Tom McCarthy has gone swiftly from being a performer to a director but he has managed to hold fast to his independent status, writes Donald Clarke.
WHEN Tom McCarthy set out to write and direct The Station Agent, a fine independent comedy from 2004, he already had a healthy career as an actor. He was, it is true, rarely pursued down his street by autograph hunters, but, with a regular role in the TV series Boston Public and supporting parts in films such as Conspiracy Theory and Meet the Parents, he was comfortably established.
The Station Agent, in which Peter Dinklage had quirky adventures in rural New Jersey, was intended as something of a side- project, as a diversion between acting gigs. Then something strange happened. The film won three major awards at the Sundance Film Festival, became a word-of-mouth hit and turned McCarthy, now 42, from a performer into a director.
"I guess that's right," he says. "That did utterly change my life. But, oddly, just as The Station Agent was launching my career as a writer and director, my acting career went on to another level as well. I got a lot of parts. So I was busy doing that and then Pixar asked me to help them write a few projects. The end result was it took me until now to finish my next film."
McCarthy, a tidy, articulate man in serious spectacles, has joined me on a rooftop garden in Edinburgh to discuss an intriguing new feature called The Visitor. To whom does the title refer? It could describe the jaded economics professor, played by esteemed character actor Richard Jenkins, who travels to New York for a stupefying conference.
It might refer to the Syrian drummer he unexpectedly befriends. Perhaps the title is nodding towards the emigré's mum, who gets close to the professor after immigration officials seize the unfortunate musician.
"Part of the reason it took so long to make this project was that it did have this complicated development," McCarthy says. "I initially had this idea to make a film about an academic who has lost his way and finds himself on a trip to New York. But then I was travelling in the Middle East - in Beirut in particular - and meeting all these people from a culture you don't see on film. And the two ideas came together."
McCarthy's point about the under-representation - or misrepresentation - of Arab cultures in mainstream American cinema is worth making. More often than not, people from that part of the world are shown waving Armalite rifles at Steven Seagal or planning to throw Tom Cruise out of a helicopter.
By way of contrast, the veteran Hiam Abbass and newcomer Haaz Sleiman, playing, respectively, mother and son, make something fleshy and sympathetic of their troubled characters. As the film progresses, the uptight academic learns how to play the drums from one and how to open his heart from the other.
"It's a strange thing, but I had never really paid much attention to the Arab community in New York myself," McCarthy says. "But I learned a lot doing research for this film." One of the themes of The Visitor is the way attitudes to the Muslim community have changed since 9/11. Did his new friends confirm that their lives have become more difficult over the last seven years?
"Oh yes. I am afraid so," he says. "When I was doing my research I stumbled across a wonderful book called The Prophet of Zongo Street by a writer called Mohammed Ali. He was telling me that, until 9/11, when he went through customs and they saw his name, the conversation would be, like, 'Wow! You're Mohammed Ali!' Now, they frown and say: 'Would you step over here, sir?' That's just an example of more serious changes."
You could view The Visitor as a campaigning film. As Jenkins's character works to stop his pal's deportation, he becomes increasingly irritated by the Kafkaesque bureaucracy that characterises the American immigration authorities. I would guess that, much as he appreciates the good reviews the film has received, McCarthy would regard a rethink in government policy as the ultimate compliment.
"Maybe. That might be asking for a lot though," he says. "I would hope that it would help people see that these issues are not just black and white. They are more complex than that. It is ridiculous to say you are pro- or anti- immigration. There will always be immigration." McCarthy works hard to play down his film's polemical inclinations, but, given the current polarised state of American politics, any musing on a topic as controversial as immigration will be viewed with interest by both conservatives and liberals.
John McCain may have found members of his own party scowling at him for a perceived liberal approach to immigration, but no sane person viewing The Visitor could be in any doubt that its director does not intend to put his tick beside the Arizona senator's name in November.
"I was worried that the film might annoy some people," McCarthy laughs. "So I was surprised that it worked so well at the box-office. I was surprised it got such critical support. But, actually, my main fear was that it might be too delicate to work with American audiences. It doesn't make sense to say that I am taking a political stance in the film. I simply don't accept that I might be making a propaganda film. I don't really understand that view."
Tom McCarthy finds himself in a very happy place right now. A graduate of Yale School of Drama - alma mater of such beacons as Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Elia Kazan - he has managed to develop two equally successful, parallel careers in the entertainment industry.
While he was pondering how to follow-up The Station Agent, Clint Eastwood hired him for Flags of Our Fathers and George Clooney found a role for him in Good Night and Good Luck.
"I was lucky enough - and I mean 'lucky' because many talented people don't get the breaks - to have worked fairly consistently. But when, for example, I got a regular part on a television series, I still wanted to do something different. If I'd wanted a regular job I'd have gone to work in an office."
Following the success of The Station Agent, he did receive a few offers to direct mainstream films involving giant octopuses and alligators in spacesuits (not literally, you understand). This is a cut-throat business and there is always an executive waiting round the corner with plans to neuter original talent.
"That's true. There are people who believe you must make the big commercial movies - not that there's anything wrong with those films," he says. "But if I wanted to do that I would certainly have done it by now. I'm glad to say there are plenty who do understand what I do. I get a lot of people coming up to me to say: 'Keep making these sorts of movies. Because we get quite enough of the other sort.'"
The Visitor is playing at the Irish Film Institute and the Light House Cinema, Dublin