“Adventureland” Director Greg Mottola on First Jobs and Generation Gaps

“Adventureland” director Greg Mottola. Image courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

It was while working on ‘Undeclared’ that Mottola came up with the idea for “Adventureland.” While trading stories about crappy first jobs with one of the writers, Mottola entertained as well as horrified the person with tales of working in a broken down amusement park. He gradually began writing a screenplay, “in the spirit of a short story,” as he puts it, about drab suburban life and letting go of childish romantic fantasies to take that first brush with real intimacy. For Mottola, it was therapeutic creating something that he could hopefully direct one day while also including some of his influences, like his favorite boyhood bands The Velvet Underground, Violent Femmes and Talking Heads and films like Fellini’s “I, Vitelloni.”

While dodging offers to direct romantic comedies and smartly getting out of helming the Ben Stiller/Drew Barrymore 2003 stinker “Duplex,” Mottola kept working on the script until Apatow suddenly came calling again. “I was literally going to send the script to companies the week Judd called me and asked if I wanted to direct ‘Superbad.’” Eleven years after making “The Daytrippers” Mottola had his second feature film lined up. “‘Superbad’ was always a funny script but we needed a director who would emphasize the dramatic aspects of the story,” says Apatow via e-mail from the set of his latest film. “Greg is as funny as anyone, but he also really understood and cared about the friendship story and that is why the movie works. Without Greg the movie would have just been about penis drawings.”

“Superbad” became one of the highest grossing and critically praised films of 2007. Though Mottola’s name was non-existent in the publicizing of the film, it bolstered his image in the business and made what would have been a painful task of finding money for “Adventureland” a little easier – kind of. “The money came fairly quickly, but it was still hard to convince people to make the movie as it was written,” he says. “There were those who wanted it to be contemporary because they didn’t think young people would want to see a movie referencing another generation.” And some people didn’t get the crappy first job angle. “I remember one executive asking me, ‘Why doesn’t he just get an internship at The New Yorker if he wants to be a journalist?’ Like a kid from Pittsburgh with no money could move to New York and waltz into The New Yorker in 1987.” Miramax came on board before the film’s 32-day shoot.

Next Mottola has been hired on to direct the upcoming Universal film “Paul,” written and starring Simon Pegg. He admits to have become content with the “one for me, one for them” formula. “I can pay the mortgage this year, I can afford to take some time off and try to finish some scripts. And I think I’ve learned enough about myself to know that I need to be taken out of myself and do something that is written by someone else sometimes,” he says.

And some of the bad luck from his past may turn around after all. Mottola says “The Daytrippers” is getting closer to a DVD release, thanks in part to the help of Steven Soderbergh, who produced the film, and Mottola is still optimistic he will be able to make “Life of the Party” (though that too is in a legal quagmire he can’t fully talk about). Now living back in New York he’s even toying with an idea for a film set in the city, “though I never could top Woody,” he quips.

Before we leave the bistro, Mottola tells me about a recent dinner he had with Allen that has stayed with him: “I did ask him some career advice and he was one of the people who said that making ‘Superbad’ was the best thing I could have ever done,” he recalls. “He said, ‘If I was coming up today I wouldn’t be as lucky as I’ve been. I’ve just been extraordinarily lucky that people have let me do my own thing, but in the climate today I don’t think that would have happened. You need to work and if you like a project at all do it.’ He was very pragmatic about it. When you start making more films you start to appreciate how lucky you are to do the job.” Mottola pauses for a moment to sip his coffee, perhaps taking the time to replay his career to this moment. “I really had to work through some shit to figure that out.”