Up in the Air was my favorite movie of the year and even though it lost to The Hurt Locker last night, I’m fine with that. Anything but A Serious Man. Still, you have to wonder what else the movie might have done to curry favor with Oscar voters. Maybe if they’d put George Clooney in a space suit? Wait a minute, they did!

The following clip contains a scene shot for Up in the Air but never used. The kids are calling it a “deleted scene”. In it, George Clooney is depicted making his way through the airports and hotels which comprise Ryan Bingam’s life in a full, moon-ready, oxygen tanked, space suit. The idea here was, I’m sure, to depict how disconnected Ryan is from his life and everything around him by using an obvious metaphor. It’s actually a really well-done scene and while I think removing it from Up in the Air was definitely a good decision, director Jason Reitman does a brilliant job of making a rather unsubtle idea more subtle and nuanced than you’d expect . Check it out: