I have a little bit of a pet peeve about how the middle class is depicted in movies. I feel like they tend to be either depicted in a very sentimental way, where everybody has a heart of gold except for the villains you're supposed to hiss at, or there's a sort of indie-style version... When it's done well, it's brilliant, it's Blue Velvet. But when it's done poorly, it feels like shooting fish in a barrel, just saying, "Ooh, scary suburbs."

I feel this way about a lot of movies, that the characters are idealized versions of people. For better or worse, I am as fascinated with human flaws as anything.

I am very interested in the small decisions people make that do set you on a different road in your life. As much as we have influence over what kind of person we're going to become, there are little tests along the way.

I was running the risk in Adventureland, even though we stayed close to the script, because I wanted it to be not a schematic movie. For better or worse, it's not a wish-fulfillment movie. It's got a kind of happy ending, but it's not like I forgot to put on the "Ten years later," and they've got four kids and a dog. Those guys are not together today. It always was leading up to the moment of "Oh, I have my first girlfriend." Credits.

I lived on Thompson Street in SoHo for 13 years and I watched it go from a little Italian neighborhood to the Mall Of America. Then the obvious fact that it's pre-Internet, pre-cell phone. Everyone I think thinks their youth is a more innocent time. I just don't know.

One of the dangers of making a movie about young people is it's potentially trite.

I was in college - Carnegie Mellon, which is one of the reasons Pittsburgh was appealing to me - and I personally feel that whole world of what we used to call "college radio" is a big part of what kept me sane through a period where I stopped dating, I felt like a freak, I felt like no girl would like me. You know, a very adolescent response to losing my hair. I turned to obsessing about The Replacements and The Smiths and R.E.M. and getting further into The Velvet Underground. People who, in my sheltered suburban life, I knew of, but didn't know fully.