Back on September 24, one of our contributors, Denise, attended one of Apple’s Meet The Author events at its SoHo store with Andrew McCarthy.
McCarthy was there to promote his latest travel memoir, “The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down”.
Here’s Denise’s full report and a few photos from the event:
He said this is more a memoir than a travel book. Andrew traveled to places like Mt. Kilimanjaro and the Costa Rican rainforests. He travels to go to places in him, not to go to physical place. He likes what the destination does to him. Traveling “excavates” something about you. He remembers going to the Sudan and Mozambique and loving the people. He said the less infrastructure on the outside, the better the internal infrastructure.
He said he got the idea for the book when he was in a cab heading to Patagonia and he was sad to be leaving but at the same time thrilled to be going alone. He needed to reconcile these aspects of himself.
The moderator then brought up the movies and how the teen films were taken seriously:
Andrew said John Hughes has such a passion for youth that he would stop and talk to teens about music and such.
Andrew thought Pretty in Pink was silly and he didn’t think anyone would care about that movie. He mentioned how he saw John Cryer (who he hadn’t seen in 20 yrs) at The View and they both thought “who knew?” about Pretty in Pink and it’s everlasting popularity.
He said all of his movies didn’t do well when they came out and weren’t really respected. He thought the start of home video really helped that market because teens could re-watch them and appreciate them.
Back to the traveling: He said once he feels at home at a place, then he doesn’t feel the need to go back. When he reaches a point where he asks someone for help then he starts to feel relaxed. Everyone he’s ever encountered has been nice and nobody’s ever said no.
He also told a touching story of when he was on the subway and he saw a woman across from him who kept looking at him and he normally puts up protection and just thought “oh here we go, Pretty in Pink” but when she got up to leave she said to him that her husband died 2 months ago and this is the first time she’s smiled since. He said they hugged and cried together and she missed her stop. He said sometime he forgets the gifts that come with this life since he too often will put up barriers.
