The Station Agent is the story of a young dwarf, Finbar McBride [Peter Dinklage], who moves to an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey, to live the life of a hermit. His attempt at solitude is soon interrupted, however, by interactions with his neighbors, like a struggling artist [Patricia Clarkson] coping with the recent death of her young son and a talkative Cuban hot dog vendor [Bobby Cannavale]. The film won multiple awards at Sundance including the Dramatic Audience Award, Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and Special Jury Performance Award for Patricia Clarkson.
I got a chance to talk with writer/director Tom McCarthy about his role in Meet the Parents, directing but not acting in his debut and why the character didn't need to be a dwarf but is. The Station Agent opens in October.
Check out the website for the Station Agent.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Why was it important to make this character a dwarf and not deformed?
Tom McCarthy: It wasn't really. I didn't set out to write a movie about dwarves or dwarfism using Peter. I was fascinated with the central character sort of inheriting the social responsibility of a station agent. He moves into this depot and then becomes the lynchpin for this really disconnected society. The depot was the inspiration for the movie and the title came out of that. But I didn't really have a backstory for that character yet. I was just playing with a lot of different storylines. I bumped into Peter on the street, we were chatting and I just knew it had to be him. First and foremost I knew Peter was an amazing actor because I directed him in an Off-Off Broadway workshop. I knew he was handsome, charismatic and had the chops to pull it off. That was the start.
DRE: The movie is a bit of a fable because there are aspects of the story that aren't realistic but it didn't matter. The vending guy is in a place where there are no customers. The guy in the depot doesn't do anything. So there is a sense of it being removed from the world.
TM: Definitely. It's funny because in many senses it is very realistic but there is a fable-like quality to it. That's even typical of a lot of great western films. The movie for me is a cowboy tale. Of course as a storyteller I could answer every one of those questions that make it seem fable-like. The whole thing about Peter living in the depot is that I was amazed at how people just accepted that right away. That's a credit to the actors because the audience connects with them. Once you connect with the audience you'll go where they take you.
One thing that gets people mad is when the train comes and Peter isn't hurt. There was almost a brawl about that last week in Boston.
DRE: That's bull because you read about stuff like that all the time in the papers. Train passes over some guy and he's not hurt.
DRE: Why does it seem that cell phones have such big part in this movie?
TM: Bad writing [laughs]. I became cognizant of that when I was writing the script. But it makes perfect sense. Trains used to connect us and now cell phones connect us. They also really disconnect us and I liked playing with that. Olivia has a cell phone and never uses it. Joe is on it all the time in the beginning and by the end Joe is reading. It's his evolution.
DRE: You worked on this script for so many years. Were you ever worried it wouldn't get made?
TM: I always thought it would. I was working a lot as an actor so I didn't get frustrated. I wrote it to be made for not a lot of money. It took longer for it to get made than I thought. That said two or three years to get a movie is not that long especially with a script as unusual as this with a dwarf in the lead. Pitches would not go well, dwarves, hot dog vendors and grieving widows. People were just not sure that American audiences could watch that for an hour and a half.
DRE: All I want to do is call you Dr. Bob.
TM: [laughs] You and 4000 high school kids. I don't even know that anymore. When people call out Dr. Bob to me I have no idea what they mean. I think they need medial attention.
DRE: Making Meet the Patents must have been an amazing experience.
TM: Yes it was. That was also where I did a lot of polishing on the Station Agent script. I didn't have a lot to do in that movie so I was in my trailer a lot.
DRE: Being an actor/director/writer was it tough to not put yourself in this movie?
TM: Not until the film became the success it is. I had a lot of regret [laughs]. I thought about it but there is something incredibly fulfilling about writing and directing. I would do another movie again and not put myself in it. I think it's really difficult to pull that off. Very few people have ever done it successfully. For me I was so overwhelmed as a writer/director, my actors would do imitations of me and they're not flattering. The whole rhythm of this movie is so relaxed that I couldn't have done it.
DRE: Did directing come easily to you?
TM: The actual working with the actors did. But the whole thing together was a mess. I had never been behind the camera before. So you hire great people, rely on your friends and approach it with a lot of humility and a sense of humor.
DRE: Peter and Bobby you wrote these roles for. What made Patricia Clarkson perfect for the role of Olivia?
TM: I was just a fan of Patty's and I was very nervous about directing her. In my mind Patty is an actor's actor. There isn't an actor who won't say she is amazing. She has that range from theatre to film to TV. Even in my movie she does these slapstick moments of tumbling down the hill and then she does these heartbreaking moments. I was terrified but she put me at ease in the weeks before we started shooting.
DRE: What sets this movie apart?
TM: The characters. What sets it apart from other character driven independent films is that it looks so beautiful. We made a very conscious decision to not shoot on digital video. Digital just not hold up especially in exterior daylight shots. We had a great cinematographer named Oliver Bokelberg who I had known for a while. He came very prepared and we had a visual language to the film which is very unusual for a half million dollar movie that was shot in 20 days.
DRE: How autobiographical is this movie?
TM: As you know I was a dwarf when I was younger [laughs]. These characters are extensions of people I know and New Jersey which I know very well. The cultural and economic differences. If it wasn't for Peter, Patty's character would never have acknowledged Bobby's character as anything more than the hot dog guy.
DRE: Everyone makes fun of New Jersey. But did you walk around going "There are stories here"?
TM: I was excited to shoot it in a beautiful part of New Jersey. People don't believe its Jersey. I love that. That's why I love American Splendor. Taking these places that are basically left for dead and finding a story there. We've been screening this movie all over the world and people can relate to it. In Minnesota and Spain they say it's just like their town.
DRE: From this would you want to work on a bigger budgeted film?
TM: No because I don't even feel the need to start my next film. I want to finish publicity for this, do some acting and write the next script. I've had a lot of offers, which is beyond me, but reading these scripts they send me either I connect with them or I don't. As an actor it may not be a great script but it's shooting in Miami or you love the director but its only a few months of your time. To make a movie it takes two years. I think I just have to be patient.
DRE: There are three characters in this movie and together they form one person.
TM: Yes I agree they are all aspects of one another. The movie starts as one man's story and ends up as three but ultimately those three people add up to one entity. Its an amazing feeling to find these moments and put them together in a script then to see the actors do it and then to see the audience respond to it is wonderful. Any director will tell you the payoff is wonderful.
Peter, throughout the movie hardly says yes or no. But he immediately wins the audience over because he's confident in who he is.
DRE: You're film as you were saying is quite minimal. Did you hold yourself back from adding more dialogue?
TM: No I was always excited by that. When you have an actor like Peter who is a force onscreen the simplicity of the story is what I kept coming back to. The only thing was that I had this dwarf who doesn't want to be with anyone and the same with this widow. So I needed someone to bring them together. Then Joe came up and he's fun. That character can say anything and move the story forward. He can get everyone having pork chops in the middle of the afternoon. Bobby is like that. In the middle of our press junket in Spain, Bobby somehow got me into a salt water spa floating. He just somehow he got me, Peter and himself in blue bathing caps. It was so Joe.
People asked me if I felt like I exploited dwarves with this film. If anything I exploited Bobby because I ripped off his personality.
DRE: How did you direct Peter into doing all that great looks?
TM: You don't. You guide and help him but Peter knew the character. We talked a lot about the character beforehand. We spoke a lot about making this guy actively disconnected. He's not passive, sad or put-upon but he's a cool guy who made this conscious decision to be alone.
DRE: Were you always a writer?
TM: No I went to Boston College and I was never involved with the theatre. I was a philosophy major which opened up a lot of doors [laughs]. I got involved with a comedy group and that was the beginning. Then we all moved to Minneapolis which was a great career move and there we started writing and performing. Then when I started taking acting more seriously I went to Yale grad school and started writing plays.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
I got a chance to talk with writer/director Tom McCarthy about his role in Meet the Parents, directing but not acting in his debut and why the character didn't need to be a dwarf but is. The Station Agent opens in October.
Check out the website for the Station Agent.
Daniel Robert Epstein: Why was it important to make this character a dwarf and not deformed?
Tom McCarthy: It wasn't really. I didn't set out to write a movie about dwarves or dwarfism using Peter. I was fascinated with the central character sort of inheriting the social responsibility of a station agent. He moves into this depot and then becomes the lynchpin for this really disconnected society. The depot was the inspiration for the movie and the title came out of that. But I didn't really have a backstory for that character yet. I was just playing with a lot of different storylines. I bumped into Peter on the street, we were chatting and I just knew it had to be him. First and foremost I knew Peter was an amazing actor because I directed him in an Off-Off Broadway workshop. I knew he was handsome, charismatic and had the chops to pull it off. That was the start.
DRE: The movie is a bit of a fable because there are aspects of the story that aren't realistic but it didn't matter. The vending guy is in a place where there are no customers. The guy in the depot doesn't do anything. So there is a sense of it being removed from the world.
TM: Definitely. It's funny because in many senses it is very realistic but there is a fable-like quality to it. That's even typical of a lot of great western films. The movie for me is a cowboy tale. Of course as a storyteller I could answer every one of those questions that make it seem fable-like. The whole thing about Peter living in the depot is that I was amazed at how people just accepted that right away. That's a credit to the actors because the audience connects with them. Once you connect with the audience you'll go where they take you.
One thing that gets people mad is when the train comes and Peter isn't hurt. There was almost a brawl about that last week in Boston.
DRE: That's bull because you read about stuff like that all the time in the papers. Train passes over some guy and he's not hurt.
DRE: Why does it seem that cell phones have such big part in this movie?
TM: Bad writing [laughs]. I became cognizant of that when I was writing the script. But it makes perfect sense. Trains used to connect us and now cell phones connect us. They also really disconnect us and I liked playing with that. Olivia has a cell phone and never uses it. Joe is on it all the time in the beginning and by the end Joe is reading. It's his evolution.
DRE: You worked on this script for so many years. Were you ever worried it wouldn't get made?
TM: I always thought it would. I was working a lot as an actor so I didn't get frustrated. I wrote it to be made for not a lot of money. It took longer for it to get made than I thought. That said two or three years to get a movie is not that long especially with a script as unusual as this with a dwarf in the lead. Pitches would not go well, dwarves, hot dog vendors and grieving widows. People were just not sure that American audiences could watch that for an hour and a half.
DRE: All I want to do is call you Dr. Bob.
TM: [laughs] You and 4000 high school kids. I don't even know that anymore. When people call out Dr. Bob to me I have no idea what they mean. I think they need medial attention.
DRE: Making Meet the Patents must have been an amazing experience.
TM: Yes it was. That was also where I did a lot of polishing on the Station Agent script. I didn't have a lot to do in that movie so I was in my trailer a lot.
DRE: Being an actor/director/writer was it tough to not put yourself in this movie?
TM: Not until the film became the success it is. I had a lot of regret [laughs]. I thought about it but there is something incredibly fulfilling about writing and directing. I would do another movie again and not put myself in it. I think it's really difficult to pull that off. Very few people have ever done it successfully. For me I was so overwhelmed as a writer/director, my actors would do imitations of me and they're not flattering. The whole rhythm of this movie is so relaxed that I couldn't have done it.
DRE: Did directing come easily to you?
TM: The actual working with the actors did. But the whole thing together was a mess. I had never been behind the camera before. So you hire great people, rely on your friends and approach it with a lot of humility and a sense of humor.
DRE: Peter and Bobby you wrote these roles for. What made Patricia Clarkson perfect for the role of Olivia?
TM: I was just a fan of Patty's and I was very nervous about directing her. In my mind Patty is an actor's actor. There isn't an actor who won't say she is amazing. She has that range from theatre to film to TV. Even in my movie she does these slapstick moments of tumbling down the hill and then she does these heartbreaking moments. I was terrified but she put me at ease in the weeks before we started shooting.
DRE: What sets this movie apart?
TM: The characters. What sets it apart from other character driven independent films is that it looks so beautiful. We made a very conscious decision to not shoot on digital video. Digital just not hold up especially in exterior daylight shots. We had a great cinematographer named Oliver Bokelberg who I had known for a while. He came very prepared and we had a visual language to the film which is very unusual for a half million dollar movie that was shot in 20 days.
DRE: How autobiographical is this movie?
TM: As you know I was a dwarf when I was younger [laughs]. These characters are extensions of people I know and New Jersey which I know very well. The cultural and economic differences. If it wasn't for Peter, Patty's character would never have acknowledged Bobby's character as anything more than the hot dog guy.
DRE: Everyone makes fun of New Jersey. But did you walk around going "There are stories here"?
TM: I was excited to shoot it in a beautiful part of New Jersey. People don't believe its Jersey. I love that. That's why I love American Splendor. Taking these places that are basically left for dead and finding a story there. We've been screening this movie all over the world and people can relate to it. In Minnesota and Spain they say it's just like their town.
DRE: From this would you want to work on a bigger budgeted film?
TM: No because I don't even feel the need to start my next film. I want to finish publicity for this, do some acting and write the next script. I've had a lot of offers, which is beyond me, but reading these scripts they send me either I connect with them or I don't. As an actor it may not be a great script but it's shooting in Miami or you love the director but its only a few months of your time. To make a movie it takes two years. I think I just have to be patient.
DRE: There are three characters in this movie and together they form one person.
TM: Yes I agree they are all aspects of one another. The movie starts as one man's story and ends up as three but ultimately those three people add up to one entity. Its an amazing feeling to find these moments and put them together in a script then to see the actors do it and then to see the audience respond to it is wonderful. Any director will tell you the payoff is wonderful.
Peter, throughout the movie hardly says yes or no. But he immediately wins the audience over because he's confident in who he is.
DRE: You're film as you were saying is quite minimal. Did you hold yourself back from adding more dialogue?
TM: No I was always excited by that. When you have an actor like Peter who is a force onscreen the simplicity of the story is what I kept coming back to. The only thing was that I had this dwarf who doesn't want to be with anyone and the same with this widow. So I needed someone to bring them together. Then Joe came up and he's fun. That character can say anything and move the story forward. He can get everyone having pork chops in the middle of the afternoon. Bobby is like that. In the middle of our press junket in Spain, Bobby somehow got me into a salt water spa floating. He just somehow he got me, Peter and himself in blue bathing caps. It was so Joe.
People asked me if I felt like I exploited dwarves with this film. If anything I exploited Bobby because I ripped off his personality.
DRE: How did you direct Peter into doing all that great looks?
TM: You don't. You guide and help him but Peter knew the character. We talked a lot about the character beforehand. We spoke a lot about making this guy actively disconnected. He's not passive, sad or put-upon but he's a cool guy who made this conscious decision to be alone.
DRE: Were you always a writer?
TM: No I went to Boston College and I was never involved with the theatre. I was a philosophy major which opened up a lot of doors [laughs]. I got involved with a comedy group and that was the beginning. Then we all moved to Minneapolis which was a great career move and there we started writing and performing. Then when I started taking acting more seriously I went to Yale grad school and started writing plays.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
missy:
The Station Agent is the story of a young dwarf, Finbar McBride [Peter Dinklage], who moves to an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey, to live the life of a hermit. His attempt at solitude is soon interrupted, however, by interactions with his neighbors, like a struggling artist [Patricia...