CANR
WORK TITLE: The Longest Way Home; Just Fly Away
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 11/29/1962
WEBSITE: http://andrewmccarthy.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/fashion/mens-style/andrew-mccarthy-young-adult-novel.html * http://www.salon.com/2017/04/01/andrew-mccarthy-stretches-his-wings-i-do-have-a-strong-yearning-to-escape/ * http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/books/review/the-longest-way-home-by-andrew-mccarthy.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
ADDRESS
CAREER
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews Jan. 15, 2017, review of McCarthy, Andrew: JUST FLY AWAY.
Booklist Sept. 15, 2012, Pitt, David. , “The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down.”. p. 19+.
Library Journal Sept. 15, 2012, Wise, Olga B. , “McCarthy, Andrew. The Longest Way Home.”. p. 82.
Kirkus Reviews Aug. 1, 2012, , “McCarthy, Andrew: THE LONGEST WAY HOME.”.
Publishers Weekly June 25, 2012, , “The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down.”. p. 165.
ONLINE
Trish Talks Texts, https://trishtalkstexts.wordpress.com (April 2, 2017), review of Just Fly Away
New York Times Book Review, http://www.nytimes.com (September 21, 2012), review of The Longest Way Home
< Actor, Director And Writer Andrew McCarthy Takes On Young Adult Fiction March 26, 20178:14 AM ET 7:15 Download Facebook Twitter Google+ Email LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: Andrew McCarthy has made many transformations in his life. He began his career as a teen heartthrob and member of the Brat Pack in films like "Pretty In Pink" and "St. Elmo's Fire." After, he became a television director of episodes of "The Blacklist" on NBC and "Orange Is The New Black" on Netflix. He's also an acclaimed travel writer and memoirist - a lot there. And now he's turned his hand to something new. He's the author of a young-adult novel "Just Fly Away" about a 15-year-old girl whose life is upended after she discovers a secret her father has kept from her for years. Andrew McCarthy joins me from our studios now in New York. Thanks for being here. ANDREW MCCARTHY: Great to be here. GARCIA-NAVARRO: So no spoiler alert because this happens early on in the book, what does Lucy, the main character, find out? MCCARTHY: Yeah, Lucy finds out that her father had an affair years ago and that she has a 8-year-old brother living across town, which sends her world, sort of, reeling and spinning out of control because everything she thought she knew suddenly is not the way it was. GARCIA-NAVARRO: So this kind of feels like a story that might be specific to something that you heard or were told about. What is it about family secrets that intrigued you? MCCARTHY: Well, I think every family's got them (laughter). But this really wasn't anything that I'd heard or heard about. Since I've finished the book, actually, a lot of people have come up and sort of revealed some of their own about siblings and... GARCIA-NAVARRO: Secret siblings? MCCARTHY: Yeah. And so it's much more common than I thought. I don't think it's true in my life, but I don't know (laughter). But I - you know, I'm, sort of, an accidental YA author. I have to confess, I thought I was writing a different book. I thought I was writing a book about a man who has an affair and has this child out of wedlock that he keeps a secret from his family for years. GARCIA-NAVARRO: So you were going to focus, initially, on the - sort of the dad? MCCARTHY: It was. It was about a marriage and how secrecy can corrode a marriage. And I was working on it for years. I'd say seven or eight years, really. And then my favorite character was always the daughter when she was 15. And one day, I just started writing from her voice, her point of view. And it set everything free. You know, I'd been struggling and struggling. And suddenly, I was sort of in the current. And then it was instantly apparent to me I was writing a YA book, which I had no intention of doing - 'cause there's something about that sort of ferocious vulnerability of that age that really appealed to me. It was liberating and, you know, I identified with it. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. I mean, I'm curious as to why it appealed to you. You obviously know a lot about being a 15-year-old boy. You were one... MCCARTHY: (Laughter). GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...And you also used to play one (laughter). MCCARTHY: Played one on TV, yeah. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, yeah, exactly. MCCARTHY: Yeah, I mean, I suppose there's just something about that moment in life that is really powerful. Everything seems so intense and so real and so all-encompassing. And I first started acting when I was 15, and it changed my life. That moment when I discovered acting, I walked out on stage. And I felt the sense of oh, there I am for the first time. And so, you know, I suppose in an unconscious way, this moment when Lucy - she's 15 - she finds out this thing, it changes her life and changes her whole place in the world. And what is originally sort of horrific, terrifying news, you know, she comes to try and reconcile and deal with it. And she's going to be a different person from that moment after. GARCIA-NAVARRO: How did you tap into the girl part of this? Having been a 15-year-old girl myself... MCCARTHY: (Laughter). GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...It's a really, really horrible period, one that I would not want to go back to, personally. How did you figure out her interior life, your character's interior life? MCCARTHY: Well, 15-year-old boy's no picnic either, I don't think. GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter). MCCARTHY: But I don't know. I suppose it's sort of like an accent. When you're acting in a certain way, it can be very liberating And suddenly words coming out of your mouth that normally wouldn't come out because you're inhabiting this kind of character. You know, she just spoke to me very clearly in a way that I don't think a 15-year-old boy who would have been saddled by my own personal literal memories and baggage would have spoken. I think the emotions and feeling of isolated and alone and misunderstood and unappreciated and terrified that life is not going to happen to you is a universal thing. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Being a father and writing this book about a 15-year-old and family secrets, I'm curious, are there secrets that should be kept from children? MCCARTHY: I don't know. I suppose that really the truth is always the best answer. And we keep things from kids in the name of protecting them. But often, it's just easier for us to keep from telling them and owning up. My mother - I don't think it's any great secret - when I was young, my mother was ill. And they - my parents chose not to tell us. And I overheard a conversation about it. And only years later did I find out what the situation was. And it was a secret I sort of lived with and kept. And I don't think that burden really particularly helped me. I mean, it was fine in the long run. It wasn't a massive thing. But it was certainly - any secret separates us and distances us and puts a little barrier between us. And we can feel the barrier, even if we don't know what it is. And I think kids particularly are so sensitized and have their antenna up all the time. And that any secret is a wall. And they are incremental and corrosive. And I think they limit that intimacy and that sense of trust that needs to happen. GARCIA-NAVARRO: As I mentioned at the beginning, you've changed your focus of your career many times. And I... MCCARTHY: (Laughter) One day I'll get it right. GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter) You seem to have done all of them pretty well. I guess, is the changing hard, especially when you start as an actor and then you turn into a novelist? You know, one is so public. And the other is private. Authors write alone. MCCARTHY: Well, I'm a bit of an introvert, so I found that aspect of it to be liberating and completely... GARCIA-NAVARRO: Really, you like writing alone? MCCARTHY: I like as few votes as possible. That's certainly the case. And, you know, when I started acting, like I said, I felt like, oh, there I am. I felt like I had found myself. And then the moment I started traveling in a real way and then later travel writing, I felt again, like, oh, there I am. It was the same feeling to me. And so - and the novel - it just sort of naturally grew out of sitting down. There's something about just sitting down that I like. And it just feels comfortable to me. GARCIA-NAVARRO: I just have one last question. Do you still talk to any of the Brat Pack? MCCARTHY: (Laughter). GARCIA-NAVARRO: Do you hate the term the Brat Pack? MCCARTHY: No, I think I used to when I was young because like anything, no one wants to be labeled and put in a box. But now, it's become this sort of affectionate and iconic kind of term referring to - it's more refers to the people who are saying it about their youth and the wistful recollection of their youth and a moment in time that probably never existed for any of us. But no, now it's fine. You know, my children, against my better - all my wishes, are becoming actors. My son is acting in his first movie. And of course his course his on-screen mother is, naturally, Molly Ringwald. GARCIA-NAVARRO: (Laughter). MCCARTHY: So it all comes (laughter) - it all comes around. There's no escape. GARCIA-NAVARRO: There's no escape. That's Andrew McCarthy, actor, director, writer and novelist, author of the young adult novel "Just Fly Away." It's out this Tuesday. Mr. McCarthy, thanks so much for being with us. MCCARTHY: Oh, thanks. (SOUNDBITE OF DAVID FOSTER'S SONG, "LOVE THEME FROM ST. ELMO'S FIRE")
Andrew McCarthy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the actor. For the attorney and columnist, see Andrew C. McCarthy.
Andrew McCarthy
Andrew McCarthy Shrek Shankbone 2010 NYC.jpg
McCarthy at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival
Born Andrew Thomas McCarthy
November 29, 1962 (age 54)
Westfield, New Jersey, U.S.
Residence New York City
Alma mater NYU
Occupation Actor, travel writer, film director
Years active 1983–present
Spouse(s) Carol Schneider
(m. 1999–2005; 1 child)
Dolores Rice
(m. 2011–present; 2 children)
Website http://www.andrewmccarthy.com/
Andrew Thomas McCarthy (born November 29, 1962) is an American actor, travel writer and television director. He is known for his roles in the 1980s films St. Elmo's Fire, Mannequin, Weekend at Bernie's, Pretty in Pink, and Less Than Zero, and more recently for his roles in the television shows Lipstick Jungle, White Collar, Royal Pains, and The Family.
Contents
1 Early life
2 Acting/directing career
3 Travel writing
4 Personal life
5 Filmography
6 Awards and nominations
7 References
8 External links
Early life
McCarthy was born in Westfield, New Jersey. His mother worked for a newspaper and his father was involved in investments and stocks.[1] McCarthy moved to Bernardsville, New Jersey, as a teenager and attended the Pingry School.[2] He also attended the town's public school, Bernards High School, for part of a year.[citation needed]
Acting/directing career
McCarthy gained recognition in Hollywood during the 1980s. His boy-next-door looks[citation needed] continually had him placed as the sincere and kind leading man. His breakout role was in the 1983 theatrical film Class. As McCarthy's career grew, he involuntarily became a member of the '80s Hollywood group of young actors known as the "Brat Pack"; McCarthy's better-known films include the Brat Pack films St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty in Pink. He starred in the 1987 box office hits, Mannequin and Less Than Zero, a theatrical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' popular novel. In 1985 McCarthy starred with Donald Sutherland and Kevin Dillon in Heaven Help Us (also known as Catholic Boys) playing Michael Dunn. In 1985, McCarthy made his Broadway debut in The Boys of Winter. He quickly returned to Hollywood in 1988 to star in several films, such as Fresh Horses and Kansas. He had another hit with the 1989 comedy film Weekend at Bernie's.
He returned to Broadway theatre to star in Side Man, McCarthy's version of the play won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1999. In 2003 McCarthy was set to guest star in two episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Due to bad relations with actor Vincent D'Onofrio, series creator Dick Wolf decided against it. Wolf later stated, "Mr. McCarthy engaged in fractious behavior from the moment he walked on the set." McCarthy fired back in a statement of his own saying, "I was fired because I refused to allow a fellow actor to threaten me with physical violence, bully me and try to direct me."[3] Despite this incident, he later guest starred in an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent (with Chris Noth, not D'Onofrio) that originally aired in November 2007.[4] In 2004, he played Dr. Hook in Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital. He appeared in five episodes of the now-cancelled NBC television series E-Ring. In 2008, he starred in the NBC television series Lipstick Jungle as a billionaire, but was eventually cancelled, and had a minor role in The Spiderwick Chronicles. He is ranked #40 on VH1's 100 Greatest Teen Stars of all-time list. McCarthy recently directed several episodes of the hit CW television series, Gossip Girl, including Touch of Eva in the fourth season. McCarthy is also known for an incident at the 2013 Comic Con Philly event, where his security staff assaulted "Skippy," a popular YouTube character, who was attempting to photograph the Mannequin actor at the time.[5] In 2010 and 2011 he also appeared in the hit USA show White Collar; he was praised by several critics[who?] for his performance in the episodes. He returned to the series in the next season to direct the episode "Neighborhood Watch". In 2015, he directed 3 episodes (ep. 11, 13 & 16) in season 2 of the NBC hit television show The Blacklist starring James Spader & Megan Boone.[6][better source needed] In 2016, he starred in the short-lived ABC drama The Family.
Travel writing
McCarthy has also become a travel writer, and is currently an Editor at Large at National Geographic Traveler magazine.[7][8] In 2010, McCarthy was escorted out of an underground church in Lalibela, Ethiopia, for entering the site without documentation. He had been in the church on assignment for the travel magazine Afar.[9] A book written by McCarthy, The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down, was published in 2012.[10] In February/March 2015, National Geographic published his account, entitled "A Song for Ireland", of his return to the house in the townland of Lacka West in the parish of Duagh in County Kerry in Ireland from which his greatgrandfather John McCarthy had emigrated in the late 1800s.[11][12]
Personal life
McCarthy with wife Dolores Rice at the premiere of Shrek Forever After.
In 1999, McCarthy married his college sweetheart Carol Schneider 20 years after they first dated. He later stated his reasons for tracking her down after they had drifted apart: "I ran into someone who said they had seen Carol and her boyfriend and they seemed really happy, and for some reason it bothered me for a week. I called her and asked her if she was really with this guy and asked her out for coffee."[3]
In 2002, Schneider gave birth to a son, Sam. In 2005, the couple divorced.
On August 28, 2011, he married Dolores Rice. They have a daughter, Willow.[13] In September 2013 it was announced that the couple were expecting their second, and his third, child.[14] McCarthy mentioned on "Good Day New York" on March 29, 2017 that his third child is a two-year old son.
In 2004, he announced that he once had a serious alcohol problem, which began at age 12. In 1992, he entered a detoxification program and has been sober since.[15]
Filmography
Film Year Title Role Notes
1983 Class Jonathan Ogner
1985 Heaven Help Us Michael Dunn a.k.a. Catholic Boys
1985 St. Elmo's Fire Kevin Dolenz
1985 The Beniker Gang Arthur Beniker
1986 Pretty in Pink Blane McDonough
1987 Waiting for the Moon Henry Hopper
1987 Mannequin Jonathan Switcher
1987 Less Than Zero Clay Easton
1988 Kansas Wade Corey
1988 Fresh Horses Matt Larkin
1989 Weekend at Bernie's Larry Wilson
1990 Jours tranquilles à Clichy Henry Miller
1990 Dr. M Assassin
1991 Year of the Gun David Raybourne
1992 Only You Clifford Godfrey
1993 Weekend at Bernie's II Larry Wilson
1993 The Joy Luck Club Ted Jordan
1994 Getting In Rupert Grimm
1994 Dead Funny Reggie Barker
1994 Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle Edwin 'Eddie' Pond Parker II
1995 Night of the Running Man Jerry Logan Direct-to-video release
1995 Dream Man David Mander Direct-to-video release
1996 Mulholland Falls Jimmy Fields
1996 Everything Relative Howard
1996 Things I Never Told You Don a.k.a. Cosas que nunca te dije
1997 Stag Peter Weber
1998 Bela Donna Frank
1998 I Woke Up Early The Day I Died Cemetery Cop
1998 I'm Losing You Bertie Krohn
1999 A Twist of Faith Henry Smith
1999 New World Disorder Kurt Bishop
1999 New Waterford Girl Cecil Sweeney
2000 Nowhere in Sight Eric Shelton
2001 Heaven Must Wait Raymond Cane
2002 Standard Time Elliot Shepherd
2004 2BPerfectlyHonest Josh
2004 News for the Church Director, writer; Short film
2005 The Orphan King Charles King
2008 The Spiderwick Chronicles Richard Grace
2009 The Good Guy Cash
2009 Camp Hell Michael
2010 Main Street Howard Mercer
2011 National Lampoon's Snatched Frank Baum
Television Year Title Role Notes
1986 Amazing Stories Edwin Episode: "Grandpa's Ghost"
1991 Tales from the Crypt Edward Foster Episode: "Loved to Death"
1992 Common Pursuit Martin Musgrove Television film
1995 The Courtyard Johnathan Television film
1996 Escape Clause Richard Ramsay Television film
1996 Hostile Force Rabbit (Mike) Television film
1996 The Christmas Tree Richard Reilly Television film
1998 A Father for Brittany Keith Lussier Television film
1998 Perfect Assassins Ben Carroway Television film
2000 A Storm in Summer Stanley Banner Television film
2000 Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Randolph Morrow Episode: "Slaves"
2000 The Sight Michael Lewis Television film
2000 Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Robert F. Kennedy Television film
2002 Georgetown Television pilot
2002 The Secret Life of Zoey Mike Harper Television film
2003 Straight from the Heart Tyler Ross Television film
2003 Law & Order Attorney Finnerty Episode: "Absentia"
2003 The Twilight Zone Marshall Episode: "The Monsters Are on Maple Street"
2003 Monk Derek Philby Episode: "Mr. Monk Goes Back to School"
2004 Kingdom Hospital Dr. Hook Miniseries
2004 The Hollywood Mom's Mystery Kit Freers Television film
2004 Crusader Hank Robinson Television film
2005 Crusader Hank Robinson Television film
2005 E-Ring Aaron Gerrity Five episodes
2006 The Way Television pilot
2007 Law & Order: Criminal Intent A.D.A. Gene Hoyle Episode: "Offense"
2008–09 Lipstick Jungle Joe Bennett; Director 20 episodes; 2 episodes
2009 Gossip Girl Rick Rhodes Episode: "Valley Girls"
2009 Royal Pains Marshall David Bryant IV 2 episodes
2009 The National Tree Corey Burdoc Television film
2010–2012 Gossip Girl Director 6 Episodes
2011 White Collar Vincent Adler 2 Episodes
2012 A Christmas Dance Jack Television film (a.k.a. Come Dance with Me)
2013–2014 Orange Is the New Black Director 5 Episodes
2013–2014 Alpha House Director 4 Episodes
2015 The Blacklist Director 4 Episodes
2016 The Family Hank Main
Awards and nominations
Fantafestival
1987: Won, "Best Actor" – Mannequin
Sedona International Film Festival
2005: Won, "Best Short Film" – News for the Church
Andrew McCarthy is a director, an award winning travel writer, and—of course—an actor. He made his professional début at 19 in Class, and has appeared in dozens of films, including such iconic movies as Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire, Less Then Zero, and cult favorites Weekend At Bernie’s and Mannequin.
He has starred on Broadway and on television, most recently appearing in The Family, on ABC. McCarthy is also a highly regarded television director; having helmed Orange is the New Black, The Blacklist, Grace and Frankie, and many others.
Simultaneously, McCarthy is an award winning travel writer. He is an editor-at-large at National Geographic Traveler, and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Travel+Leisure, AFAR, Men’s Journal, Bon Appetit, and many others. He has received six Lowell Thomas awards, and been named Travel Journalist of the Year by The Society of American Travel Writers.
His travel memoir, THE LONGEST WAY HOME, became a New York Times Best Seller, and the Financial Times of London named it one of the Best Books of the year. He served as guest editor for the prestigious Best American Travel series in 2015.
His debut novel, JUST FLY AWAY, will be published by Algonquin in the spring of 2017.
McCarthy lives in New York City.
Andrew McCarthy’s Newest Role: Young Adult Novelist
Encounters
By MARIA RUSSO MARCH 31, 2017
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The latest project of the actor, writer and director Andrew McCarthy is a young-adult novel called “Just Fly Away.” Credit Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times
A man approached me in the Lexington Candy Shop, a luncheonette on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that has not changed much since it opened in 1925. This was the time we had set for an interview, but I took the man for just another middle-aged New York dad until I registered the melancholy blue-gray eyes and sweetly electric smile that won over a generation (mine) of young women.
In a corner booth, Andrew McCarthy, the 54-year-old actor, writer and television director known for his roles in 1980s movies like “Pretty in Pink” and “Less Than Zero,” made steady progress on a burger and fries as he discussed his latest project: a young-adult novel called “Just Fly Away” (Algonquin Young Readers). It’s about family secrets, and it’s written from the perspective of a 15-year-old girl.
Between bites Mr. McCarthy imagined the pushback he may have to endure for his choice of protagonist.
“What does some 54-year-old dude think he knows about a teenage girl?” he said. “But this book is me.”
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He recalled his high school years as a time when he felt uncomfortably “separate.” He had no real interests, he said, and not much luck with girls.
“I was always the confidant, never the boyfriend,” he said. “When I was 15, I looked very young. I would stand in front of the mirror wishing I could know what I would look like in 10 years.”
His mother nudged him to audition for the school play, and he was cast as the Artful Dodger in “Oliver.”
Photo
Andrew McCarthy on his legacy: “When I go, it will be ‘Andrew “Pretty in Pink” McCarthy dies’ — which is fine! I ran from all that for years.” Credit Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times
“I finally felt like, ‘There I am,’” he said.
He no longer minds so much that people still identify him with the work he did in the ’80s. “When I go, it will be ‘Andrew “Pretty in Pink” McCarthy Dies’ — which is fine!” he said. “I ran from all that for years.”
Readers of his best-selling travel memoir, “The Longest Way Home,” know that by his 30s he had stopped drinking and rediscovered that feeling of “there I am” by going it alone to far-flung places. He kept a notebook and spent a year trying to persuade a travel magazine editor to give him a shot. He has since published dozens of travel essays and has won awards, including the 2010 Travel Journalist of the Year from the Society of American Travel Writers.
Before dedicating himself to his young adult book, Mr. McCarthy spent seven years working on a novel “about a married guy who had a one-night fling and had a child and spent 25 years keeping it a secret.” It was terrible, he said. Then, one day, while waiting for a plane to take off, he started writing from the point of view of his favorite character, the 15-year-old daughter.
“I was just messing around,” he said. “I would do anything to avoid writing the other book.” The pages came easily, and he realized “the big novel was like a dead tree in the woods and this was a nurse tree that sucked up all the roots.”
His protagonist, Lucy Willows, lives in an unnamed New Jersey town based on Westfield, where Mr. McCarthy’s family lived until he was 15, when they moved to Bernardsville. Furious at her father after learning about her secret half brother, Lucy jumps on a train to New York City and ends up on a solo journey to Maine.
Mr. McCarthy said he had not read any of the recent, similarly realistic young adult novels by the likes of John Green and Rainbow Rowell, who have become publishing juggernauts. But he has embraced the idea of writing for a teenage audience. “I thought, if there’s truth in this, it would be a book for that extraordinary teenage moment in life, because everything is so important, it’s life and death, and you’re the only one who’s ever gone through it,” he said.
He tested a draft on a teenage neighbor, who told him Lucy’s voice sounded legitimate.
A waiter approached with a soda refill, prompting Mr. McCarthy to sweep a copy of “Just Fly Away” out of view. “They’d start asking about it,” he said apologetically. “I’ve come here for years and years.” He lived nearby briefly, but these days he lives in the West Village with his wife and three children, one from his first marriage. “I’m very happy down there,” he said. “I’m basically walking the same streets I walked in college” — he spent a few years at New York University before leaving to act full time — “but it’s different every day, and now I’m doing it with kids and a dog.”
After lunch, we headed to Teavana, where he ordered a takeout darjeeling. “My wife is Irish,” he said. “I now drink tea all day.” While we sat on a bench in Central Park, at times saying nothing, I recalled his description of a teenage character in “Just Fly Away”: “a loner who likes to mingle.” It’s the vibe Mr. McCarthy gives off.
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In addition to writing and directing for television, Mr. McCarthy has also become a somewhat reluctant stage dad. His daughter, Willow, played Matilda in the Broadway production of “Matilda the Musical,” which closed on Jan. 1.
“We went to see ‘Matilda,’ and she was like, I want to be in ‘Matilda,’” Mr. McCarthy said. “At that point she had been the frog in the school play; she was not an actor. I was like, O.K., sweetheart. So the babysitter was looking online for all things ‘Matilda,’ and there was an open call and Willow was like, ‘Can I go?’”
Five auditions later, she won the part that she played for eight months.
“She was wondrous and wonderful, and she loved it,” Mr. McCarthy said. “I saw ‘Matilda’ 50 times. Luckily, it’s a great show. She gave the last performance of ‘Matilda.’ I found it very stressful. It was all the anxiety of performing but none of the release. It’s like watching your heart outside your body.”
In the meantime, his oldest son, Sam, has acted in a few TV shows. “It’s everything I said would never happen to my children, and now here I am,” Mr. McCarthy said.
Recently Sam was cast in the indie movie “All These Small Moments.” His mother will be played by Molly Ringwald, Mr. McCarthy’s co-star in “Pretty in Pink.”
“After the first day of rehearsal, Molly emailed me and said, ‘Your son just walked away from me and it was like watching you walk away from me 30 years ago,’” he said. “It was very sweet.”
As Mr. McCarthy posed for a photograph under a bridge, a woman of a certain vintage called out, “I just have to say — a lifetime! You look great.”
He stared serenely into the distance.
McCarthy, Andrew: JUST FLY AWAY
(Jan. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
McCarthy, Andrew JUST FLY AWAY Algonquin (Children's Fiction) $17.95 3, 28 ISBN: 978-1-61620-629-1
Fifteen-year-old Lucy's world is rocked when her father confesses to her and her sister that they have a half brother, the result of a brief affair. Though their mother has been aware of the existence of Thomas, who's 8 and lives in their same New Jersey town, for many years and has made her peace with her husband's infidelity, Lucy reels when she learns about him. Her realistically described reaction of fury and indignation builds until she finally embarks on an impulsive road trip without telling her parents, ending up at her larger-than-life grandfather's house in Maine. This family drama is appealingly narrated in Lucy's wry, confessional voice, and a romance she stumbles into with her friend's stoner brother is sweetly fumbling and awkward. All the major characters seem to be white; musings about the ethnicities of various people Lucy encounters while on her clandestine trip, including a passage in which she wonders whether her own implicit bias might be at play in an interaction she has with a black man, underscore her new determination to seek out answers to questions that have gone unasked in her sheltered upbringing. A poignant, character-driven coming-of-age novel that, despite a too-tidy ending, will appeal broadly to teen readers. (Fiction. 14-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"McCarthy, Andrew: JUST FLY AWAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477242397&it=r&asid=f7088a84a27344f7825f83dc09521d0f. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477242397
The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down
David Pitt
109.2 (Sept. 15, 2012): p19.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association
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The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down. By Andrew McCarthy. Sept. 2012. 288p. Free Press, $26 (9781451667486). 920.073.
Who knew that McCarthy, a familiar face on the big screen (St. Elmo's Fire, Pretty in Pink) and the small (Law & Order, Monk), is also a noted travel writer! An editor at large for National Geographic Traveler and winner of several awards (including Travel Journalist of the Year), he contributes travel articles to numerous publications, and his work has appeared in the anthology The Best American Travel Writing. This is not some memoir written by an actor who fancies himself a world traveler. McCarthy really is a world traveler--and a damned fine writer, too. The book features eight destinations--New York, Patagonia, the Amazon, the Osa, Vienna, Baltimore, Kilimanjaro, and Dublin--and, along the way, McCarthy explores himself, too, introducing us to a man whose love for life is matched only by his love for the woman he would eventually marry (and whose growing importance to McCarthy is a thread that runs throughout the book). To readers who think, "Andrew McCarthy? Really?" the answer is a resounding and emphatic yes. Really.--David Pitt
Pitt, David
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Pitt, David. "The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down." Booklist, 15 Sept. 2012, p. 19+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA304306955&it=r&asid=facceb01146651ac344520c4ca5f4c25. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A304306955
McCarthy, Andrew. The Longest Way Home
Olga B. Wise
137.15 (Sept. 15, 2012): p82.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
McCarthy, Andrew. The Longest Way Home. Free Pr: S. & S. Sept. 2012. c.288p. ISBN 9781451667486. $26. TRAV
Though most recognizable as a member of the group of actors known in the 1980s as the Brat Pack, actor and travel journalist McCarthy (editor-at-large, National Geographic Traveler) shows off his writing chops in this memoir of his gradual resolution of the major conflicts in his life: to wander or to settle, to commit or to be free, to be lonely or to be sociable. As he struggles to commit to his fiancee of four years, he travels alone to exotic and remote locales (Mt. Kilimanjaro, Patagonia, lesser-known parts of Costa Rica and the Amazon) and, with his wife-to-be, to cities that epitomize civilization (New York, Vienna, and Dublin). His work as a travel writer gives him the opportunity to simultaneously wander the globe and return to his resolve to marry the woman he loves. VERDICT Combining the best aspects of Paul Theroux's misanthropy in books like Old Patagonian Express and Elizabeth Gilbert's emotions in Eat, Pray, Love, this book is hard to put down. Bound to be popular, this compelling and honest chronicle will not disappoint readers.--Olga B. Wise, Austin, TX
Wise, Olga B.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Wise, Olga B. "McCarthy, Andrew. The Longest Way Home." Library Journal, 15 Sept. 2012, p. 82. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA303072383&it=r&asid=ab5721020cfab681fe651e5582ef7961. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A303072383
McCarthy, Andrew: THE LONGEST WAY HOME
(Aug. 1, 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
McCarthy, Andrew THE LONGEST WAY HOME Free Press (Adult Nonfiction) $26.00 9, 18 ISBN: 978-1-4516-6748-6
Former 1980s heartthrob actor McCarthy embraces world travel to make sense of life after movie stardom. The author's debut is a linked series of introspective essays inspired by his extended trips to Patagonia, Spain, the Amazon, Costa Rica, Baltimore, Vienna, Kilimanjaro and Dublin. McCarthy, who writes for National Geographic Traveler, among other publications, is a fair writer with adequate descriptive powers at his disposal. However, much of the prose lacks wit and originality, and though he has traveled to some extraordinary places, what's lacking here are extraordinary experiences. McCarthy often writes about the therapeutic qualities associated with traveling solo and the psychological advantages of anonymity while visiting a strange, remote place. Whether he's walking alone in Spain, taking a group river cruise down the Amazon or slurping coffee in Vienna with his family, McCarthy's writing slips deep into the intensely personal territory of memory. But with so much inner searching, even the most exotic surroundings fade into an amorphous blur to accommodate the author's personal life. In fact, there's rarely a point where readers will feel that the author has connected to his surroundings in a significant way. Although driven by Paul Theroux's ideas about wisdom being best acquired by traveling alone, McCarthy's ruminations on the meaning of solitary experience in relation to his surroundings never quite penetrate the ordinary. A clunky mix of memoir and travelogue that only occasionally does justice to either form.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"McCarthy, Andrew: THE LONGEST WAY HOME." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2012. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA298255938&it=r&asid=e7cfbea7333ecb3bbb4f5bcc1375212a. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A298255938
The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down
259.26 (June 25, 2012): p165.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down
Andrew McCarthy. Free Press, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4516-6748-6
In this carefully modulated record of self-discovery, actor turned travel writer McCarthy finds in far-flung, solitary sojourns from Patagonia to Kilimanjaro a way finally to commit to marrying his longtime Irish girlfriend. Having stumbled into fame as a 19-year-old NYU student playing the "vulnerable and sensitive" male lead roles in films such as Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo's Fire, McCarthy falls into drinking as a way of wrestling with his emotional ambivalence and self-reservations. Travel allows him the freedom of anonymity, forcing him "to rely on instinct and intuition" rather than vanity, and now sober in middle age, he finds new motivation in pursuing stories for National Geographic Travel. Tidily divided into trips he pursued around the world, and framed around amorphous plans for his marriage with D in Dublin after a four-year-engagement and raising their five-year-old daughter, this rather bland memoir tries to confront the author's relentless need to shy and duck. Impressionistic moments such as venturing out onto the Perito Moreno Glacier in Patagonia, riding down the Amazon, mingling among other "escapees" in the gold-mining Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, and riding the clamor of a family outing in Vienna help release, if reluctantly bit by bit, his solitariness. Remote and diffident, McCarthy confronts very real male fears of being stifled and restrained. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down." Publishers Weekly, 25 June 2012, p. 165. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA294898204&it=r&asid=d6b90f98ab98c022daedada32edb5f0f. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A294898204
April 2, 2017Posted in 2017 release, family, grief, identity, netgalley, slow paced books
just fly away
Just Fly Away by Andrew McCarthy
Published by: Algonquin Young Readers
ISBN: 9781616206291
Released: March 28 2017 (US)
Read: March 31 2017
AMcCarthySmAndrew McCarthy was always my favourite brat packer, so I couldn’t resist requesting his YA novel from Netgalley. It took me too long to get to it, so I apologise that this review isn’t out before the book, which was released on March 31, just a few days ago.
I have been interested in comments at GR that basically say ‘why is this middle aged man just now starting to write from a young girl’s point of view?’ I found an interview with McCarthy on the Publishers Weekly site, and think he answers some of these questions quite satisfactorily.
The story itself is not new, but the 15 year old protagonist Lucy is fresh and flawed. She is quite immature, and doesn’t handle the abrupt change in her family life very well. She seems to immediately ditch her one friend and take up with another which leads to her meeting Simon, a goofy, wise boy, who swiftly becomes an anchor to the angry lost Lucy.
McCarthy’s style is factual and descriptive. Lucy’s narration tells us she is angry with her father and her rebellious, often selfish actions reflect this. It takes a lot to warm to her, and I found I was halfway through the book before I liked her. But I did like Simon straight away, and thought McCarthy created other interesting and authentic secondary characters, who add depth to the novel, including Lucy’s grandfather and her younger sister who is hiding a secret of her own.
Lucy’s literal and figurative journeys show how unpredictable and fragile life can be. She spends a lot of time in her own head, sorting through her emotions, and she often falls short of our expectations. I wanted her to be less judgmental and more forgiving, but ultimately she proves to be a worthy and admirable hero. She’s actually quite strong and when she finally listens to the people around her, Lucy is also compassionate and pro-active. There are a couple of scenes with Thomas that are quite affecting.
Thanks to publishers and Netgalley for approving my copy to read.
Recommended to readers who like their contemporary stories full of ups and downs, characters who don’t behave how they should, and a quirky and sweet romance. Family is the main ingredient here, and Lucy’s shows the importance of communication and the dangers of keeping secrets. There is some sexual content and some reference to drug use, but it’s not gratuitous or condoned.
Released in the US last week, March 28.
Where Is He Now?
‘The Longest Way Home,’ by Andrew McCarthy
By CHERYL STRAYEDSEPT. 21, 2012
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Early on in “The Longest Way Home,” Andrew McCarthy recounts a vivid childhood memory of venturing alone into the yard one winter night. Intent on making a snow angel, he instead finds himself on his back mesmerized by the stars. It isn’t their beauty that transports him; it’s the unspeakable vastness of their glorious existence. In this moment, McCarthy is no longer a boy “prone to worry and fret,” but rather a wise young soul who knows to his very bones what it is to be alive, his entire being flooded with the exquisite perception that we are at once profoundly connected to the wide and cluttered world and utterly, inexorably alone in it. If I had to cut out the heart of this book, that’s where I’d put the knife, on that boy in the snow on that dark night long ago. It’s an intimate realization that glimmers with universality and sets us up for the question McCarthy grapples with mightily in the course of this engaging debut: How do we manage to nurture our deepest bonds at the same time that we honor our most necessary solitude?
This isn’t a philosophical question for McCarthy. He truly doesn’t know — at least not during the period he writes about here, when he’s well into his 40s, married and divorced and engaged again, the father of two children, one by his ex-wife and another by his fiancée, whom he calls D. As McCarthy lays out in perceptive and occasionally self-lacerating terms, despite his long attachments to the women and children in his life, he’s kept a good deal of himself apart. He’s maintained what he calls a “habitual position of singularity” — an emotionally withholding stance he acknowledges contributed greatly to the demise of his first marriage and also causes him to hesitate on the brink of marrying again. He doesn’t know why. He’s not happy about it. He loves D and his children like crazy. He wants to give them his “complete self, without ambivalence, fear and doubt,” and yet he hesitates. So he does what anyone who seeks a more intimate connection with his soon-to-be spouse would do and books a solo trip to Patagonia, or as D puts it, to “the end of the earth.”
Ostensibly, he’s going for work — McCarthy is a well-regarded travel journalist and an editor at large for National Geographic Traveler — but both he and the saintly and incredibly cool D know that’s not the real reason he’s going. He’s going so he can find a way to marry her. His need to go is laid bare when he lines up not only the trip to Patagonia in the wake of their engagement, but an essentially back-to-back, multicontinent itinerary of more than half a dozen solo excursions in the months immediately preceding their wedding. “I guess I’ll see you at the altar,” D quips after learning of her fiancé’s travel plans. Though McCarthy never doubts he’ll be there on the designated day — and neither do we, since the book’s prologue is set during the couple’s honeymoon — he has grave concerns about which version of himself he’ll bring to his wedding and beyond. When his closest male friend tells him the best thing he can do is “show up,” he’s saddened to recognize how seldom he’s done that in any way but the literal.
“The Longest Way Home” is about how McCarthy learned to truly show up. While D ponders the complexities of Evite wedding invitations and takes care of their preschool-age daughter back in New York (McCarthy’s ex does the same with their 9-year-old son), the groom-to-be heads out of cellphone range to Patagonia and Tanzania, the Peruvian Amazon and the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, among other places. That we happily go with him without concluding he’s a self-absorbed jackass is a testament to his fine writing and sensitive mind. This isn’t a brash, boorish, “don’t go loving me babe because the road’s my middle name” memoir of masculine bravado. It’s a good book about a good man who’s trying good and hard to figure himself out.
Photo
Andrew McCarthy Credit Matt Carr/Getty Images
All the better for us that he needed to do it on top of Kilimanjaro.
It’s a convention of the travel memoir that the author does two things at once. He or she takes a physical journey while either intentionally or unintentionally going on an emotional or spiritual or psychological one as well. In the best of these narratives, the two journeys feel like one organic trip. The reader gets to see the world in a way that only the author can show it and vicariously inhabit a self that only one person can be. In “The Longest Way Home,” McCarthy achieves this with charm and credibility. Each of the eight chapters is titled after a place he visits, and though they’re not arranged in strict chronology, the effect is such that one feels pulled along by an inevitable current moving in only one direction, the book gaining momentum and meaning page by page.
While wandering the jungles and rivers and village markets and mountains and cities, which he renders in vibrant and elegant prose, McCarthy delves into the things that have both made him the man he is and kept him from becoming the man he wants to be. His distant and once angry father. His old insecurities and doubts. His unabashed love for his children. His lifelong sense of isolation and separateness — an internal reality that may seem at odds to some given his early success as an actor (in the book he calls his designation as a member of the “Brat Pack” in the ’80s “one of the stranger ironies” of his life). The way solo travel makes him feel “at home in” himself like nothing else.
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McCarthy’s at his best when he’s describing his feeling of being at home in foreign worlds. His prose shines with intelligence and intimacy when he’s elucidating the challenges of hiking in the dense jungle of a Costa Rican national park or the pleasures of wandering in a Peruvian market: “The small stalls, one after the next, are lined with different herbs in bags or bottles. There are wooden bowls filled with roots and twigs. There’s abuta bark, for menstrual cramps; the vine of una del gato, for cancer; . . . the aphrodisiac maca root, to be boiled and made into tea. ‘Muy efectivo,’ the creased woman on a stool beside the display assures me.” In these solitary scenes, he lets the reader walk so closely beside him we feel as if we’re walking through that market and jungle too.
But in other, more private moments, he doesn’t allow us all the way in. Specifically, when it comes to sex he opts for shadowy rather than frank. In some of the book’s most intriguing passages — those in which he feels lust for various women along the way — McCarthy is vague about his past experiences when a forthright account would have been more enlightening in this book that is, after all, about committing to a life of monogamy. In one scene, as he stands with a sexy yogini on a mountainside platform at a remote rain forest lodge, he notes his “failure to react” to the situation “this time,” and wonders if it means he’s “past that temptation” — but we wonder how such temptations played out before and, more important, what bearing they have on McCarthy’s fears about and eventual journey toward matrimony.
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And this soulful and searching book is ultimately that: a long, strange trip in the direction of full-throttle love. On the last of McCarthy’s pre-wedding travels, as he watches the Tanzanian countryside roll by from the back of a tourist van, he imagines his beloved D thousands of miles away and feels more connected to her than ever. He’s once more the boy on his back in the cold yard gazing in wonder at the stars, amazed at how something so far away can contain within its distance a great, unbreakable unity. The final chapter in “The Longest Way Home” is set in D’s native Ireland, where, dear reader, without hesitation, she married him.
THE LONGEST WAY HOME
One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down
By Andrew McCarthy
Illustrated. 273 pp. Free Press. $26.
Cheryl Strayed is the author of the memoir “Wild,” the advice essay collection “Tiny Beautiful Things” and the novel “Torch.”