at a cultural phenomenon he once preferred to avoid. The documentary did not pretend that everyone associated with the label remembered it the same way. That disagreement was part of the point. The film examined memory, journalism, celebrity, friendship, resentment, and the strange experience of seeing one’s youth transformed into cultural history. McCarthy was no longer merely the young actor being described by somebody else’s article. He was the filmmaker deciding how to investigate that article’s impact almost 40 years later.
There is a certain symmetry in that development. At
