It’s taken only two feature films, but writer-director Jason Reitman has already established himself as more than just the son of renowned comedy director and producer Ivan Reitman (“Stripes,” “Ghostbusters”).

Reitman first hit the scene with “Thank You for Smoking,” a razor-sharp satire about the tobacco industry that received critical acclaim and two Golden Globe nominations. But it was “Juno,” his second film, that propelled him to the national stage, after the film won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and earned three other Oscar nominations. His latest film, “Up in the Air,” tells the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney, “The Men Who Stare at Goats”), a man who travels around the country to fire employees for bosses who are too cowardly to do it themselves. In a recent conference call, Reitman discussed his latest film, frequent flying, unconventional sex and the angry white man film trilogy.

While his first three films have featured main characters who appear to have nothing in common at first glance — a head lobbyist for Big Tobacco, a pregnant teenager and a guy who fires people for a living — Reitman believes they are more alike than one would originally think.

“I’m obviously attracted, whether I know it or not, to characters who live in a kind of polarized world,” Reitman said. “Why I like these characters is that they usually have a very open-minded point of view on something, and they give me an opportunity to take a fresh look at a subject that is usually kind of talked about in one way.”

Although Reitman began adapting Walter Kirn’s 2001 book of the same name seven years ago, “Up in the Air” was delayed by the production of Reitman’s first two films. During this time period, however, the story began to take on more of a real life persona as Reitman grew up.

“When I first started writing this, I was a single guy living in an apartment in my 20s, and by the time I finished, I’d met my wife, I’d become a father and had a mortgage,” Reitman said. “So what started out as a movie about a guy who just fired people for a living became about a man who was trying to figure out who and what he wanted in life.”

The film, which involves various corporate workplaces conducting employee layoffs, also has more of an authentic feeling now that it is being released in today’s struggling economy. Reitman enhanced this realistic feel by casting real people who had just lost their jobs in real life.

“I wanted it to be as authentic as possible, and that’s why I reached out into the community, in Detroit and St. Louis, looking for people who were willing to talk openly about what it’s like to get fired in this kind of economic meltdown,” Reitman said. “And I was very fortunate that these people with no on-camera experience were willing to come forward and not only be interviewed, but then also fired on camera.”

Bingham, the conflicted main character in “Up in the Air,” spends his life going from one airport terminal to the next, comparing loyalty cards and frequent flyer miles as opposed to family photos with his love interest in the film, Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga, “Orphan”). Ironically, Reitman has spent just as much time on airplanes as Bingham lately, a lifestyle he says he also enjoys.

“I started enjoying flights for the same reason I enjoyed going to movie theaters: it’s a chance to unplug from your normal life,” Reitman said. “When you’re up in the plane, your cell phone doesn’t work and your closest friend is this person in 17J and you can have the kind of conversation with him that you would never have with someone you knew well. You find out about lifestyles and jobs you would otherwise not know.”

Having now made three films, Reitman said people are starting to create lines of continuity between his work, which to him, is kind of terrifying in a sense to find out who he is as a person by the way his movies are judged.

“Back just a week ago, [“Juno” screenwriter] Diablo Cody noticed that in my movies, people never have sex in bed, that they only have sex like everywhere else, like in a closet or on the floor, and I can’t even begin to think what that says about me,” Reitman said.

Another trend people have started to notice is how Reitman humanizes tricky, unlikeable characteristics through his protagonists in “Thank You for Smoking” and “Up in the Air,” something Reitman acknowledges would make an interesting trilogy of sorts.

“I need, you know, my third angry white guy to fill in,” Reitman said. “Tobacco lobbyists, corporate termination executive, what is the third slot? I’m not sure. Maybe either pharmaceuticals or lawyers? Someone who works in the clergy? I don’t know.”

What Reitman does know, however, is while his movies don’t necessarily fit entirely within either the comedy or drama genre, they will still entertain and move a variety of audiences.

“I don’t limit myself to one or the other,” Reitman said. “I think that I’d like my movies to have comedy, and drama, and danger, and romance, and kind of every technique that allows you to just kind of push and pull the audience and give them as complete of an experience as possible.”