Sobriety gave him an opportunity to rebuild, but creativity gave him multiple new directions in which to grow. Acting introduced him to storytelling; directing, journalism, books, travel, and documentary filmmaking allowed him to continue it. That broader body of work is now as important to understanding him as the photographs that once made him a teenage heartthrob.
For McCarthy himself, the past appears to be something worth examining but not necessarily something worth recreating. He can acknowledge what Pretty in Pink means to someone who watched it at 16 without
