I’m missing too many movies this year. One of the ones that I really wish I had seen is The Visitor, a hugely acclaimed film starring Richard Jenkins as a guy who comes home one day to find an illegal immigrant squatting in his Manhattan apartment. It’s the latest movie from Thomas McCarthy, who directed the very good The Station Agent and who also has a career as an actor – maybe you saw him on The Wire‘s final season as the reporter who makes up his stories.
Instead of working on directing another film or acting in another great project, McCarthy has signed on to 2012, Roland Emmerich’s next end of the world disaster movie. McCarthy claims he’s doing it for more than just the money.
“As an actor, I’ve never worked on anything with this scale before,
and I always go see these movies,” he said. “And then there’s the
director part of me. I get really excited about working with
directors like this, who do things that are so wildly different
from me. And he really is. He works on a totally different
canvas.
“It’s something (Gersh agent Rhonda Price) and I talk about:
finding new things to do that are different and exciting from what
we’ve done before, and this fits the bill.”
Well, even if it’s for the money, who can fault one of the more exciting talents out there today for earning a buck or two. And he’s surrounded by a decent cast, including lead John Cusack and Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover and
Oliver Platt.
The good news: McCarthy says that he’s already working on another script.