‘Adventureland’ finds vintage 1980s-era theme park in Pennsylvania’s Kennywood

While writing the screenplay for “Adventureland,” writer/director Greg Mottola always imagined shooting the film at the Long Island, N.Y. amusement park of his youth.

“What I loved about the park is that it was a little rough around the edges, a kind of misfit world, and that’s the feeling I wanted to retain in the storytelling,” he said.

But when Mottola set out to film “Adventureland,” he discovered the slightly tawdry, occasionally thrilling, always quirky 1980s-era New York amusement park of the past didn’t exist anymore. Repeated renovations had modified the park beyond recognition.

“It had a completely different feeling than the place I remembered,” Mottola said.

So Mottola’s team set out to find a park that had retained the independent spirit he was looking for.

“A lot of amusement parks are very corporate these days,” Mottola said. “They have a lot of cartoon character affiliations with Disney or Warner Bros., and we didn’t want that. We were looking for that one amusement park that hasn’t changed much over the years.”

They finally settled on Kennywood, a 111-year-old theme park outside Pittsburgh with a fleet of 1920s wooden roller coasters and vintage carnival-midway game booths. (Read more on the Kennywood coasters and rides in the movie.)

“I don’t know if we could have made this movie if Kennywood didn’t exist,” said “Adventureland” producer Ted Hope. “Where else could we have found an amusement park so meticulously maintained that we could shoot a period piece? Where else could we have found an amusement park that wasn’t corrupted by blatant branding — yet had that atmosphere of old-fashioned fun? Lo and behold, Kennywood had it all.”

The R-rated coming-of-age comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg (”The Squid and the Whale”) and Kristen Stewart (”Twilight”) debuts in theaters this weekend.

Find the latest amusement and theme park news at the Los Angeles Times Funland blog: www.latimes.com/funland. Follow Funland on Twitter.

— Brady MacDonald, Los Angeles Times staff writer

Images: Miramax

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 6:58 am by Brady MacDonald and is filed under Celebrity, Family & Kids, Theme Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.