Greg Mottola

I had always thought my fantasy career would be making indie films and doing my own thing. But then 'Superbad' came along, and it totally changed everything. It was so hilarious and smart and extreme; you could probably do a psychoanalysis term paper on the male sexual psyche going on there.

I worry that I would actually hurt my career doing something I didn't enjoy.

I remember on my very first film, which Steven Soderberg executive-produced, he said, 'Try not to repeat yourself. Do things that scare you.' Even if it's a challenge, I want people to say that this guy tried this thing. Hopefully he learned from it.

Film school didn't prepare me for the fact that you have to manage so many different personalities at every stage, and I learned nothing about what to do when a movie was finished.

I like writing, but it really can be a struggle for me.

I'm the most awkward man alive.

When you're a young person, the solace one can get from popular music is something I just have tremendous nostalgia for, affection for. I still have it.

I have a long love of fantasy and science-fiction.

When I first saw 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' I thought: That's what my life is like. That's my day-to-day.

In indies, life is very dark and realistic, and in mainstream films, the edges are all rounded off and very sentimentalized.

I think I am attracted to that time in life when your worldview is still forming in small ways.

My first-ever job in the movie business, I was an art student at Carnegie Mellon, and they were shooting the movie 'Gung Ho' in Pittsburgh, and I worked as an extra for a few days. Michael Keaton bumped into me in one scene, and it's in the movie. And I worshipped him.