When he’s not making indies like The Station Agent or the upcoming The Cobbler , filmmaker Thomas McCarthy writes studio scripts like Up and Million Dollar Arm . Here’s why he doesn’t see the two as all that different.
Frazer Harrison / Getty Images
Here's an elevator pitch for you: Thomas McCarthy's new movie is "about a sad cobbler." "How's that?!" he said, laughing when giving the rundown over the phone. "It's about a cobbler from the Lower East Side who's asking the eternal question: Is this all there is? In the midst of that, he discovers he has a special ability to change his future. It opens up his life in a whole new way."
Not that McCarthy needs to do anymore pitching on that project. He's currently in post-production on The Cobbler, which he directed and co-wrote, and which stars Adam Sandler in one of those rare and often surprising non-Adam Sandler movie roles. It's a safe bet that the film's headed to a premiere at one of the major festivals, where McCarthy's three past features have all premiered to acclaim.
As a filmmaker, McCarthy's been an indie darling since his 2003 debut The Station Agent, the first introduction for many to Peter Dinklage, who starred as a railroad-loving introvert who inherits and goes to live on an abandoned train depot in rural New Jersey. 2007's The Visitor and 2011's Win Win have continued his tradition of taking potentially cutesy scenarios and spinning them into nuanced, warm, but never easily sentimental portraits of ragtag communities and families of choice.
Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, and Bobby Cannavale in The Station Agent
Miramax Films
McCarthy began his career as an actor — you might remember him as shady reporter Scott Templeton from the final season of HBO's The Wire — but it's his work behind the camera that's been commanding all the attention lately. That's included writing screenplays for other filmmakers, like Pixar's Up, on which he shares a story credit with directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, and Disney's recent Million Dollar Arm, starring Jon Hamm as a sports agent who goes looking for pitching talent in the cricket-loving market of India and ends up bringing two village boys to L.A. to train.
These are much bigger films than the indies McCarthy's helmed himself, but they share a clear sensibility. They're more stories of people from different walks of life finding connection and community in one another, and they reveal themselves to be much sharper and less easy to pin down than you'd expect when first hearing their innocuous descriptions. Those complications are what drew McCarthy to Million Dollar Arm, which is now in theaters, and which he described approvingly as an "unconventional story, something I hadn't quite seen before."
"It has the sheen of a sports movie, but it's really not a sports movie at all," McCarthy said. "If anyone goes into it thinking they're getting a straight-up sports story, they're going to be disappointed."
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