Simple Favor.”
And back to potato chips, is there any better Reitman prototype than Paul Rudd? Ageless, danceable, up for anything communal yet unwilling to do anything mean. He’s the guy you want to drink a craft beer with, the guy you want to marry, the guy you want to meet at the gym, your best man, your wing man, your dream date, your work spouse.
When the time came to cast last year’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (produced by Ivan Reitman and directed by son Jason), what better choice than to include Rudd? To pick the worthiest specimen of the “I love you, man” generation, the ultimate buddy? It was a recognition of a debt deeply owed to Reitman, from bros (and bro-ish people) everywhere.
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