May 15, 2023 • 8 mins
Actor Andrew McCarthy talks new book, 'Brat Pack' documentary and more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I had on with Mario Lopez.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's every Mario Lopez Jodan now on Zoom. Actor, director, author,
Andrew McCarthy.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the show Man. How you been good?
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Good, good to be with you.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Very nice to see you. I like the brick wall
behind you. I'm Ilay was fascinated when people are resooming
from that. Are you We're up against the wall here literally,
are you at home?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Is that an office?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah? I'm at home.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Very cool. The brick wall chilling. I like it.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Congrats on Newbork work now to New York.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It's a New York thing, exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It's a good I was just gonna say, I love
the look. Congratulations on the new book Walking with Sam.
You walk five hundred miles across Spain with your son.
That sounds awesome. How old is your son and what
inspired this journey?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, he was nineteen when we did it. And what
inspired it was?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
You know, twenty five years ago I did the same journey,
walked along the Old Camino to Santiago, which is an
ancient pilgrimage root in the north of Spain, and it
was a real life changer for me and I wanted
as my son was getting out ready to go out
into the world. I wanted to to have a way
to some you know, to connect and resort of rewrite
the rules of our relationship in a real way. And
(01:06):
doing this really helped us to do that, you know,
helped us to sort of see each other as differently
than we had up to that point.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Absolutely, I'm fascinated by this. Make a great movie. Did
you have to convince your son to join? Was he reluctant?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I was surprised how quickly he said yes.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
You know, he heard me talk about the Camuino for
a lot of his life because it was such a
big experience for me when I did it the first time.
You know, I think I suffered from a bit of
what we now call imposter syndrome when I was young
and successful in the movies and all that, and walking
the Camino helped me to sort of take ownership of
my own life in a really strong and real way,
and it changed me, changed my place in the world,
and so I was I think my son was intrigued
(01:46):
by that, and so it was open to the idea
that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Gosh, I'm so fascinated by this.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Were there rules like you can't be on your phone,
no listening to music.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
No, we didn't have it.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
I mean, I think some people who do walk to
Camino have these kind of rules, but we did not.
And I have to say, but the technology part of
it sort of it's, you know, we are always all defaulting.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
All the time to on our phone.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Second and so, but as you walk and walk and walk,
you know, which is the natural rhythm with which we
were born to sort of move, which we've gotten so
far away from, right.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
But the further into the journey we got, the less
the phone became an issue. So by the end of it'd
be like, oh, wait, I haven't looked at my phone today.
I should check and see, you know.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
So they just sort of receded out of the picture
in a real way without having to be sort of
bam famished.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Oh that's awesome, because yeah, thinking about it and what
was to do with my boys or my daughter should
be here either hearing podcasts or on a textat of
friends the whole time, they defeat the whole purpose.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
How long did it take you.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
About a month? About thirty one thirty two days.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So what were you averaging a day?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Like twelve fifteen miles a day.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
And I mean we were in August too, so August
to do with this, Vain is pretty hot hot, so
you know, yeah, but yeah, about twelve fifteen miles a day.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Wow, did you have a favorite area in the journey
that you travel? Was there a particular that was just
the most beautiful or a specialty something interesting.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
The commune is interesting because it goes through tiny villages.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
You know, there's one day you walk out of the
village of twelve people and then walk yourself into a
city of two hundred and fifty thousand, you know, so
it's interesting to sort of walk from nothing into society
and then even more interesting really the next day to
walk from all those people back out into the country
where there's nothing. You know, there's that We walk over
the Pyrenees Mountains, which are beautiful, brutal. There's a thing
(03:36):
called the High Messta, which is like these plains, which
is just fields and fields and miles and miles and
miles of wheat, and so it drives you kind of crazy.
Don Quixote was, you know, he was out there in
the mersea when there's no wonder he was tilting and windmills.
I mean, it kind of makes it insane, but it's
all sorts of different topography, and to really walk it
at that kind of pace and sort of slowly incrementally
(04:00):
move over a landscape is kind of amazing. And the
further west you get, it's very lush and green. And
so you walk yourself out of this desolate drive parks
landscape into this, you know, dense fobia.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Just fascinating it is.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
And obviously you're never bored too, you know, you think
you'd be bored. Oh my god, I just walk all
day time. You're never bored. There are a lot of
things going on before him is never one of them.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, yeah, there's new it's new geography every time, and
just to kind of soak it all in, it's I
think it's awesome. What about physically, how much of a
toll did it take on?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
You beat the crap out of me. But my son
was nineteen, and so he was He had a tough.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Time at the beginning for a week or so, but
then he walked himself into shape and I'd say, by
the end he said, I'm ready to walk across two
more countries.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Here.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Look at that.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
That's you know, when we were on the second day
of the trip, he said to me, Dad, what's the point.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Of this f and walk?
Speaker 4 (04:49):
And you know, And on the last day of the trip,
he said to me, Dad, that's the only ten out
of ten thing I've ever done in my life.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I love this. I'm kind of inspired. I got to
figure out. Uh, I got to figure out.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It requires nothing.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
All you needed some willingness and the pair of good,
you know, walking shoes.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Full disclosure, though, Andrew, I would be more concerned with
getting lost. How did you manage.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
The beauty of that? Here's the beauty of that.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
It's impossible to is it painted on the ground, on trees,
on rocks everywhere across the entire country.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
They're these little yellow arrows.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
So you literally just follow little yellow arrows across the
entire country. And there are also other pilgrims people walking the.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Root too, So you know, dude, is it this way?
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that way?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Oh so they know, Okay, Well then I'm good. That
would be my only concern.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh that is so cool. And you kicked off a
book tour, right, so it's gonna be hitting the road.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Yeah, I'm on the road, going out into America to
talk talk walking with Sam.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, that's awesome, man, that's awesome. Congratulations on that this year.
I can't believe fortieth anniversary of your movie debut.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Class.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So what do you remember about being on set for
the first time.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I remember not knowing anything. It was the first thing
I'd ever done.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
And I remember on the first day ever in front
of a movie camera, I was in a bra and
panties in front of five hundred extras and it was
sort of very baptism by fire into the movies.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
But it's it's shocking to me that all that was
so long ago, you know, I look back on and.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
It seems like, you know, I see clips of it
and I'm like, who is that young man?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
I remember him exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Think another life I read working on a documentary about
the Brat Pack.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
Is that?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Is that still happening or what's the status?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yeah? Yeah, I whan.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
A couple of years ago, I wrote a book, a
memoir about those days, called Brat And so when I
finished it, I kind of thought, you know, Okay, I
now know what happened to me in that time, what
happened to everybody else, you know? And I know it's
a seismic event in all our lives, and I'd never
talked to anybody about it. So I hunted and went
hunting everybody down and went brought a camera and chatted
with people about it and it was great. I hadn't
(06:54):
seen you know, Rob Loermeilio or me more Ali Shedi
in thirty odd years, so to go get.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Everybody's take on and everything was amazing.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
I realized we all realized we had so much more
affection for each other and for our youth than we
did at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
You guys are great too, because I happened to have
spoken to all the people you just mentioned, and I
love that era and I can't wait to check it out.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Is there a release date or do you have a
platform yet where.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I'm just finishing.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
I'm just finishing. I'm editing it now and then not
hopefully by the end of the year.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Awesome, awesome man, Well, good luck. I can't wait to
check it out. How many kids do you have in total?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Three feels like thirty.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I two have three. What are their ages?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Twenty one, sixteen, and nine?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And are you doing the walk with all of them?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Because I got to imagine the other ones are like, hey.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Well my sixteen year old daughter said, can we just
go to Paris? My nine year old picked up the
book as he was sitting around, and he picked it
up and he read about a page and he said, this.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Would have been a lot better if it was about me,
and it covers their attitude.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
That's awesome, that's awesome. We again, congratulations on the book.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I look forward to the documentary and you can pick
up Walking with Sam wherever you get books. Andrew, thanks
for checking in. Hopefully we'll get to the talk when
the doc comes out.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, love to Thanks all right, take care You
Speaker 1 (08:14):
On with Mario Lopez
I had on with Mario Lopez.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's every Mario Lopez Jodan now on Zoom. Actor, director, author,
Andrew McCarthy.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to the show Man. How you been good?
Speaker 3 (00:10):
Good, good to be with you.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Very nice to see you. I like the brick wall
behind you. I'm Ilay was fascinated when people are resooming
from that. Are you We're up against the wall here literally,
are you at home?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Is that an office?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yeah? I'm at home.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Very cool. The brick wall chilling. I like it.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Congrats on Newbork work now to New York.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It's a New York thing, exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It's a good I was just gonna say, I love
the look. Congratulations on the new book Walking with Sam.
You walk five hundred miles across Spain with your son.
That sounds awesome. How old is your son and what
inspired this journey?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, he was nineteen when we did it. And what
inspired it was?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
You know, twenty five years ago I did the same journey,
walked along the Old Camino to Santiago, which is an
ancient pilgrimage root in the north of Spain, and it
was a real life changer for me and I wanted
as my son was getting out ready to go out
into the world. I wanted to to have a way
to some you know, to connect and resort of rewrite
the rules of our relationship in a real way. And
(01:06):
doing this really helped us to do that, you know,
helped us to sort of see each other as differently
than we had up to that point.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Absolutely, I'm fascinated by this. Make a great movie. Did
you have to convince your son to join? Was he reluctant?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
I was surprised how quickly he said yes.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
You know, he heard me talk about the Camuino for
a lot of his life because it was such a
big experience for me when I did it the first time.
You know, I think I suffered from a bit of
what we now call imposter syndrome when I was young
and successful in the movies and all that, and walking
the Camino helped me to sort of take ownership of
my own life in a really strong and real way,
and it changed me, changed my place in the world,
and so I was I think my son was intrigued
(01:46):
by that, and so it was open to the idea
that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Gosh, I'm so fascinated by this.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Were there rules like you can't be on your phone,
no listening to music.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
No, we didn't have it.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
I mean, I think some people who do walk to
Camino have these kind of rules, but we did not.
And I have to say, but the technology part of
it sort of it's, you know, we are always all defaulting.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
All the time to on our phone.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Second and so, but as you walk and walk and walk,
you know, which is the natural rhythm with which we
were born to sort of move, which we've gotten so
far away from, right.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
But the further into the journey we got, the less
the phone became an issue. So by the end of it'd
be like, oh, wait, I haven't looked at my phone today.
I should check and see, you know.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
So they just sort of receded out of the picture
in a real way without having to be sort of
bam famished.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Oh that's awesome, because yeah, thinking about it and what
was to do with my boys or my daughter should
be here either hearing podcasts or on a textat of
friends the whole time, they defeat the whole purpose.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
How long did it take you.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
About a month? About thirty one thirty two days.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So what were you averaging a day?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Like twelve fifteen miles a day.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
And I mean we were in August too, so August
to do with this, Vain is pretty hot hot, so
you know, yeah, but yeah, about twelve fifteen miles a day.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Wow, did you have a favorite area in the journey
that you travel? Was there a particular that was just
the most beautiful or a specialty something interesting.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
The commune is interesting because it goes through tiny villages.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
You know, there's one day you walk out of the
village of twelve people and then walk yourself into a
city of two hundred and fifty thousand, you know, so
it's interesting to sort of walk from nothing into society
and then even more interesting really the next day to
walk from all those people back out into the country
where there's nothing. You know, there's that We walk over
the Pyrenees Mountains, which are beautiful, brutal. There's a thing
(03:36):
called the High Messta, which is like these plains, which
is just fields and fields and miles and miles and
miles of wheat, and so it drives you kind of crazy.
Don Quixote was, you know, he was out there in
the mersea when there's no wonder he was tilting and windmills.
I mean, it kind of makes it insane, but it's
all sorts of different topography, and to really walk it
at that kind of pace and sort of slowly incrementally
(04:00):
move over a landscape is kind of amazing. And the
further west you get, it's very lush and green. And
so you walk yourself out of this desolate drive parks
landscape into this, you know, dense fobia.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Just fascinating it is.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
And obviously you're never bored too, you know, you think
you'd be bored. Oh my god, I just walk all
day time. You're never bored. There are a lot of
things going on before him is never one of them.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, yeah, there's new it's new geography every time, and
just to kind of soak it all in, it's I
think it's awesome. What about physically, how much of a
toll did it take on?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
You beat the crap out of me. But my son
was nineteen, and so he was He had a tough.
Speaker 4 (04:34):
Time at the beginning for a week or so, but
then he walked himself into shape and I'd say, by
the end he said, I'm ready to walk across two
more countries.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Here.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Look at that.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
That's you know, when we were on the second day
of the trip, he said to me, Dad, what's the point.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Of this f and walk?
Speaker 4 (04:49):
And you know, And on the last day of the trip,
he said to me, Dad, that's the only ten out
of ten thing I've ever done in my life.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I love this. I'm kind of inspired. I got to
figure out. Uh, I got to figure out.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
It requires nothing.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
All you needed some willingness and the pair of good,
you know, walking shoes.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Full disclosure, though, Andrew, I would be more concerned with
getting lost. How did you manage.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
The beauty of that? Here's the beauty of that.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
It's impossible to is it painted on the ground, on trees,
on rocks everywhere across the entire country.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
They're these little yellow arrows.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
So you literally just follow little yellow arrows across the
entire country. And there are also other pilgrims people walking the.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Root too, So you know, dude, is it this way?
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, that way?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Oh so they know, Okay, Well then I'm good. That
would be my only concern.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh that is so cool. And you kicked off a
book tour, right, so it's gonna be hitting the road.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Yeah, I'm on the road, going out into America to
talk talk walking with Sam.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, that's awesome, man, that's awesome. Congratulations on that this year.
I can't believe fortieth anniversary of your movie debut.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Class.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So what do you remember about being on set for
the first time.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I remember not knowing anything. It was the first thing
I'd ever done.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
And I remember on the first day ever in front
of a movie camera, I was in a bra and
panties in front of five hundred extras and it was
sort of very baptism by fire into the movies.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
But it's it's shocking to me that all that was
so long ago, you know, I look back on and.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
It seems like, you know, I see clips of it
and I'm like, who is that young man?
Speaker 3 (06:25):
I remember him exactly.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Think another life I read working on a documentary about
the Brat Pack.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
Is that?
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Is that still happening or what's the status?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
Yeah? Yeah, I whan.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
A couple of years ago, I wrote a book, a
memoir about those days, called Brat And so when I
finished it, I kind of thought, you know, Okay, I
now know what happened to me in that time, what
happened to everybody else, you know? And I know it's
a seismic event in all our lives, and I'd never
talked to anybody about it. So I hunted and went
hunting everybody down and went brought a camera and chatted
with people about it and it was great. I hadn't
(06:54):
seen you know, Rob Loermeilio or me more Ali Shedi
in thirty odd years, so to go get.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Everybody's take on and everything was amazing.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
I realized we all realized we had so much more
affection for each other and for our youth than we
did at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
You guys are great too, because I happened to have
spoken to all the people you just mentioned, and I
love that era and I can't wait to check it out.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Is there a release date or do you have a
platform yet where.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
I'm just finishing.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
I'm just finishing. I'm editing it now and then not
hopefully by the end of the year.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Awesome, awesome man, Well, good luck. I can't wait to
check it out. How many kids do you have in total?
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Three feels like thirty.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I two have three. What are their ages?
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Twenty one, sixteen, and nine?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
And are you doing the walk with all of them?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Because I got to imagine the other ones are like, hey.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Well my sixteen year old daughter said, can we just
go to Paris? My nine year old picked up the
book as he was sitting around, and he picked it
up and he read about a page and he said, this.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Would have been a lot better if it was about me,
and it covers their attitude.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
That's awesome, that's awesome. We again, congratulations on the book.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I look forward to the documentary and you can pick
up Walking with Sam wherever you get books. Andrew, thanks
for checking in. Hopefully we'll get to the talk when
the doc comes out.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, love to Thanks all right, take care You
Speaker 1 (08:14):
On with Mario Lopez
Host
Mario Lopez
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