"Up in The Air" with George Trivia Quiz

Answer: In an airplane

In "Up in The Air" (2009) directed by the talented Jason Reitman (who directed the award winner "Juno"), Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a frequent flyer, a business man who spends most of his life in an aircraft. He flies all over the USA to provide "termination assistance" - he "downsizes" employees for corporations who don't want to deal with it. He does this with practiced, yet not unkindly, effectiveness. He brags that he flies more miles each year than the distance to the moon. The movie features close-ups of people reacting to the news they've been fired. Many of these were real-life non-actors who had in fact recently lost their jobs in the Great Recession.

Ryan: "I'm a wake-up call."

Answer: Efficiency

Ryan Bingham is incredibly efficient and methodical. Repeatedly we watch him pack his suitcase, scan his cards, avoid delays and get through airport security with streamlined and smug precision. Mastery of the check-in and saving time are his forte, and the flight itself is his happiness.

Ryan: "To know me is to fly with me. This is where I live". "I'm 20 minutes from boarding into a world of bliss."

Answer: He is unmarried without children

Having no wife or children has been part and parcel of Ryan Bingham's lifestyle, leaving him free to travel constantly. He is so focused on doing his job well, earning miles and being efficient, he seems not to notice he has no friends and no wife or kids. He has two sisters (Kara and Julie, played by Amy Morton and Melanie Lynskey) but as Kara says, "You pretty much don't exist for us." He even gives a motivational seminar in which he teaches that all family, friends and belongings are wearisome burdens.

Ryan: "Make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components of your life. ... Imagine waking up tomorrow with nothing. Kind of exhilarating, isn't it?"

Answer: He falls in love

Now in his forties Ryan meets a woman named Alex Goran (the beautiful Vera Farmiga) who says she is exactly like him, except female. She too flies often, has similar business-like values, and can meet him briefly between flights for short-lived romance. He finds himself thinking about her instead of his normal routines. He dances with her, he laughs, and he even invites her to be his date at the wedding of his sister, whom he has rarely seen. Ryan experiences the joys of connection for the first time in decades. Later in the film he walks out of his own seminar presentation to go surprise Alex at her house, excited to be in love. She is callous and cool, the way he had always been. She calls him a mere "parenthesis" to her real, married life.

While attending the wedding, Ryan and Alex sneak into his old high school, where they view a display of Ryan's basketball trophies and news clippings. These are real-life news clippings of George Clooney with his high school basketball team.

Alex, as she's walking away: "Call me if you get lonely."
Ryan: "I'm lonely."

Answer: Video conferencing

Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick earned an Oscar nomination for this role) is an up-and-coming 23 year old business woman. She's introducing videoconferencing so the company can ground all their traveling "termination engineers", and fire people from the office via the computer instead.

This devastates Ryan whose whole life is flying, and he believes Natalie knows nothing about the finesse required to let people go. They fly out together so Ryan can teach her these are real human beings who need face to-face downsizing.

There's some comedy here where Ryan teaches Natalie some of what the years have taught him - she's got clumsy luggage stuffed with junk, for instance. Natalie is then forced to confront the human beings she had planned to fire from a distance, and it doesn't go well.

She is also upset by Ryan's disregard for romance and marriage, two things she longs for.

Answer: A photo board of Julie and Jim

Julie and Jim want Ryan to take pictures of their photoboard with different locations in the background. The photoboard doesn't fit into Ryan's perfectly orderly luggage, or into his worldview. He and Natalie get into an argument when Ryan asks her to take a shot of the photoboard at the airport in St. Louis. He's irritated that she knows nothing about the history of the airport, while she thinks his entire "philosophy" of life, and taking a photo of an airport, is barren and pointless.

Natalie: "The isolation, the traveling, is that supposed to be charming? It's a cocoon of self-banishment!"

Answer: He gets cold feet

Jim Miller (Danny McBride) gets cold feet the day of his wedding. In part it's seeing Ryan "so happy" as a single guy, but the weight of his coming obligation and those in his future scares him. Ryan, who doesn't "see the value" of marriage, and reminds his sister, "I teach people how to avoid commitment," has to use his motivational speaking skills to convince Jim to go ahead with the wedding. Struggling with what to say, Ryan seems to realize having a "co-pilot" does make life richer.

Ryan: "Your favorite memories, the most important moments in your life, were you alone? Life is better with company."

Answer: She jumps off a bridge

Natalie initially brings the curt confidence of the inexperienced to the termination interviews, but she is unprepared and shaken when one man she fires starts sobbing. Then she fires Karen Barnes, who calmly states she plans to jump off a bridge. When not long after Karen actually does it, Natalie abruptly quits the job and leaves town.

Ryan's boss (Jason Bateman): "You remember Karen Barnes? She was part of a 30-person reduction a few weeks back..." Bateman tries to get Ryan to say Natalie caused or knew about Karen's plan to suicide - which she did - but Ryan lies to protect Natalie - another sign Ryan has learned to care about others. The bridge pictured is infamous for its many suicide victims.

Answer: Yes

Bingham long relishes the day he will become just the seventh person ever, and the youngest, to log ten million frequent flyer miles. He does achieve this, but by then he "can't remember" the reasons it means so much to him. His lover Alex has called him a mere "escape" from her "real life" with her husband and kids, he barely knows his sisters, and his apartment is tiny and sterile. Ryan now sees the ten million miles award for what it is... a badge of the lonely. He doesn't even have a use for the frequent flyer miles he's collected obsessively, so he does something entirely new: he transfers his frequent flyer miles into an "Around the World Ticket" as a honeymoon gift to his sister and her new husband, who can't afford to travel. He gives away what used to be the only meaningful thing in his life.

When the airline captain (Sam Elliot playing Captain Maynard Finch) sits down next to Ryan to congratulate him, he asks, "Where are you from?" Ryan replies sadly, "I'm from here."

Answer: Lucky

We see a beaten and emotionally bruised Natalie at a job interview. The interviewer questions her past choices, but then holds up a letter. "This guy says we'd be lucky to have you." Ryan has thought about someone else for a change, and given Natalie a second chance in life.

Then we watch Ryan return to the airport, but this time he stands at the airline board, studying the list of flights, as if considering where he would like to be. He lets go the firm grip he has had on his luggage.