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.
Greg MottolaI'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.
Greg MottolaI'm a huge fan of Zach's [Galifianakis] and I auditioned Zach a million years ago on a movie called Duplex which I was fired from. But Zach came in - It was like 2000, maybe - as a buddy stand-up that people were starting to notice and there was something about him I loved. He wasn't quite right for the part in [Keeping Up with the Joneses] and I got fired anyway, so who cares? But I always wanted to work with Zach.
Greg MottolaI feel like I'm long overdue for a "one for me" movie, so I've got two low-budget indy personal things I'm working on.
Greg MottolaI 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.
Greg MottolaI 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."
Greg Mottola