Kevin Smith Pays Tribute to Ghostbusters Director Ivan Reitman, He "Gave Us Some of the Best Movies"

Filmmaker and geek icon Kevin Smith took some time out during the latest episode of the Fatman Beyond podcast to remember the life and work of Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman. The filmmaker, who also directed films like Meatballs and Ivan Reitman, unsurprisingly had a profound impact on Smith, whose brand of comedy leans heavily on pop culture references and the shared experience of fandom. Smith co-hosts Fatman Beyond with Marc Bernardin, and in the second half of the latest episode, the pair talked about Reitman, who passed away in his sleep earlier this month. The entertainment industry has been awash in love for the filmmaker since.

"Our family is grieving the unexpected loss of a husband, father, and grandfather who taught us to always seek the magic in life," Reitman's children Jason, Catherine and Caroline said in a joint statement earlier this month. "We take comfort that his work as a filmmaker brought laughter and happiness to countless others around the world. While we mourn privately, we hope those who knew him through his films will remember him always."

Smith remembered Reitman as a filmmaker who "gave us some of the best movies" and "shaped a lot of our childhood."

You can see Smith's comments comments -- a little after 40 minutes in the video -- below.

In a lengthy eulogy, Smith said among other things that Clerks's Randal Graves would never have come to be, if it weren't for the kind of snarky antiheroes that populated much of Reitman's work.

"It f---ing sucks to lose anybody, particularly somebody who had a run of wonderful films that shaped a lot of our childhoods," Smith said. "Yeah, our parents and friends shape our childhoods as well, but the things we watch and the things we love and rewatch -- particularly those of us who grew up in that generation that didn't have every option on the planet and didn't live with our faces in our phones, with lived with our faces in our TV screens, ladies and gentlemen, where we watched our movies over and over again, most of them by Ivan Reitman. The man made a triumvirate of movies which infected my DNA and you can see the influence of his work in mind. He did back to back almost Meatballs, Stripes, and Ghostbusters. The antiheroes of those three movies -- Tripper, John Winger, and Peter Venkman -- I don't get to Randal without those characters. The person who's the smartest guy in the room but not doing as well as you would think he would being as clever as they are, is an archetype that he captured expertly on film with the help of powerhouse Bill Murray. The one positive thing, the one silver lining to his death is that he did get to see Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which is such a beautiful memorial fan film to the original from father to son."

Reitman began working in film in the 1970s and was one of the biggest directors of the 1980s. He remained an active director, and a producing giant, for most of the rest of his life before he largely retired from directing in 2014 after helming the Kevin Costner-starring Draft Day. After that, he focused mainly on producing projects including BaywatchFather FiguresA Babysitter's Guide to Monster Hunting, and Ghostbuster: Afterlife

Reitman produced Afterlife, with his son Jason in the director's chair. The family connection was a big part of the story behind the movie, whether it be the director's own childhood connections to his father's films, or how the family legacy mirrored the story, which centered on the family of Egon Spenger, played by the late Harold Ramis.

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