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SXSW Talks: Tom McCarthy, ‘Win Win’
He had appeared in two consecutive movies as a 30-year-old wondering if he should get married or not. The only discernible differences between the roles were the films’ settings and his characters’ religious backgrounds. That’s when McCarthy decided to take matters into his own hands.
“Rather than complain about it, I decided to just start to write. And that was the ‘Station Agent.’”
McCarthy’s 2003 debut about an unlikely trio of characters finding solace in each other’s company won him the best original screenplay award from the Independent Spirit Awards and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
The writer-director followed those achievements in 2007 with “The Visitor,” a story of a lonely man who stumbles into companionship, which garnered him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Director and a nomination for best screenplay from the Writer’s Guild of America.
Both films showed a sensitive and subtle filmmaker exploring ideas of loss and the need for connection.
With his third feature, “Win Win,” which screened Monday night at the Paramount Theatre, McCarthy again examines relationships. But his story of a man who makes an unethical, and seemingly innocuous, decision that eventually impacts his family and those around him does not tread emotional ground quite as weighty and somber as his previous films.
“Ultimately, look, especially after ‘The Visitor,’ I wanted to have fun with this story,” McCarthy said Monday morning before his movie played SXSW. “I just wanted to loosen up and kick back — a little sloppy, a little fun.”
Despite his best efforts, middle-aged suburban lawyer Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) can’t seem to stay ahead of life. When faced with the opportunity to take advantage of aging client’s dilemma, the straight-shooting Mike makes an unethical and out-of-character move that will earn him $1500 a month. Although it seems a victimless crime, Mike realizes his plan is not fool proof when his client’s grandson, Kyle (an excellent turn by Alex Shaffer), appears.
Although the movie is funnier than McCarthy’s previous script, the Yale drama school grad admits that the broad comedy also resonated with him on a deeper level.
“When decent people that we know - he has a family and he lives and town and he’s a good guy, but he did this thing,” McCarthy said. “That to me was speaking very, very directly to where we are as a society, especially financially.”
McCarthy has a nuanced opinion of some of the players involved in the economic calamity that has engulfed the country.
“I don’t think they’re all evil people; I’m not a big believer in that. My family works on Wall Street. But there were some really bad choices made by decent people. Too many things like this happen and we say, ‘Oh, those guys are bad guys. We’re in this situation cause of bad guy.’ I think we’re in this situation because collectively we’ve made some pretty bad choices.”
The filmmaker said he was specifically fascinated by the collapse of former Texas energy titan Enron.
“The thing Joe and I kept talking about was Enron. We kept looking at the Enron model. That’s the thing that interested me. Because it was this company, which now we are all aware of its fall from grace, but which at the time it was the pillar. The company was the flagstone. And a lot of good came out of that - a lot of decent people’s lives were made, kids went to college and philanthropically and bolstering the economy in local communities and all this great stuff. Granted a few people were getting very rich, but all this wonderful trickle-down fallout … until that moment happened and everyone was like, ‘Whoa! Hold it. What? What is this?’ Then it didn’t look so good. And that to me was really interesting.”
The filmmaker, who continues to work regularly as a character actor (most notably as unethical Baltimore Sun reporter Scott Templeton on HBO’s “The Wire”), never judges his characters in “Win Win,” primarily because they are good people who succumb to bad decisions, just like all of us do at times.
“I think if we were all cognizant of the bad choices we’re making, we wouldn’t make them,” McCarthy said. “If we just lived with them fully all the time, we would be less prone to engage in them. But it’s the fact that we can compartmentalize …”
Look for more from my conversation with McCarthy and “Win Win” actress Amy Ryan when the movie opens in Austin.
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