Thomas McCarthy isn’t known for making Adam Sandler fantasy movies. In fact, the Oscar-nominated co-writer of Up is best known for directing award-winning dramas like The Station Agent and The Visitor. So it stands to reason that he’d approach the by now well-established genre of Adam Sandler doing magical stuff from a completely different angle in The Cobbler, in which a mild-mannered shoe repairman named Max Simkin discovers that he can become any of his clients whenever he wears their shoes.
I got on the phone with Thomas McCarthy to find out where this unusual idea came from, and how it spiraled into a superhero story about New York City gentrification. I also tried to “get him” with what seems like a plot hole involving Max Simkin’s superpowers. But McCarthy is a consummate professional, and he already knew the answer.
The Cobbler arrives in theaters and on VOD and iTunes this Friday, March 13, 2015.
Check Out: TIFF 2014 Review: ‘The Cobbler’
CraveOnline: Having seen some of your other films, they tend to be somewhat humanist, very character-driven dramas. Here you’ve written a film about a cobbler who turns into other people when he wears their shoes. How did that come about?
Thomas McCarthy: [Laughs.] Doesn’t it seem like a natural progression to you?
Maybe not so much from the outside. I’m curious about the inside.
[Laughs.] I don’t know! I just started thinking about cobblers one day, in my office. Literally. A couple of different things. I lived about a cobbler for a little while. He was in the basement of my building. He had a subterranean lair that I always thought was kind of cool. I loved the equipment. There was something about tradesmen that I found compelling, in general, and how many of them are in the city and just how invisible they are, and how they provide these services that we all so desperately rely on. Whether they’re cleaners or dry cleaners or barbers or butchers, you name it. Locksmiths I thought were cool.
So we just started, Paul [Sado] and I, knocking around some story for about a year, just talking about what would that story be, and thinking about the idea of the cobbler who had this neon sign that actually said, “New Soles in 15 Minutes, Or While You Wait.” I thought, well, that’s cool. We just started putting this story together, and speaking of [what you were saying], trying to find the humanity in it. What would this look like through our lens? How would we tell this story in various tones and genres, and create something that in its own, simple way, felt original. That’s what we were trying to do.
It’s an odd type of story, because on one hand it’s a sweet story about a guy who gets involved in his community and stands up against gentrification. And yet he also ends up fighting crime. Did you feel the criminal element was necessary to…?
[Laughs.] I think some people consider gentrification a crime.
Fair enough.
Yeah, I think the backbone of gentrification is development, right? I think developers by and large can be pretty shady folks. I know that living in New York. I see it all the time, you hear about it all the time, you read about it all the time. So yeah, it felt like a little bit of a natural extension, but I agree it’s sort of… the story moves around a lot, right? It’s got this sweet, human quality and then it gets into like a caper, and then it gets a little superhero quality. We were well aware of that.
We were like, how can we fuse this together and what would an audience feel if they saw it together? Because normally they kind of want one thing. They don’t want the story movie around on them. But we kind of felt compelled to try that for whatever reason. Let’s see where we can push it that still feels like we’re following a story, but our rules were kind of like, let’s feel like we’re creating something just to create it. Okay, he learns he has this power, he has it, he abuses it for a while because who wouldn’t, and then gets in over his head with it because probably who wouldn’t, and then he actually uses it to help someone who needs help.
I think most good people, and Max Simkin is a good person, if you can help somebody, you do. So whether he’s solving crimes or just helping out when someone needs it, that’s what it felt like he was doing to us. That felt very human.
