Greg Mottola

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. ”

I don't like high concept movies very much, and the kind of scripts that I would occasionally get offered tended to be really high concept comedies or romantic comedies. I just don't like it. I like much more realistic movies with actual psychology and behavior in them. ”

I can't seem to escape comedy. Whenever I sit down and try to write something serious, it just doesn't work. ”

I'd like to think I have a strange affinity for the embarrassing. Not sure what that says about me. But I like the awkward, uncomfortable comedy. ”

I have alopecia. My hair fell out when I was in college and I didn't take it so well. ”

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.' ”

I kind of thought I would only work exclusively in the world of naturalistic comedy drama, but there is this side of me that also loves Hollywood, and I wanted to see what that felt like. ”

The crazy thing about independent filmmaking is that you're so judged on your first film. It almost needs to be one of those groundbreaking 'I've-never-seen-that-before'-type movies. ”

Having grown up in a Catholic family, while I felt like I was never conscious of any blatant anti-Semitism, I was aware of a slightly insidious, us-versus-them mentality. A lot of my best friends and early girlfriends were Jewish, and I encountered what was more of a suburban small-mindedness, of people needing to defend their tribe. ”