"I hope they call me Henry when I die, too."
How Adventureland (2009) shaped the way I look at life, love and art.
At 13 or 14, I actually am not sure when it was exactly, I was perusing the shelves of my childhood family room looking for something to watch when I found an unopened copy of a movie I’d never heard of. How my household acquired it I am still unsure as I don’t know what would have prompted either of my parents or sisters to purchase it. Having just watched it for what feels like the 100th time, it’s funny to me to think I’d just stumbled upon it randomly one day.
Directed by Greg Mottola, responsible for the iconic 2007 hijinks classic Superbad, the movie was Adventureland.
If you’re unfamiliar: it’s 1987 and the wealth was not trickling down, causing our main protagonist James’ father to lose his job. James (played by Jesse Eisenberg, pre Social Network), now the proud haver of a comparative literature and renaissance studies degree, is subsequently doomed to spend what was supposed to be a summer gallivanting in Europe instead in his childhood hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Shoving boxes into the family Dodge Aries, James and his roommate Eric discuss his fate:
Eric: “Summer in Pittsburgh. That’s fucking harsh.”
James: “It’s a nightmare. They don’t like people like me where I’m from. You know, we’re romantics. I read poetry for pleasure sometimes.”
James needs a job—he’s lined up to attend Columbia for a graduate program in journalism in the fall. The only place hiring apparently was the local amusement park down the road where James got a concussion on the teacups when he was six. You can’t get less romantic than that…or perhaps not.
At Adventureland, things are all a bit wonky: the rides break at the push of a button, the corn dogs taste kinda off, the games are purposefully unwinnable. It’s charming in a run down, small town carnival way. The employees are equally shambly, with different issues of their own, albeit some a little more down on their luck than others.
At the park James befriends Joel (played by Martin Starr), a Russian literature major who smokes a pipe and delivers wry jokes every other line with the finest deadpan you’ve ever heard. When James is almost knifed over a giant ass Panda he’s saved by Em (Kristen Stewart), a reserved and moody fellow games employee home for the summer from NYU. James immediately falls for her.
The crew slogs through the summer where we learn about various goings on amongst the staff: Em is actually sleeping with the married park maintenance man Connell (Ryan Reynolds). Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), the park bombshell, makes a late appearance to help out her family after her father gets laid up on the job. There’s parties and pot cookies and music, oh man is there MUSIC (curated by 80’s indie darlings Yo La Tengo no less!)!
I’m always trying to pin down where I got my penchant for things, and looking back, at 13 the characters in Adventureland mirrored the attitudes I felt bubbling inside of me. My folks, like James’, are conventional baby boomers—they don’t really read books or dissect literature or discuss art (my dad, like every other middle aged man in the early 2000’s, did end up in the grip of Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code series); they enjoyed music and brought me to concerts every so often. They were pretty straight edged, your average upper middle class working parents just fine with the calm of conformity and a relatively lax child rearing strategy.
Similar to James, coming into adulthood I would learn that parents are not so one dimensional. Especially in the last few years I’ve watched my parents evolve. But at the time, like most kids, I found it depressing, their lack of desire to experience a life of wonder. My sisters are several years older than me but only a year and 3 months apart, so they existed on a different plane than I. Exiled to the end of our cul de sac, it was up to me to invent romance if I wanted it.
When I watched Adventureland, I found some, and filmed just down the road in Pittsburgh!
What starts as a coming of age love story transforms to capture that time when you start seeing people and things for what they are, instead of just simmering in limerence. Whether someone is a romantic or an existential pagan or a textile worshipping cult member, when you see someone it is hard to unsee them. But when it’s the right person, how beautiful it is to see and be seen.
The characters in Adventureland were how I wanted to be seen: well-read, intellectual, funny, outcast, but on purpose. They were also obsessed with music—a core tenet of my brand of romanticism. Throughout, it’s music that drives the plot forward, acting as a support beam to the characters lives and personalities. During parties they discuss records. James sports a well-worn concert tee from Neil Young’s 84/85 International Harvesters tour. Whispers in the park rumored that maintenance man Connell once jammed with Lou Reed, front man of the Velvet Underground—those late 70’s progenitors of indie rock that lent me reference for what “good” music was. Insinuations about a character’s taste (or lack thereof) are made at the mentions of bands like Judas Priest, or their reaction to songs like “Rock Me Amadeus.” When James wants to get Em’s attention, he makes her a mixtape of back to back “truly miserable, pit of despair type songs.”
Like every other teenager, I felt vastly unsure of who I was, and then all at once I had a guide. I’d gone looking for romance, and I found it. Adventureland became a scripture of sorts, one I still cite today despite all that’s changed (or hasn’t) since I first watched it.
Similar to James, I chose a less than practical major, English, forthright that passion supersedes pragmatism (I am unemployed). I’ve grown to deeply appreciate all the bands on the soundtrack and mentioned throughout the film; I actually understand most of the period specific jokes now; I’d like to think I am a romantic now not just in youthful proclamation but in practice, with at least a little more experience and knowledge to actually back up what that means.
Reader, this is where I have to talk about my high school boyfriend. Trust me, I’d rather not. But if I want to talk about my dear Adventureland, the two are inextricably intertwined.
I can’t remember who brought it up first or if he’d even seen it before I showed him, but we both loved it eventually. The soundtrack became ours, accompanying short car rides to Barnes and Noble where we’d talk at length about books we read once as if we’d written them ourselves. One year for Halloween we procured GAMES shirts and went as James and Em. On the way to scope out the abandoned amusement park in our hometown, I’d play our own list of 2010's adjacent bummer songs. At any chance I’d get, I’d turn on “Pale Blue Eyes”, and in that delusional state which only a high schooler can muster, it felt like Lou Reed was singing only for us.
I thought it was “love” and “meant to be.” After all, his eyes actually were a gorgeous shade of pale blue, flanked by these long, wispy eyelashes, one’s I’d seen so much closer than I thought I’d wanted to see anything ever. I thought it was all so romantic, because to James and Em it was romantic, playing in the lead up to their eventual embrace. Was it romantic, or were we? Yes. You couldn’t convince me otherwise.
I would come to make selfish choices like any good, drunk, teenage romantic, hurting both myself and him. Self soothing in a masochistic manner, I’d put on “Pale Blue Eyes” and cry and cry, the opening guitar riff laying bare all the memories stored within it.
I hear he’s getting married. While I no longer feel the same about him as I did then (or most men for that matter), every time I watch Adventureland, I can’t help but wonder if he ever thinks of the late summer nights I’d sneak into his basement, our limbs and feelings tangled up in an exhilarating mess doomed to fizzle.
When it was good, it was fun. Yes, we were romantics (in the vaguest sense of the word). But we were also assholes, together learning to approach things with a flavor of pretentiousness that surely wouldn’t exist without the influence of Joel’s unencumbered pragmatic nihilism, or Em’s laid back perspective on sex and love, or James’ aversion to blind patriotism and synth pop.
I can’t speak for blue eyes, but for me, it was James’ ability to see the world not through rose colored glasses but an overall rose colored hue (skewed at some points by the inevitable forces of capitalism and patriarchy) that stuck with me the most.
In one of the last scenes of the movie, James and Joel are talking about what’s next after the summer. Joel, who by this point has suffered humiliation at the hands of midwestern anti-semitism and seen his dream girl swept off her feet, isn’t sure he sees the point.
On some days, I know Joel is right—one day they will just forget our fucking names anyway. But James, the self-proclaimed romantic, can’t help but see the beauty in it all anyways, reveling in passion just for passion’s sake. He sees both the sublime in Melville’s niche passion and the beauty in his disregard of the insecurities that could have stopped him from pursuing it. And more often than not, I think he is right. I guess the two things can also be true at once.
Here, my romanticism, a life dedicated to emotion and beauty and reading poetry for pleasure (sometimes), would bloom. One may argue giving this much credence to a movie is inherently romantic in itself, and there’s no doubt in my mind that I have Adventureland to blame.
We’re all victims of the deluded reality that is living in 2025, when war crimes and famine and mass murder are ignored by the majority of the planet and massive wealth is prioritized above all. We’re overdue for a romantic renaissance–and I don’t just mean “romanticising your life” for the sake of snapping a pic for Instagram.
The original romanticism movement started in the mid 19th century, a response to the “disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order.” In the midst of the Industrial Revolution, romantics turned to nature for answers instead of the increasingly present machine. In the age of AI, I can’t help but see the parallels.
Although romantics historically were concerned with the individual, this was way before smartphones—you might not be aware of what was happening in the next town over let alone the other side of the world. If romanticism is having a comeback, I think it’s evolved to laud the powers of community and acting in the interest of humanity as a whole.
Or maybe I am just romanticising romanticism.
Nonetheless, if only to stay connected to my younger self, I’ll keep my annual tradition of watching Adventureland. The flavor and subjects of my romanticism may be ephemeral, but that I am one is not. I hope that continues to remain true.
Adventureland media guide:
The full soundtrack, an amalgamation of all the punk and indie rock one could need to develop into a pretentious asshole such as myself, but also a historically accurate sonic capsule of life in 1987.
Nat’s favorite bummer songs – my take on the mixtape James makes to court Em
Quiet days in Clichy (1956) by Henry Miller, as seen read by James in several scenes, including sitting on the couch with his mother which is hilarious considering it is borderline erotica.
The Overcoat (1842), a short story by Nikolai Gogol
Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, obvi. Maybe one day I’ll read it—that day has yet to happen.
This primer on romanticism from a fellow Substacker
This is so so good, also you make me want to watch Adventureland
“when you see someone it is hard to unsee them. But when it’s the right person, how beautiful it is to see and be seen.” Glorious