Most every profession has its iconic, onscreen hero – that one badass who represents everything cool about an industry and to whom everyone in it looks for inspiration. Fighter pilots have Maverick in “Top Gun.” Talent agents have Ari Gold in “Entourage.” Journalists have Robert Redford in “All the President’s Men.” (Sorry, Dustin Hoffman. Too short.)
And now the lowly business traveler — that sap who slept in a Red Roof Inn last night and is right now moldering in an airport lounge waiting on a delayed flight — may have just gotten his first celluloid hero in Ryan Bingham.
Bingham spent 322 days on the road last year. He packs his rolling suitcase just so, and has earned preferred customer cards for practically every airport and hotel in America. He knows how to blow through security and always gets in line behind Asians, because Asians “pack light, travel efficiently and have a thing for slip-on shoes.” What Maverick did to Russian MiGs, this guy does to frequent-flier miles.
Bingham (George Clooney) is the main character in Friday’s “Up in the Air” — a comedy written and directed by Jason Reitman of “Juno” — and as improbable as it sounds, he’s based on a real person. You mean there’s actually a human being out there who enjoys flying, outside of those people in an airline commercial?
“Up in the Air” was adapted from a 2001 novel by Walter Kirn, who got the inspiration for Bingham while flying to LA. The author asked a fellow traveler where he was from and the man replied, “From right here. Right from this seat.”
The road warrior traveled 300 days a year and didn’t even have an apartment. He’d traded it for a storage locker long ago. There was only one complication to this completely untethered soul. “I realized as I talked to him,” Kirn says, “that he had adapted to a global landscape that’s entirely composed of airports, hotels, chain restaurants, gift shops and magazine racks. But I also realized how lonely he must feel.”
And therein lies the thrust of “Up in the Air.” Bingham, an avowed bachelor, has no meaningful relationships to speak of. Writer-director Reitman says the character is, in part, intended as a warning for what’s happening to all of us.
“We’re all using our cellphones and Twittering and texting, and it seems as if we are more connected than ever,” Reitman says. “In reality, people don’t look each other in the eye much anymore, and we have fewer real relationships.
“Ryan’s life in airports is a metaphor for that. You can go into an airport anywhere in the world and instantly know where everything is. They have the same shops, the same restaurants, the same newspapers. We’re comfortable everywhere, yet nowhere really seems to be home. We’re so global that we’ve lost that sense of local community.”
To complicate Bingham’s desire for isolation, Reitman added two characters to the story: Alex (Vera Farmiga), a road warrior Ryan has flings with when the pair find themselves in the same city, and Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a perky, naive executive with whom Ryan is forced to partner.
One aspect of the film that Reitman couldn’t control is its synchronicity with the current economic downturn. Call “Up in the Air” the first major release unintentionally about the recession. Bingham works as a corporate downsizer. He basically gets paid to fire people, and business is booming. (On the plus side, if you gotta lose your job, it helps to have the so-called sexiest man alive deliver the news. )
Reitman says the downturn is merely “a location” in the film, but he and the crew took great pains to make the scenes in which Bingham wields the ax as authentic as possible. Those people sitting on the other side of the table from Clooney? They’re real Americans who were recently fired.
The filmmakers found them by placing ads in St. Louis and Detroit — two towns hit hard by the recession — seeking participants for a supposed documentary on joblessness. The participants chosen were told what the movie actually was and asked to do a scene with Clooney. For their big moment, they were given an interesting choice: reenact what they said and did the day they were actually fired, or let loose with what they wished they had said.
Most chose to play it straight.
“I think I know why,” Reitman says. “I had gotten a legal firing form from a friend who worked in HR. It had all the verbiage that everyone hears when they get fired, and because of that, it was like sense memory [for the participants]. They just started saying the first things that came to them, which were often what they said the day they lost their job.
“They would ask the same questions: Why them? How many people in their department were laid off? What happens to their medical benefits?”
Most did not enjoy reliving the experience.
“It was a very emotional day,” Reitman says. “They were put back into the moment, and you could see it. Their body language changed, their eyes changed, one girl broke out into hives. They were suddenly in the moment in the same way an actor would be.”
All in all, Reitman says “Up in the Air” is his best film. (Though he recently tweeted of “Juno,” “Man, I did do a good job on that.”) He says he’s simply a more experienced filmmaker.
“I’m not trying to be pretentious, but directing is such an instinctual job,” Reitman says. “I just have a gut feeling, and my gut has gotten better as I’ve gone on. I think this is a much more emotionally articulated film than ‘Thank You for Smoking.’ It’s better than ‘Juno.’ ”
And don’t expect “Up in the Air” to launch ubiquitous catchphrases like his last film. That might have been worse than flying coach.
reed.tucker@nypost.com