5 Questions with Kyle Richard McCarthy
7 years in the making, the documentary “We Like It Here,” by Kyle Richard McCarthy, is an intimate story of a family, and a seaside town recovering from Hurricane Sandy. We asked McCarthy how the project began, about the creative challenges he faced, and a recent film he’s loved…
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
So I have always loved film and grew up making skate videos and shorts with friends but I didn't really get serious about film until Hurricane Sandy actually. At the time I was in grad school, about to become a high school history teacher, and the storm kind of changed my whole perspective on what I was doing with my life. The storm made me realize just how fragile and short life is (as corny as that might sound) and I realized that film was what I was most passionate about but also most scared to pursue. Since then I have been making short films, music videos, and working as a freelance videographer/video editor. It's definitely not as stable as being a teacher (haha) but I love it.
2) What was the original inspiration to create this film, and what were some of the first steps to get it going?
Back in the summer of 2011 when I first attempted to make a documentary, about a hypothetical hurricane, I had a feeling that Long Beach was way overdue for a major hurricane. I was hoping that a major storm was still 50 years away but I thought it would be an interesting topic to explore. Then Sandy happened and I got lucky enough to film the whole experience. So in the winter of 2013 I felt like between the footage I had from the summer of 2011 and the Sandy footage I had the building blocks of something special and that is what led me to start a Kickstarter to finish making it.
3) I appreciate how upfront you were about your doubts and difficulties with the project. I can certainly relate. I’d be curious to hear more about the roadblocks you faced creatively. What do you feel like wasn’t working about the film in earlier forms?
The biggest roadblock for me came from making a Kickstarter for it. Over the years any project I have done where money is involved has felt way more challenging then the projects I have made for fun. Even though I only raised a micro-budget I felt like whatever I produced was not going to be good enough. I also felt that with the earlier drafts of the film I was trying to make too broad of a documentary about Sandy. Over time though I found that the more I leaned into my personal narrative and allowed myself to be vulnerable and honest the more the film started to make sense to me and I was able to finish it.
4) You pull off a tricky balancing act with the different threads, with the families, Long Beach, Sandy and the environment, there’s a lot going on. Can you talk about how you went about creating room for all these threads to co-exist and play off each other. And were their other elements at a certain point that had to be edited out due to form or length considerations?
Thank you, I really appreciate that. It was definitely a challenge to figure out how to make all the different threads connect. I felt like when I first started the project it all felt like a big puzzle and I had no idea where all the pieces went. It took me about eight different drafts of the film to finally start to realize where each piece should go, but it just took me watching it over and over to figure it out.
There was a part of the film that I ultimately ended up cutting out for time but I had a hard time doing so because it was such a wild story: A couple of months into the rebuilding process somebody broke into our house in the middle of the night stole a big stereo and threw it through our neighbors window. We were not home at the time but our neighbors were and they called the cops but the people ran away before they came. It was such a strange situation and I filmed what the house looked like the day after in happened and had a clip of my parents talking about the break in, but ultimately I felt like it was too tangential so I took it out.
5) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
I recently saw Ben Berman's documentary "The Amazing Jonathan Documentary" and thought it was incredible and honestly one of the funniest documentaries I have ever seen. For those who might not be familiar with the documentary the film starts off as a fly on the wall style doc about the comedian/magician The Amazing Jonathan as he prepares to do a comeback tour after being told he has a fatal heart disease. About six months into making the documentary thought the director Ben Berman finds out that The Amazing Jonathan has also given permission to a second and more successful documentary crew to make a film about him as well. From there Ben Berman finds himself in this weird competition to finish and make a better documentary than the other crew. It's super funny and there so many twists and turns it takes. It's on Hulu right now.
Bonus Question) What’s next for you?
I am actually about to start filming this weekend a new short film I am super excited about. Should be out sometime in the fall!
Contact Info:
Website: http://kylerjmccarthy.com
Instagram: @Sleepingloops
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sleepingloops
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kyle.speedwalker