Education Quote by Andrew McCarthy

McCarthy’s line has the offhand candor of someone letting you see the machinery behind the dream. Film culture loves to pretend festivals are pure temples of taste, but he starts with the blunt reality: there are “five billion of them.” It’s a comedian’s exaggeration used like a flashlight, cutting through the romance to reveal a marketplace so crowded you need strategy just to be seen.

The intent is practical - he’s describing how he learned the terrain - yet the subtext is about identity and fit. Calling it “a really good East Coast festival” isn’t just geography; it’s code for a certain vibe: smaller, scrappier, maybe more writer-driven than celebrity-driven, less red carpet than industry handshake. When he says, “I thought this little movie was an East Coast film,” he’s quietly positioning the project as modest, personal, perhaps a bit bruised by reality - the kind of story that wouldn’t play as well in the glossier, status-forward ecosystems that dominate the popular imagination of festivals.

Coming from an actor associated with a very specific Hollywood era, there’s also a faint self-awareness here: McCarthy isn’t selling myth, he’s admitting apprenticeship. The repetition of “just” and the casual “’cause” signal humility, even a bit of defensiveness - as if to preempt the gatekeepers by saying: I’m not pretending this is bigger than it is; I’m trying to place it where it belongs. In a culture that prizes scale, he’s arguing for the power of the right room over the biggest room.