the ending of ‘up in the air’

Vulture:

Yesterday, a reader of Jeffrey Wells’s blog posited a theory that Up in the Air director Jason Reitman had once intended to keep the original ending of Walter Kirn’s 2001 novel, on which his movie is based. […] He wonders if certain parts of the film aren’t vestiges of an earlier version whose finale hewed closer to Kirn’s and might’ve been more affecting. By the way, Reitman denied all of this last night, but it’s still interesting. Want to know what might’ve been?

If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, don’t read on in the above post – there be spoilers ahead.  For my money, I think using the book’s ending with the movie’s pace and style would have cheapened the movie.

A good deal of what I think makes the film so successful – and slightly polarizing amongst my friends – is that it has such a seemingly simplistic story.  I’ve gotten into a number of debates over the journey of Clooney’s character or if he even has one. Whatever the belief, the story is clear of any screenwriting trickery.  The entire progression of the story comes out of interactions amongst the characters without any “acts of God”s inserted to keep it interesting.