Theme park film brings director back to Pittsburgh

In between takes on the set of ‘Adventureland’ two years ago — on location at Kennywood… In between takes on the set of ‘Adventureland’ two years ago — on location at Kennywood amusement park in West Mifflin — director Greg Mottola wouldn’t spend his breaks sitting around and relaxing. He would take the crew and unwind by riding ‘some of the greatest wooden roller coasters’ he had ever seen.

‘Just go on that a couple times in a row, and it rattles your brains out,’ said Mottola in a conference-call interview.

‘Adventureland,’ a new teenager coming-of-age film written and directed by Mottola, circles around the life of a fresh college graduate working a summer job at a theme park in Pittsburgh called Adventureland. The story is all too familiar to Mottola.

Mottola based the film off of his own personal experience of working at an amusement park in the summer, namely falling in love and getting paid minimum wage. Some of the characters are based on real people — the main character’s love interest, portrayed by Kristen Stewart, is a composite sum of Mottola’s own girlfriends from his early 20s.

But some characters, like the married park owners played by ‘Saturday Night Live’s’ Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, are characters borne directly out of Mottola’s imagination.

‘I took the people that I thought were the most interesting characters to inhabit this world and mixed them into the film and made up a story,’ said Mottola. ‘I didn’t date a woman who had the exact issues and struggles that Kristen Stewart’s character had, but I had heard stories like that.’

The 2006 summer hit ‘Superbad,’ starring Michael Cera and Jonah Hill, is probably Mottola’s best-known work to date, but don’t look for any McLovins in ‘Adventureland.’

‘I love comedies that are purely funny, but it’s even more satisfying and more rounded if you actually see yourself in it or have some feeling about it,’ said Mottola. ‘I don’t expect this movie to be the cultural phenomenon that ‘Superbad’ was ‘- I never did. It’s much more bittersweet and melancholy, about making things feel realistic and psychologically true.’

There is no Adventureland in Pittsburgh. The story was originally supposed to take place in Long Island, N.Y., near the actual Adventureland, but shooting shifted to Pittsburgh because of financial circumstances. Filmmakers get a larger tax rebate for making a movie in Pennsylvania than they do in New York.

Mottola planned to transform Pittsburgh into Long Island for the film but changed his mind after reminiscing about his college days at Carnegie Mellon University.

‘As soon as I started to drive around the city, the nostalgia for my college years came back,’ he said. ‘I thought, well, that’s stupid. I should really make it about Pittsburgh. I really love Pittsburgh. It has so much character.’

Years after receiving an art degree from CMU, Mottola made his first movie in 1994, ‘The Daytrippers.’ Initially, much hype surrounded the film and the director after ‘The Daytrippers’ won the Grand Jury Prize at the Slamdance Film Festival in 1996, but it went practically unnoticed by audiences and critics alike upon its release.

Mottola also directed several episodes of the television shows ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘Undeclared,’ but he regrets rejecting the opportunity to direct an episode of ‘Freaks and Geeks,’ an opportunity offered to him by his good friend Judd Apatow.

‘The biggest mistake I ever made in my career was being blind to some great opportunities in front of me,’ said Mottola.

If ever given the chance to talk to his younger self, Mottola would remind himself not to take everything so seriously.

Mottola doesn’t seem to be getting too serious anytime soon. His next film, written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (‘Shawn of the Dead’ and ‘Hot Fuzz’), is called ‘Paul.’

‘It’s a movie about two British sci-fi geeks who take their dream road trip to the United States, from San Diego, Comic-Con to Area 51. They are obsessed with extraterrestrials, and they actually meet one. They meet an alien.’

From amusement parks and summer romance to gaming geeks and aliens, Mottola’s well of creative comic ideas doesn’t look like it will dry up anytime soon.

And if he can add McLovin to the mix, then audiences will be in for a treat.