Director Jason Reitman's latest film "Men, Women Children" hit theaters in wide release today on Oct. 17 and we had the opportunity to attend a special screening of the film presented by "Psychology Today." The event was hosted by distributor Paramount Pictures at the New York Institute of Technology Auditorium. The publication's Editor-At-Large Hara Estroff Marano and "Pschology Today" contributors Azadeh Aalai, Ph.D, Gregory Dillon, M.D., Guy Winch, Ph.D engaged in a facinating panel discussion with Reitman and actress Elena Kampouis.

Read exclusive highlights from the discussion below:

Hara Estroff Marano: I want to start off by asking Jason, why this story? There are lots of stories out there to tell.

Jason Reitman: (laughs) Why do you sound like you're complaining?

HEM: This is the second time I've seen it and it's just as effective the second time as the first time.

JR: You know, the same man who discovered Diablo Cody discovered the author of the book "Men, Women, Children." His name is Mason Novick and he's a producer and he said you got to read this guy's book! His name is Chad Kultgen, he writes really well, and I started reading Chad's books and he had this new book called "Men, Women, Children" that I just fell in love with and I just thought he had incredible insight into what it was like to live right now. And how the issues that have always surrounded intimacy, how they have been transformed by the internet. And it just kind of stayed in my head. I just knew I wanted to make this movie one day and one day, I'm at Sundance, I'm at the Marriott and I come out of my hotel room and down the hall I see Erin Cressida Wilson, the writer of "Secretary," and "Chloe," she was a friend of someone I worked with before. And I thought, "Huh. Well she's certainly not a prude. I should work with her on this." And I gave her the book that day, I literally gifted it to her through the iBook store, and within two months we were writing.

HEM: Tell me Elena, something about your experience of relationships from inside the film, inside the character. What was your take?

Elena Kampouris: Well, it was really interesting. This whole experience of playing Allison was such a transformative one for me and being about to do it with Jason and go on this journey with the character ... was a life lesson for me, really, because it was something I had never done before. And Jason and I, being able to work with him it was great because we both have this level of trust, that was a dual level of trust I think in approaching this sort of character. And we both had this goal of bringing a truthfulness and an authenticity through all of the characters and with Allison. And that was our goal to just tell the truth and to be authentic with her portrayal. And just being on that journey of playing the character and taking Jason's direction was something that I've never had before and it was amazing.

HEM: There are a lot of challenging issues raised in the film about relationships and the effects of technology on them. Do you think we're ready to tackle some of those issues? I think my co-panelists want to raise some of those issues. Are we ready as a culture? This technology has sort of wooshed into our lives faster than any other technology before, we're kind of reeling. It's having this huge impact as you've shown us in graphic detail. Are we ready to take it on do you think?

JR: I mean, I'm not the one here with degrees. You've got three lovely panelists, I ... as a director, it's kinda nice. I get to just throw sh*t against the screen and say, "We got problems, eh?" And they have to figure it out.

HEM: What kind of problems do you think we have?

JR: Again, they're gonna correct me in three seconds.

HEM: There's no correcting, we're all in this.

JR: I appreciate that. You're like my eleventh grade drama teacher. (laughter) What I'm curious about is this. It feels as though ... when you go on a first date, when you first meet somebody, there's this automatic openness. Your ability to be brave, and to be honest, to share things, to let people know your secrets, it's the kind of things that you let someone know when they're a seat mate on a plane and they're a complete stranger. But as you get to know someone over five, ten, fifteen years and beyond, you begin to close up. You begin to become worried about rocking the boat, you don't want to start arguments, and we start to hold on to our secrets tighter. And yet there's something about the internet that inspires this concept of opening up. We share things with strangers, with strange communities ... I saw this TED talk recently that said that our search engines know more about us than our loved ones and our family. And I'm curious about that because we have this instinct to connect. When I look at the Voyager, the reason why we opened we opened the movie on that was because in the 1970's, we cobbled enough technology to launch this thing into space ... this space craft that is now the furthest human object from Earth. And it's carrying this gold disk, this message in a bottle, this hope to reach out and make contact with something we don't even know exists. And yet we have so much trouble reaching out and making contact with people right in front of us. So that's what fascinates me. Are we ready to tackle that? We're in this enourmous transition moment, one of the great transition moments in human history. And I find a joy in looking at what it's like to be in the midst of that, and what does it reveal about us that wasn't already there.

Gregory Dillon: I'm so struck by that, because you're so positive in that moment. And I totally get it. But what's so striking about the dichotomy of this is the atrophy, the sense of real sadness, the kind of giving up that the Adam Sandler and Rosemarie DeWitt couple had, but that everybody had. The sense of just bailing out, atrophying in their ability to communicate or their desire to communicate, and it seems like it's suggested, if not thrown out there, that it's a function of technology and the internet to a great degree, but what's kind of beautiful in the movie and the hopefulness of it to me was, the subtlety of it. Not only the subtlety of the direction but when you finally see a little bit of a smile, or a little bit of a connection, whether it's in the couple or the ex-football player and the psychiatrist, just a moment it's so huge because after all this you're like, "Jesus, finally, communication." Or "Finally, they're talking again." This is epic, this is huge. And it really comes together with the Emma Thompson narration. When she gives the word "responsibility," I was like "yes, responsibility." It's all about picking up the ball and running with it. It's not a movie about damning technology, damning the internet, it's about taking responsibility. So I thought that was huge split, but nicely played out.

Azdeh Aalai: If I could just dive in there for a moment too, I wanted to really thank you for the movie because as a professor, of arguably the most digitally wired generation, I try to caution them about being more mindful of what they're doing online. While not being like Jennifer Garner's character, so extreme, that they're going to totally shut down. But one of the themes in particular that I was drawn to, as a social psychologist, you know, you talked about this need for connectivity, this fact that we're all social beings, there's this perversity of connectivity and disconnectivity that I noticed in the film. So a lot of people are going online to try to connect, but at the same time they're disconnecting from their present lives, or the RL (their real lives). So you have a mother and daughter as they're walking through a mall together, but they're both on their digital devices. Even though they're both physically in the same space, they're both mentally somewhere else.

HEM: And the whole entire school, too.

AA: Absolutely.

HEM: They weren't connecting with each other, they were working on their phones.

Guy Winch: For me, I think the disconnection was the most thick thread that ran through the movie. It's interesting because the internet gives us so much information and people are becoming very informed and much less aware of themselves at the same time. And loneliness, for example, is one of those things that so many of the characters in the movie felt, and so few were aware that they were feeling. And the one thing about loneliness, that I think people don't know, is that it has a huge impact on our psychological and our physical health. When you start to feel lonely, immediately you have higher blood pressure, your immune system is suppressed. Immediately when you feel lonely ... chronic loneliness makes you more likely to have an early death by fourteen percent and actually kills you. And we're not aware of these kinds of psychological injuries even though we're seeking all this knowledge and we're so unaware of what's happening to us internally. So to me that loneliness that all the characters had, and none were actually addressing, except for that young couple that were trying to, but were so unaware of how much they were suffering.

JR: Okay, well this is officially the scariest QA I've ever been to. (laughter)

HEM: Why don't we make it a little less scary.

JR: It's funny because it's so personal. And it doesn't matter that you're adapting a book, because there's a reason why I chose that book, there's a reason why I put certain scenes in ... as a filmmaker I feel like I'm just working out my own things on screen. I don't expect three psychological professionals to be on stage with me going, "Well this is clearly the work of a lonely man ... Who's on the verge of dying frankly ... I'll leave my business card on the table."

HEM: Well, surely, this is not a film that you will leave hopping and skipping. So what were you kind of hoping would happen when people saw this?

JR: Honestly? Conversation. That's what I hope for with all my films.

HEM: That's what we're hoping too.

JR: Yeah ... but look. I don't like movies that wrap up nicely, I like movies that push you think, and push you to have conversation. That's what I like about the theatrical experience, is that, you each sit here and experience something differently, and you walk out and grab a beer, or whatever you're into, and have a long conversation about it. And there's a lot to talk about hopefully in this movie, particularly in that last scene. And that last scene between Rosemarie and Adam, that's a very personal scene. That's one of the reasons I made this movie.

HEM: When you say it was a personal scene, how so?

JR: Not that I lived that scene, but more that these are the questions that are on my mind. Would we be better off being honest with each other or would we be better off lying?

After the screenings, the celebrity guests in attendance like Jeremy Jordan, Stephen Lang, David Schwimmer, Victor Garber, Emily Meade, Lou Taylor Pucci, Josh Pais, Elizabeth Vargas, Ron Claiborne, John Stossel, Amy Heckerling, Melonie Diaz, Amir Arison, Will Janowitz, Jesse Peretz, Wesley Taylor, Adrienne Warren and Psychology Today’s Editor at Large Hara Estroff Marano, Publisher John Thomas, contributors Azadeh Aalai, Gregory Dillon, and Guy Winch headed to a fabulous party at Library Bar at Hudson.

Film Synopsis: The film follows the story of a group of high school teenagers and their parents as they attempt to navigate the many ways the internet has changed their relationships, their communication, their self-image, and their love lives. The film attempts to stare down social issues such as video game culture, anorexia, infidelity, fame hunting, and the proliferation of illicit material on the internet. As each character and each relationship is tested, we are shown the variety of roads people choose - some tragic, some hopeful - as it becomes clear that no one is immune to this enormous social change that has come through our phones, our tablets, and our computers. It stars Emma Thompson, Kaitlyn Dever, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ansel Elgort, Jennifer Garner, Judy Greer, Elena Kampouris, Dean Norris and Adam Sandler.