Comments

1. I posted this on the Flyertalk thread:

   I made it to the world premiere Saturday night at the Toronto International Film Festival. I will start out by saying the atmosphere for this screening was electric. It was great that George Clooney, Jason Bateman, Jason Reitman and the other stars were all there. But I knew it was something special when I saw freakin Oprah sneaking in a side entrance. (The crowd went wild for Oprah). Then right when the movie started Drew Barrymore also snuck in.

   The movie itself was excellent. George’s character works for a company that fires employees for other companies too chicken to do it themselves. He is on the road 300 days a year so is basically a Frequent flyer nomad. He doesn’t spend a cent without thinking about the mileage implications. His apartment is barren. He also gives seminars on “emptying your backpack” of responsibilities. The big issue of the movie is can George Clooney’s character actually make real connections with people and family when he is really trying to avoid them by traveling all year. I won’t give away too much more of the plot. George is onscreen for basically the whole movie and he is excellent.

   Now for the FlyerTalk parts. George flys AA. He has an AA Concierge Key. He also does Hhonors and rents from Hertz with top status at both of these. These companies figure prominently in the movie. George’s big goal is to reach 10 million miles so he can get lifetime executive status, he would get to meet the first?/ most famous? AA pilot and he gets him name on a plane. He would be only the seventh person to get this.

   There is a great scene early on where he is a bar at the Hilton and he starts up a conversation with a woman about the merits of various rental car companies (they both insult one fictional company), then they move on to airlines, and start comparing their cards and status in various programs. Lots of innuendo about how big his stack of miles is and his AA Concierge Card really makes her hot. If the movie were real life George would definitely be a Flyertalk member.

   As far as I saw in the credits it was shot in Omaha, Detroit and Maimi mostly with a few other places thrown in. George actually visits a bunch of cities like Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, Tulsa and Des Moines but i have no idea if they actually shot there. (I missed some of the credits).

   In my opinion they did a really good job on the Frequent Flyer part and the obsession with status and miles. I didn’t find out who their consultant was for that part. The frequent flyer part also figured much more prominently in the movie than the “pudding guy” part of Punch Drunk Love. Overall the whole movie was great. It had a really good story and great acting. It will hands down be the Flyertalk movie of the year, probably of all time.