Key Change: How Up in the Air Changed My Life with Music (and a Little Serendipity)

By Kevin Renick

Well, I can’t dunk. (Bob, a newly fired worker played by JK Simmons):
No, but you can cook! (George Clooney’s character Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer giving Bob the bad news):
Bob: What are you talking about?
Ryan: Your resume says that you minored in French culinary arts. Most students, they work on the fryer at KFC. But you bussed tables at El Picador to support yourself. Then you got out of college and then you come and work HERE. How much did they first pay you to give up on your dreams?
Bob: $27 grand a year.
Ryan: And when were you going to stop, and come back and do what makes you happy?
Bob: Good question…

Plenty of movies we watch throughout our lives make a lasting impression, becoming associated with memories we recall fondly, changes in how we perceive our personal journey, or by simply telling a story that deeply resonates with who we are in our core values. But I think it’s quite rare that a movie literally changes someone’s life. That’s a tall order for a piece of celluloid. And yet, I’m here right now to tell you about a movie that did just that for me. The film was Jason Reitman’s Oscar-nominated 2009 opus UP IN THE AIR, an eerily timed examination of the previous year’s economic downturn and how three egocentric characters are caught up in different aspects of it. My life these days can be divided into “before UP IN THE AIR” and “after UP IN THE AIR.” An overly dramatic statement? Nope, not really. 

At the start of the holiday season in 2008, I was laid off from my long-time job as an Advertising Proofreader at a large company called Momentum Worldwide. I’d been in advertising for many years, with stints at the Riverfront Times and D’Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles preceding my Momentum era. It surely seemed that correcting other people’s mistakes was going to be my primary source of income, perhaps forever. My formal major at Webster University way back when was “English with a Journalism Emphasis,” and I’d spent a lot of hours at Webster writing and editing for the school newspaper, the Journal. I even won a few prestigious awards. But rather than aggressively pursuing a career as a reporter or even an arts reviewer, something I had a passion for (I contributed heavily to two St. Louis publications, NoisyPaper and Playback STL and many people knew me from those pieces), I just sort of fell into a proofreading job. I gained considerable skill at this over time, and by the time I started my decade-long stint at Momentum, I viewed proofreading as my lot in life. I think I felt happy to have ANY skill that could be considered “marketable.” And at times, it was even kind of fun....they referred to me sometimes at Momentum as “Eagle eyes.”

But what none of my co-workers there knew, and even precious few of my colleagues at Playback or the RFT, was that I had long dreamed of being a singer/songwriter. I would periodically pick up my old acoustic guitar and strum simple chords, and find myself composing a melody. I had an ear for melody, I felt, based on years and years listening to the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, CSNY (especially Neil Young), Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell and many more. My songs were mostly melancholy, and focused on a few recurring themes: the passing of time, the search for love (or loss of it) and the absolute uncertainty of, well, everything in life. Sometimes I would nail a mood and an arrangement that I thought felt and sounded right, although I seldom shared these songs with anyone. But one day, a series of verses flowed out of me pretty effortlessly, dealing with my lack of self-esteem, my shame about not being more successful in my family’s eyes, and my constant wondering where in the heck my life was truly headed. I titled my song “Up in the Air.” After each of its six verses, I sang some variation of the refrain “Cause I’m up in the air.” In the final verse, I delivered the deeper meaning of the song through the lyrics I penned about how I loved to be out in the woods, watching birds, and how they had that magical gift of simply being able to fly from place to place. “I guess it all comes down to them/Cause they’re up in the air,” was the line I wrote. So, a phrase that was almost universally associated with the idea of being indecisive and uncertain, something people casually uttered all the time in conversation when discussing life choices, could also mean the ability to move freely from place to place. To be on “wings of discovery,” or something. If you were in the air, flying somewhere new, weren’t all things possible?

Director Jason Reitman must have had thoughts like this when he read the Walter Kirn novel Up in the Air, about a man who flies around the country helping companies downsize. It’s well-known that Reitman originally intended his third film (he’d just scored critically with his sophomore effort JUNO) to be a comedy, and he was apparently startled by the major economic shift, housing crisis and unemployment numbers that plagued the U.S. and dominated the news in 2008. He realized he had to shift the tone of his film, and more weight was to be given to the dramatic aspects of it, as lead Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) was to serve as a sort of “viewer’s guide” to the unemployment crisis, while a feisty new hire at his company, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), demonstrates how laying people off was a process that could be streamlined with the newly efficient potential of the internet. Ryan and Natalie clash, of course, and part of UITA’s arc is depicting how Ryan’s somewhat old-school firing techniques (and his secure M.O. of flying around the country freely) is threatened by new technology and methods. This guy who loves being literally “up in the air” is about to learn a different meaning of that phrase.

But back to my story. It’s simply the biggest coincidence of my entire life that after getting laid off from a “secure” corporate job, I found myself reading a news item about a film coming to shoot in St. Louis titled UP IN THE AIR. I was sitting there with my completed original song of that same name, reading an ad asking for recently laid-off workers to come to a given mall to tell their stories (I thought about attending, but decided not to). And it was revealed that director Reitman would be doing a lecture about his career and the upcoming new film, at my alma mater. Webster University! All of this was so colossally eventful to me, I went into a kind of nervous tizzy. I knew I HAD to attend the lecture, and to convey to Reitman, somehow, that I’d written an original song called “Up in the Air.” I didn’t really know the plot of his film; I mistakenly thought early on that Clooney played a pilot or something in the movie. But I just remember saying to myself, “What IF my little song could somehow fit the storyline of Reitman’s film, and what IF I can get a demo of it to him to check out?” It seemed improbable, and there were titters in the audience during a Q&A when I asked Reitman if he’d be willing to hear my song. “Certainly,” he said, memorably. “The more unusual the way I get the music, the better.” But he was likely just being polite. The fact is, I had to track him down VERY quickly after the lecture, because he was bolting for the exit. To his credit, though, he let me hand him my yellow manila envelope, which included a cassette tape containing a simple demo of my UITA song recorded that very week, and a letter explaining why I hoped the song might work for the film. Reitman audibly groaned and made a joke about not owning a cassette player anymore; this scene has been described in numerous articles and is part of the whole miraculous story. I felt pretty embarrassed, and as I left Webster that night, I was certain Reitman would just throw my tape in the trash. A mere two days later (this was the second weekend in February of 2009), a nightmarish event occurred that made me set aside all thoughts of being in a movie—my mother had a serious fall and was rushed to the ICU at a local hospital. The seeds of both the best event and the worst event in my life were planted the same weekend. 

The story would take a while to unfold. I was soon to lose my beloved mother, but I was to GAIN a music career when Reitman actually played my song on a friend’s tape player, liked it and used it as the closing credits song for his new movie. Starting with the premiere of the film in November 2009, I would be thrust into the pop culture spotlight, with articles appearing in the Washington Post, the Riverfront Times, the Post-Dispatch and many other publications. I was the subject of a segment on Katie Couric’s weekly CBS show (reporter Jim Axelrod flew in to interview me, and included a bit where he spoke to Jason Reitman about me). At the premiere, almost all of my close friends were in attendance, as well as my girlfriend Lisa. I performed “Up in the Air” live before the sold-out screening and discussion. Despite being in a nearly out-of-body state, I thanked Jason Reitman immediately. I said something like, “Jason, you’re so cool, you sent the cool-o-meter into the red zone. You BROKE the thing!” In one of those moments fully captured by the whirring cameras, Reitman himself yelled out from the audience, “My pleasure!” The audience yelled and clapped enthusiastically. And in a humorous remark during the Q&A he referred to my song as the “Stairway to Heaven” of folk songs. Excessive flattery for sure, but the occasion was full of such things. And plenty more was to come: I was asked just a few months later to join actress Anna Kendrick on a trip to Tokyo to promote the premiere of UITA in Japan. That trip, if I described it in detail, would triple the length of this article...no need. Let’s just say that I was treated like a star myself. It was all happening so fast, and I just couldn’t believe it. Somehow, Japanese fans found out very early about my song, and would show up regularly at my hotel to ask for autographs and photos (the Japanese absolutely love American pop culture). Every day in Tokyo, I had interviews for either radio, TV or print media. I have to say, I rose to the occasion. I already LIKED doing interviews, but I had no trouble answering questions. When asked what I would say to laid-off Japanese workers who feared the kind of economic apocalypse that was happening in America, I commented “Well, there are two main things. Be kind to your friends and loved ones...cherish those relationships. Because you will NEED them more than ever if you lose your job. And secondly, find something that you feel passionate about in life...a hobby, a long-time interest...just something you can focus on anew. Because having something else in life that keeps you engaged or interested can be crucial.” That, of course, was one of the underlying themes of UITA—the notion that an unexpected “career transition” could lead a person to pursue their actual dream. It doesn’t feel good to be fired, but what might it result in? That’s what Clooney’s character was trying to express to Bob in the opening dialogue I quoted, and it is, of course, precisely what happened to ME. I couldn’t fully express the absolute irony of it all until much later. Anyway, back to my adventure in Japan…

There were several scheduled events with Ms. Kendrick, so I got to hang out and chat with her, along with my pal Ted, who made the trip with me. Anna was absolutely kind and warm, an easy conversationalist who made me feel like an equal. She even complimented me on camera to one of the Japanese reporters. Ted and I performed my “Up in the Air” song twice, to the gathered Japanese media throngs, on beautiful stages adorned with “American Airlines” banners. This was just heady, heady stuff, and it was changing the script of my entire life dramatically. From day to day, I had no idea what opportunity might come my way (some of them suggested by my then-manager Robynn Ragland, who for a time was fielding quite a few relevant phone calls).

Yes, now I had a music career, apparently. Although I’d had a few low-key gigs at the Grove Deli in Webster by this time, and I penned some of the best songs of my life in the aftermath of my mother’s death, that was on a strictly local level. In December 2009, the UITA soundtrack was released by Warner Brothers. It featured my first recorded song to reach an international audience—something very exciting, indeed! My late brother Kyle had earlier joked that my song would likely be performed in the movie by some hot young starlet “like Miley Cyrus,” rather than an unknown name like me. But Jason Reitman’s vision allowed precisely for the kind of “who’s THIS guy?” query that my slot on the soundtrack would soon arouse. And in one of the breathtaking ironies that have all been discussed in articles upon the film’s release, my song appeared on a disc that also featured Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, a songwriting foursome hugely influential in the way I composed and conceptualized my own songs as a young man. 

I began to get emails and other correspondence from places far and wide as the song made its way across the airwaves and the internet. There was talk that my song was worthy of “Oscar consideration,” but I was disqualified due to two Academy rules, one of which was that nominated songs had to be written specifically for the movie. My song was written before UITA went into production, so that took care of THAT. But I was soon to have my mind blown by the internet when I started to see comments on YouTube and elsewhere stating that my song helped viewers understand the movie better; one comment said that it even EXPLAINED it. Sure, I’ll take it, I thought. I’m “up in the air” in my life, and the character played by mega-famous George Clooney is “up in the air” by the concluding moments of this Hollywood dramedy. I earned heaps of praise, and yes, a pretty generous amount of money from my little acoustic song. And what you hear in the film, remarkably, is my original demo. Reitman did NOT want me to go into a studio and record a more polished version of the song (I asked to do this). No, I was told that he liked the “authenticity” of the original bedroom recording.

Hence, my personal song about uncertainty and angst, during a time of uncertainty and angst for the entire country, became the theme song for a movie about uncertainty and angst among laid-off workers and three characters of flawed morality and self-aggrandizing tendencies, who soon have to face...uncertainty and angst. I don’t think I particularly need to rehash all the plot points of Up in the Air, as you can read that sort of thing elsewhere, but many of the laid-off workers shown in the film were ACTUAL laid-off workers. I met one of them, Deborah Norman. I also became friends with fellow musician Erin McGrane, who had a small role in the movie as Clooney’s attractive neighbor who brings a package down to him at his Omaha apartment. 

I’ve often said that the three principal characters in the movie all learn that they’ve been harboring ongoing misconceptions. Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, who pretends not to need anyone else in his life, is charmed by a fellow executive named Alex (Vera Farmiga) with whom he has an amusing “credit card competition” and becomes sexually involved. He gradually comes to care for her sincerely, in spite of himself, and when he tries to express that by way of a surprise late in the film, he gets an unwanted jolt. There has been discussion on IMDB and elsewhere about whether that changed him or not; whether being “hurt” has now made him reevaluate his life of relative isolation. The Ryan  character is shown to be selfish and narcissistic, something his periodic “self-improvement” talks (which glibly challenge audience members to think about what they would put in a metaphorical backpack if they had to get by with ONLY the essentials) clearly reveal, but he is not without feelings. Not without empathy; his developing concern and respect for Natalie soon tells us that.  

As for this character that Anna Kendrick portrays, she starts off being a bit too cocksure about the need for streamlining the firing process and the annoyance factor of some of Clooney’s behavior. Two events throw her off her game. One is the suicide of a worker she helps to terminate, the other is the totally unexpected breakup with her boyfriend, who gives her the bad news via a text message. “Kind of like firing someone over the internet,” Ryan dryly tells her. This movie was one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to delve into aspects of changing technology and social media and how both can damage the communication process. Such things are talked about routinely now, but they weren’t at the time UITA came out. 

And then there’s Alex, a woman who seems to have everything and can match the kind of man Ryan presents himself to be, toe to toe. Alex is appealingly self-assured, but she likes to keep secrets. She leads a double life and seems to have no respect for weakness or vulnerability. “You could have really screwed things up for me,” she coldly tells Ryan after the surprise development I referred to earlier. She adds a unique insult in their subsequent exchange, “You’re a parenthesis.”

Up in the Air wants to say plenty about relationships and the human need for connection. One of the first posters featured the tagline “The story of a man ready to make a connection.” In a memorable scene, Ryan has to talk some sense into the “cold feet” of his sister’s fiancé, Jim (Danny McBride), who spouts all the reasons why a relationship could go awry. Ryan speaks about how in the best moments of your life, you probably aren’t alone. “Everyone needs a co-pilot,” he says, and Jim responds, “That was a nice touch.” We can’t be sure how sincere Ryan is by expressing these sentiments, but we do get the sense he’s changing. He’s done BOTH his estranged sisters a big favor here, and his words to Jim express a theme of this sometimes scattershot movie.

So it’s part of the movie’s raison d’etre, charting these three primary characters reactions to each other and their impact in each other’s lives as they try to reach a place they clearly haven’t arrived at yet. And it’s most definitely part of the movie’s importance that it documents a very real and horrendous economic and financial quagmire. I lived through that. I witnessed scenes of offices being phased out, and I also had gut-wrenching conversations with fellow layoffs. Scenes like this in the film were especially poignant for me. And while UITA was not a movie that everyone enjoyed (there were internet squabbles over everything from how Ryan found out Alex’s address to whether Natalie’s crying scene halfway through was good acting or not), there’s no doubt its timeliness was effective. GQ called it “the movie of the year, the movie of the moment.”

I’ve had many, many discussions about this film, and I simply find it difficult to be objective about it, after all it brought to my life. I can see its flaws, and I can see many things I really like about it. But...it genuinely changed my own trajectory. Because of UITA, I am now discussed on the IMDB page for the movie and in YouTube versions of the song. I am now a member of AFTRA and the Screen Actors Guild (because my voice is heard speaking as an intro to the song). I gained instant entry to ASCAP. I had venues that were now willing to book me for shows...beyond just the little suburban deli where things started for me. I gained respect and praise for my songwriting, with appreciative comments from around the world. People from places such as Iran, India, South Africa and Australia told me that my song helped them deal with their own uncertainty, and I realized that other humans from other cultures felt the same way I did. 

In the first year after the movie’s release, I was surprised over and over again at the poignant stories people told me. This would have appealed to me as a writer and “life observer” anyway, but knowing I’d written a song that moved people made it so much more profound. I gained permission and MOTIVATION to keep doing this thing I had long dreamed about, with an unexpected offer coming barely a year after the movie for a commission to write and perform a narrative style song in the UITA mode for a documentary about farmers. That ended up being my song “Ballad of the American Farmer,” which won a monthly songwriting award. 

Almost everything I get to do these days in music—performing, recording and meeting awesome new people—is because of a one-in-a-million, synchronistic coming-together of a song and a movie, a theme and an American financial crisis, a rising director and a nervous unemployed shlub, a burst of brazen courage and a pathetic little cassette tape, which so startled the young director that he took time to go play it on a friend’s car cassette player. He heard something in that song that resonated. And he changed the life of a laid-off proofreader who was about to run out of unemployment compensation. That guy was feeling up in the air on every single level, battling many demons and a discouraging sense of inertia. But he was about to be given “wings” to fly in a new direction, one that would make him feel a little of that sense of freedom that the birds in one verse of his newly famous song always had…

I’m out in the woods
Something here does my heart so good
I breathe the air and I know that I’m alive
And I stare at all the birds as they fly by
I guess it all comes down to them,
Cause they’re up in the air.