Word: adventureland
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...While F&F had plenty in the tank, the week's other wide release, Adventureland, just plain tanked. It finished a sad sixth. Fewer than a million patrons paid to see Superbad director Greg Mottola's reminiscence of an '80s summer he spent working in an amusement park. Apparently most of those who wanted a reverberation of their Superbad vibe stayed home and watched star Seth Rogen, who ubiquitously promoted his next-week's movie, Observe and Report, on Letterman, The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live and quite possibly the Home Shopping Network...
...there really an Adventureland? Yep. It's on Long Island, and I worked there during college. We didn't shoot the movie there, though, because we went back now to scout it out, and it just didn't look right for the '80s. It didn't have the right sort of lovely seediness, the sense that at any moment you might trip over someone's discarded needles...
...details in the film drawn directly from your Adventureland experience? I took some artistic license, and pulled things from different periods of my young life. As we were taking the project to studios, many wanted me to make it contemporary, but I thought that was precisely what made it funny - to dredge up all these specific old memories, and to recreate them. I love that it's set in a different time period, when James would take this all way too seriously, shocked that all these games are rigged at the amusement park. And I love that this college...
...that these are the things that teenagers think about. Some of those who were raised a little better might not have said it, but these thoughts are there for every teenage male. That said, I honestly didn't see myself making a mark in teen comedies. I had written Adventureland before Superbad came along, and so I set this one down for a year...
...TIME's review of Adventureland...