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

A scene from Greg Mottola's "Adventureland". Image courtesy of Miramax Films.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This profile was originally published as part of indieWIRE‘s coverage of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival

When Greg Mottola and I met at a small bistro in Lower Manhattan a week before he left for Park City it wasn’t the nostalgia of returning to the site where his career began that was on his mind but the anxiety of trying to downplay his recent success in Hollywood so his upcoming film could be judged on its own merits.

Though many in the indie world know Mottola, 44, for his witty 1996 feature debut “The Daytrippers,” it’s directing the Judd Apatow-produced teen comedy “Superbad” that will draw general audiences to his ’80s first love comedy, “Adventureland.” Screening at Sundance in its Premieres section and being released by Miramax in March, the film stars Jesse Eisenberg (“The Squid and the Whale”) as a recent high school graduate who must forgo a trip to Europe with his friends to stay home in Pittsburgh and work at a dingy amusement park for the summer. There he meets a beautiful girl (Kristen Stewart) who turns his summer into a memorable one. The film also includes a great supporting cast including Ryan Reynolds, Martin Starr (“Knocked Up”), Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. Though comparisons to “Superbad”’s youthful protagonists are inevitable, Mottola hopes that won’t cause people over 25 to skip it. “’Superbad’ was the greatest thing that could ever happen to me in a lot of ways and the most logical way is to sell it on the tail of that film,” he says. “But I hope people who grew up in the ’80s don’t assume it’s not for them. In a way there is a credibility Sundance will lend it.”

However, Mottola’s neurosis is hardly earth shattering as not too long ago he wasn’t sure if he’d have a career making feature films.

After “The Daytrippers” won the Grand Prize at the 2nd annual Slamdance Film Festival in ’96, followed by a distribution deal at Cannes, his next script, “Life of the Party,” was greenlit at Columbia making Mottola believe his dream of being a writer-director auteur like his idol Woody Allen was taking form. Unfortunately, “The Daytrippers” was underappreciated in theaters (and is unavailable on DVD due to legal issues) and “Life of the Party” was shelved when the studio decided to back their other rehab project, the Sandra Bullock-starrer “28 Days.” Suddenly Mottola’s climb up the director ranks was in a sudden free fall. Luckily someone in Hollywood wanted him to direct TV. “Judd Apatow called and asked if I wanted to do ‘Undeclared,’” Mottola recalls. “He had contacted me about ‘Freaks and Geeks’ but I thought I was making ‘Life of the Part.’ He was nice enough to come back to me and I thought to myself, ‘What am I doing? I’m dying to work and this is a great guy.’”

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With no other options Mottola moved to L.A. and began directing episodes of “Undeclared” followed by directing gigs at “Arrested Development” and “The Comeback.” Though his laid back demeanor and I’m-just-happy-to-be-working attitude made him an easy fit in television, Mottola admits that his internal drive to be making his own films was eating away at him. “I was getting extremely bitter and it was my own fault because my second movie fell part, other people said they wanted to make it and it fell apart, and I was really unwilling to consider other ways of working,” he says. “I wish I had the maturity after ‘Daytrippers’ to come to some of these realizations sooner because I would have spent less time spinning my wheels before the TV work.” He also blames his lack to rebound after “Life of the Party” to taking too long to write scripts and a fear to show unfinished works. “I have scripts that I’ve only shown to animals… and they passed on them.” Page 1 of 2 Next Login to recommend this article » posted on March 30, 2009 Films to Snag Login to Leave a Comment »