Written Interview: Tom McCarthy (“Win Win”)
Today we feature writer-diretor Tom McCarthy whose new movie Win Win debuts in the U.S. this weekend. Here’s a plot summary from IMDB:
Disheartened attorney Mike Flaherty (Giamatti), who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach, stumbles across a star athlete through some questionable business dealings while trying to support his family. Just as it looks like he will get a double payday, the boy’s mother shows up fresh from rehab and flat broke, threatening to derail everything.
Here are some excerpts from a feature on McCarthy in the San Francisco Chronicle:
“It comes back to if you are sitting in a bar and somebody tells you a story and you go ‘Really? no way,’ “ he said. “Maybe that is the Irish side of me. I don’t come from a family of artists. In fact, most of them are in the corporate or financial world. But they are all great storytellers. They will tell me a story about their day — something I really don’t care about — but the way they spin it, it becomes really interesting to me and very funny and dramatic.”
With his new movie “Win Win,” McCarthy has taken on a world he is familiar with, having been on the wrestling team at New Providence High School in New Jersey.
“I was thinking there has never been a good wrestling movie. You have to go back to 1985 and ‘Vision Quest’ to find a movie about it at all.”
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The story credit goes to McCarthy and his former wrestling buddy Joe Tiboni, who is now a New Jersey lawyer. The two did research by attending matches at their old high school.
“It was a win win. I got to see my family and hang out with one of my best friends. When I started writing I was not locked away in a room. I kept going to matches. As a result, some stuff developed very organically,” he said.