I was naïve when I was young, I was sheltered. I had illusions about who I was going to be, delusions, and a little bit of pretentiousness. And I thought, "I'll write the guy like that. It'll allow me to make fun of everyone else if I make fun of myself."

Believe me, there is a ton of stuff we shot on Superbad that was unusable, because people were just riffing and riffing. It's just part of the Judd Apatow method, and part of the technique is to also be able to rewrite the movie again in the editing room.

When I was a TV director working on Judd Apatow's show Undeclared. I was surrounded by so many young people. People like Seth Rogen, who was 9 years old or something. It was just a ridiculous amount of talented young people. I started to think I'd like to see a young-love movie, but not one done in that glossy, Hollywood, high-concept manner we've become accustomed to. One that was, for lack of a better way of putting it, a little more ambiguous, '70s-style, where everyone was flawed, middle-class characters.

I'm really glad to have made a movie that way on Superbad, because I learned a lot about what can be done and what the limitations are.

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.

Even the mistakes and the pain that you've caused and enacted upon you. That is definitely what I'm trying to capture

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