New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

In what feels like a first for our Director’s Spotlight Column, we’re going to take a look today someone that is still very much finding his footing as a director. Today’s auteur has only three features to his name, only one of which you almost certainly have seen. And while Greg Mottola hasn’t quite reached household name status yet, he is beginning to garner a cult following, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him discussed in the same breath as breakthrough comedic voices like Judd Apatow in the future (maybe that’s because the two filmmakers are frequent collaborators, but I digress).

The Daytrippers (1996)

Mottola, a Columbia film school grad, got what every film student since the dawn of film school hopes for – he got noticed. After creating an 11-minute short that made the film festival circuit, Mottola received an offer from the Granddaddy of independent cinema himself, Steven Soderbergh. Soderbergh’s grant money would go towards producing one of Mottola’s screenplays. While the funding for that project never came together, Soderbergh offered to produce another project for Mottola, permitting it came in under the micro-budget of $40,000. With that, Mottola went to work, and the following month he completed the script for The Daytrippers.

The Daytrippers was rejected from Sundance, but ultimately won the top prize at Park City’s cross-town, underground festival Slamdance. The production history for Daytrippers is ripe with great stories (e.g., losing your $35,000 camera on the first day of shooting!), as are many first time sets. In the end, The Daytrippers found a domestic distributor, 71% positive reviews on Rottentomatoes, and a $2.1 million gross – not bad for a $40,000 investment (and don’t worry, the camera was insured).

Mottola’s feature debut follows a married woman, Hope Davis, when she finds what appears to be a love letter in her husband’s pocket from someone named Sandy. She shows the letter to her family, including her bickering and overbearing mother, her stoic father, and her immature sister and her sister’s pompous boyfriend. Together, the entire lot hops into a station wagon and makes the titular daytrip from the suburbs into Manhattan. Along the way they squabble, wax philosophical, meet some pleasant and some strange New Yorkers, and eventually find out that Sandy is a dude, and that Davis’ husband (played by Stanley Tucci) has been questioning his sexuality on a pretty regular basis for upwards of six months.

In the same vein as other dialogue heavy, somewhat meandering films like Slackers or Clerks before it (though not nearly as vulgar/funny as the latter), Daytrippers is an uneven, but at times amusing ride into the city. The plot is really more of a framework for putting these five characters in a confined space together for 80 minutes, and whether or not you enjoy the film really will live or die by how much you enjoy spending time with them. Being a New Jersey-born suburbanite myself, and having labored through many a long family car ride into the Big Apple, there was more than one time I wanted to get out of the car and simply wish Hope Davis and her family well on their long drive. Still, Mottola’s rookie effort isn’t without promise – it features some strong performances, very natural dialogue, and a tidy little twist ending. Some of the faults (poor aesthetics and camera work and uneven pacing) can be blamed, likely, on a lack of experience, micro-budget, and impressive 16-day shoot. Given the promise he showed in his first foray into feature filmmaking, it’s surprising that Mottola’s name didn’t resurface again until 2007. But boy, did it resurface in a big way…

Continued:       1       2       3       4