Interview: Tom McCarthy
Tom McCarthy is an actor, screenwriter and director whose writing credits include The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007), the latter for which McCarthy received a nomination by the WGA for Best Original Screenplay.
In this Coming Soon.net interview, McCarthy talks about The Visitor, The Station Agent, acting, and how finding stories is like “investigative journalism”:
CS: You said “finding stories” like you were literally walking around until you found one.
McCarthy: It’s exactly that. It almost feels more like journalism. For me, a lot of times, it’s looking at people, watching characters traveling is a great thing for me. It sort of opens my mind a little bit to a different way of looking even at my own place in the world, and I think it literally is that. A lot of times, I would just keep accumulating notes, just keep doing it, until I feel like I can weed through and see the story in there. Do I have enough clay to make something with? It’s that kind of feeling, so I do think that’s how, it’s almost like investigative journalism at the start for me.