I was just about to write that Tom McCarthy first came to fame as an actor, but that's not entirely accurate. Although McCarthy has been acting in smaller parts for TV and film projects for 15 years or so (I first remember him from the first season of David E. Kelly's "Boston Public"), it was as the director of 2003's THE STATION AGENT where his talents as a writer and director came to light. That modest story of three dedicated loners finding each other struck a chord with its casual but immensely heartfelt storytelling anchored by a star-making turn by then-relative unknown Peter Dinklage. As a filmmaker, he followed that up with THE VISITOR (featuring an Oscar-nominated performance by Richard Jenkins) and WIN WIN, starring Paul Giamatti. As a writer, he garnered a story credit on Pixar’s UP and wrote the screenplay for last year’s MILLION DOLLAR ARM.
McCarthy's work as an actor began to soar with supporting film roles in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, ALL THE KING'S MEN, SYRIANA, and YEAR OF THE DOG, 2012, BABY MAMA, THE LOVELY BONES, JACK GOES BOATING, and FAIR GAME. Perhaps most memorably, he was one of the key actors on the final season of HBO's "The Wire," playing the Baltimore Sun reporter who makes up facts and quotes when the truth isn't interesting enough for his editors. It was one of the most memorable characters the show has ever had.
He’s just finished shooting his biggest film to date, SPOTLIGHT, the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese. The all-star cast includes recent Oscar nominees Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo, as well as Rachel McAdams, Stanely Tucci, Billy Crudup, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Len Cariou as Cardinal Bernard Francis Law. McCarthy and I talk a little bit about the film, which he’s currently editing and hopefully will be out by year’s end.
But the reason we chatted recently was to talk about his most recent release, THE COBBLER, which is opening this weekend in select markets. The film combines bits of Jewish mysticism, folklore, and the theme of anti-gentrification of New York neighborhoods. Yeah, it’s a little out there, but McCarthy has rarely told familiar stories in his films, which often feature tales of outsiders looking to make changes in their secluded lives. Playing it mostly straight, Adam Sandler plays Max Simkin, the titular shoe repairman who discovers a foot-cranked shoe repair machine in his shop’s basement that allows him to put on the shoes of other people (alive or dead) and become that person until he takes them off again. And that’s all I’m going to reveal about the plot. The film co-stars the likes of Steve Buscemi, Dustin Hoffman, Ellen Barkin, Melonie Diaz, Method Man, Dan Stevens, and Lynn Cohen as Max’s mother.
I’ve interviewed and done Q&As with McCarthy several times over the years, and he’s always such a great, open guy to talk to. And with that, please enjoy my chat with Thomas McCarthy…
Thomas McCarthy: Hi, Steve.
Capone: Tom, how are you?
TM: I’m good. How are you doing man? Remind me, I kept wondering, when we’ve spoken before, was it in Austin or Chicago?
Capone: It was definitely in Chicago when we talked in person and did the WIN WIN Q&A. As I’m watching THE COBBLER, I’m thinking that Adam Sandler usually has some level of control of the films that he makes. But between this film and Jason Reitman’s film [MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN], he seems to be willing to relinquish some of that control. Or am I way off base? Did he have complete dictatorship over this movie?
TM: I just did what he told me to do [laughs]. No, I’ve got to say I didn’t know Adam at all going into this. It just felt like he was right for this role, and he was just terrific to collaborate with. He I think understood that I had a particular vision for the movie and was on board with it. But like a lot of smart actors, he had notes and thoughts. Being a producer, actor, and director himself, he understands there are times you’ve got to relinquish that a little bit. So ultimately, he just kinda went with it. I don’t know what this means other than to say I was pleasantly surprised by how hard he worked and how generous he collaborated. He was really open hearted about the project, which is what you want your actors to be, right?
Capone: Especially something like this that is out there in a lot of ways. What was the germ of this idea that combines traditional fables, Jewish folklore, and a healthy disrespect for gentrification?
TM: Those are all pretty much spot on. We started with this idea of a cobbler in New York, and the saying “to walk a mile in another man’s shoes.” The guy I ended up writing with, Paul Sado, who lived in Lower East Side, we were just talking about it a lot and knocking it around. I lived above a cobbler on 6th Avenue for years, and I was always fascinated with him. They dot the landscape of New York and they’re everywhere and invisible and essential and forgotten by many. I started doing some research, and all these fun things would pop up—the connection to the history of the tenements and the Jewish immigrants, and all the cobblers that came out of that and shoemakers. There was so much to back it up, it just got interesting to me.
And then I’d take little things—I noticed that everywhere you looked in New York where there was a shoe repair place,it was next door to a barbershop. And Paul and I started jokingly sending each other photos. Every time we took a walk, we’d see it, and we’d just take a shot. So that became the Steve Buscemi character, Jimmy’s storyline. We just wanted to have some fun with it, and I think specifically I wanted to play with something outside my normal sandbox and play a little bit subtly with various genres and tones, and see how we could hold it together and be a little loose with it, not overthink it. But of course, we always overthink everything [laughs].
Capone: Sandler is one of the few Jewish actors that isn’t afraid to embrace his Jewishness on screen. He’s actually made movies about it. Did that play into you wanting to use him?
TM: Not initially. Although, in our first phone call…when I called him before he read the script, Judd [Apatow] put us in touch with each other. We both know Judd. And in the conversation, he said, “What’s the story about?” And you can imagine me trying to explain this one. So I was like, “Well, it starts off with this Russian-Jewish cobbler from Brooklyn, blah, blah, blah.” And he said, “Oh, great. I’m already in.” And I said, “Really?” “Yeah.” And he was kind of joking, but he goes, “No, but in all seriousness, ‘Sandler' means ‘cobbler’ in Hebrew.” I didn’t know that. “Sandlar" or something—it goes back to sandals. So there are all these little things. Sandler’s family is from Brooklyn, and he totally connected with it. At that time, Paul and I were like deep in the research of the period and the Lower East Side and the transformation and the waves of immigrants—Jewish, Irish, Italian—who came in and left. And we were sending him information, and he was totally into it. It was cool.
Capone: Speaking of him being from New York, almost every single one of your lead actors is a New York native, with the exception of the one guy that I would have sworn was, which is Dustin Hoffman. He’s from L.A. But did you do that on purpose?
TM: Honestly, I think at the onset, I thought he was too, and then it turns out no. But when we were shooting on the Lower East Side, and he was looking around and was like, “Oh my god, I lived right there in a four-story walk up with…” Whoever he was living with at that point. Who was it that he was living with at that point? Another actor from the Actors Studio. I’ll think of it in a minute.
Capone: Maybe Gene Hackman?
TM: It was Hackman at one point, but then it was also…
Capone: Robert Duvall?
TM: Yeah, Duvall. I was like, “That’s fucking cool.” But no, you’re right. Ellen Barkin, Buscemi, Method Man are all from New York; Melonie Diaz lived probably blocks from where we were filming, where she grew up. I think all these guys really had fun with that. It’s always fun to make a movie in New York.
Capone: Once again, you have at the center of this movie you have a socially stagnant man. Maybe those people are easier to paint onto; they’re sort of a blank slate to start with. What is the appeal of guys like that in your films?
TM: I don’t know, really. I think ultimately I end up using them in different ways, thematically, and maybe at other times with my movies I’ve dealt with these themes of people coming together and chosen families. I feel like at its heart, this is sort of like the anti-superhero movie, which we didn’t set out to do. It just kept evolving in that direction, and we leaned into it and embraced it in a fun way. I feel like there’s something of a fable quality, not just in how the movie opens and some of the magic elements, of course, but in the telling of it. That heart is usually a protagonist in the epic fable tradition. It just fell into place in that way. Paul and I were watching MARTY early on, looking at the simple beauty of that movie and a guy who wants something more in his life. My characters are not really looking for anything else at the top of the story; they get pushed into it. I think Adam was really looking. I think Max is someone who was looking around at mid-life going, “Is this really it? Isn’t there something else that’s special?”
Capone: He’s desperately looking for something else at the beginning.
TM: Yeah, he definitely doesn’t feel like he chose his life. He just inherited it, and I think that’s something a lot of people find their way into in mid-life. It’s a crisis.
Capone: There’s a definite genuine rhythm and flow to this story that gets sped up as the film goes on. How much of that was built into the script and how much did you build in the editing?
TM: Yeah. I think it’s always a fine line. I’m cutting a film right now with my editor, talking about our Reel One woes sometimes, and I think for once we don’t have it on this film—the film I’m doing right now. I’m always slow paced at the top. Specifically with this movie, it’s about letting the audience settle in and feel what our character’s feeling, and there’s always a fine line about trying to show that without losing the audience or making them suffer through it. But I think you’re right. I think here’s a guy who is literally sleep walking in a very particular pace through his daily ritual day after day, week after week, year after year. And then this one bad dude walks into his office, and things start to happen. So I think that is something that we intended on the script level, and then we executed it as best we could on the film.
Capone: We were talking about Melonie Diaz before. I’m such a huge admirer of her work going back to when she was like a kid. I remember her in RAISING VICTOR VARGAS and A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS.
TM: I love that movie, VICTOR VARGAS; I haven’t thought of it in a while.
Capone: I was actually shocked that she’s 30 years old, because she still looks like a teenager, but in many ways she’s the heart and soul, and certainly the catalyst, of this film. I can’t really imagine anyone else playing this part. Talk about her contribution to the film.
TM: Well, exactly that. We had written the character, and I didn’t write it with Melonie in mind, but as soon as I thought about her, I knew she was just right. A friend of mine came to see the movie—I always do these little screenings for people when I’m trying to get the movie into shape—who’s a social activist, and she just loved Melonie. She was like, “Oh my god. I’ve met 100 women like that.” They’re so gung-ho and direct and a little bit robotic in their delivery. Rehearsing their lines of how to pull this off, and she was just totally smitten with her. Melonie just brings that.
She’s got a real goodness to her, that woman. She’s got this bright light, and I think there’s just a directness about her. There’s some playhouse right there in the Lower East Side where she did her first acting. And I was like, “Melonie, have you gone back there to talk?” And she’s like, “No. What am I going to say?” I’m like, “What are you going to say? You have a great career as an actress, and that was your first place. Go tell those kids that they can do it too.” She was like, “I’ve never thought about it that way.” I think she underestimates how good she is.
Capone: You brought up your next film. I’ve got to ask you about SPOTLIGHT. This is an unbelievable cast, the story is unbelievable, and you’ve already shot it. Are you planning on releasing it this year?
TM: I don’t know yet. I couldn’t speak out of turn on it. I think there’s a good chance we’ll try to. I think our distributers and producers like the idea, and I think the movie will be ready based on where we are now. I actually have to go back and shoot a couple more scenes with Keaton and Ruffalo, now that their commitments to the industry are over.
Capone: Their awards circuit tour.
TM: Exactly. I think we’ll shoot those scenes and get it together, and hopefully it will come out this year. We’ll see.
Capone: I’m curious what the take on the material is. Since it’s told from the Boston Globe’s point of view, is it an outside-looking-in, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN approach?
TM: It definitely has an investigative element to it and a procedural element to that end. The abuse that they’re looking into happened for many of years, many years earlier—not that it’s still not going on. I don’t mean to indicate that. But specifically the cases that we’re dealing with, it wasn’t just about the abuse; it was about the cover-up. The Catholic Church’s willful cover-up. To me certainly, and my co-writer Josh [Singer], that’s what made the movie have a sense of urgency, because it’s about the complicity and indifference of all institutions. It’s interesting when you look at it though that scope, and I think a little bit more relevant to about everything that’s going on today.
Capone: I’m incredibly excited to see it. I saw Len Cariou was playing Cardinal Law, which, of course he is. Who else would play him?
TM: It’s kind of a no-brainer, and he’s terrific. We don’t see a lot of Law in the movie, but we see that he has that wonderful gravitas and intelligence. It’s a great cast. We were very lucky with that cast.
Capone: Tom, it’s was great to talk to you again. Thank you very much. Best of luck with this.
