You gotta know what you're talking about

Up in the Air (2/18/03 draft) by Sheldon V. Turner, based on the book by Walter Kim

I'm going to start by saying, I don't know Jason Reitman found his Up in the Air in this script.  I haven't read the book, I know nothing about the book.  My hope is that the book is closer to Reitman's vision, and this particular screenwriter and countless producers conspired to ruin to it....Although, my fear is that this is a farily accurate adaptation.  I have nothing to back that up except for the fact that the writer makes little mistakes which leads me believe he doesn't know what's he's talking about and just parroting a summary of the book.  Case in point, the protagonist refers to people as "Japeto".  I think this is reference to "Gepetto" from Pinocchio.  But, who knows.  The more egregious case occurs on page 32 where as joke (I assume) he answers the phone "Edie Ahmean".  I can only assume he is referring Idi Amin famous Ugandan dictator.  While I don't expect everyone to have seen Barbet Schroeder's General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait (Last King of Scotland had not yet come out this point), I do expect someone who is trying to make a cultural reference to at least do the research on the spelling of the person's name. (On a complete sidenote when I saw the writers spelling all I could think of was Edie McClurg's role from Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Being a fan of the film and after these (and other minor mistakes) I was predisposed not to like this script, and I didn't.  It again makes me realize that Jason Reitman is one of the best filmmakers of generation.  He knows when not to touch a script (Juno) and when to rewrite and make it his own.

But, I wonder if it was his track record that allowed to make such sweeping changes (like everything but the setup), which is why this one falls so flat.  I am going to hope that this was a new writer without the juice to say that the ending is just too Hollywood, and doesn't fit with the tone of the movie.  This could also be a function of the time- 2003 being good times economically and 2009 being bad.