Interviews // Kate McCarthy (The Hicks Happy Hour)

I Heart Noise: Congratulations on having the Hicks Happy Hour screen at Tribeca Film Festival! That’s awesome!

Kate McCarthy: Thank you so much! We’re super excited!

I Heart Noise: What was your role in the production?

Kate McCarthy: I am the co-writer and director.

I Heart Noise: Will you describe the film in a nutshell for me?

Kate McCarthy: It is a colorful musical dramedy set on one night of a 1970s variety TV show hosted by the Hicks Family Band. But tonight, dad did not show up to the taping. So, it’s about a family falling apart and playing the part of a happy family and trying to keep the show going.

I Heart Noise: I love the concept of this, how its set in that world on that particular day. Was this your idea?

Kate McCarthy: Yeah, it was, but it started out way different. It was not an idea that just came to me perfectly. Originally, I had pitched this as our AFI thesis film. And originally, I pitched the idea of a mom trying to make divorce fun for her kids. That was the original concept, way different. But it always was about a family in transition and splitting apart, and it was always about a mother character who sort of is having a hard time with reality and wants to slap a smiley face on stuff. And then I also, separately, have this lifelong love of 1970s variety TV shows, and I realized that that was actually, like, a perfect fit to further illuminate the themes. And I was like, that’s so me. I wanted to elevate it out of the living room and make it a family, but explored through a family band, but the keyboard is empty. And so that’s how it came to be.

I Heart Noise: I think your love for variety shows really shown through in this. What shows do you like to watch?

Kate McCarthy: Oh, my gosh, the big one that it really starts with is Donnie and Marie, which there’s a small Donny and Marie tribute in the film. But I think those clips really grabbed me with their showmanship and level of surreality almost because of how faux glamorous and over the top everything is, and the aggressive sort of characters they’re playing, and the fact that they’re like brother and sister and doing all these love songs is hilarious and part of the film. But there’s them, and then also the Partridge Family. As if the Partridge Family got to have their own Variety show, which I know the Brady Bunch later got to do their own variety TV show special. And it’s just such a strange era of entertainment where they were giving everyone these crazy gonzo variety TV shows.

I Heart Noise: I loved the Partridge Family! My Dad wanted my siblings and I to be like that, he gave us each an instrument and wanted us to be the Partridge Family pretty much.

Kate McCarthy: Oh, my gosh, and what happened?

I Heart Noise: It was a huge failure. And honestly the project ended when my parents got divorced. So, I really felt your story here.

Kate McCarthy: You’re the target audience, probably for the best that fell apart. I think if there’s one takeaway from my film, not one takeaway, but a thread, we all know, things didn’t work out so great for Michael Jackson. Safe to say, if a parent is enforcing the matter and being like, you will be a band, that’s probably not so good. A couple kids want to be a sibling band. That sounds fine, but it gets tricky when it’s the family livelihood.

I Heart Noise: What was the writing process like for this?

Kate McCarthy: My co-writer, Michael, and I just kind of talked and talked and talked endlessly, because this story kind of became sort of Frankensteined together. As I mentioned to you, it didn’t come together as one perfect idea out of the gate. There’s a lot of struggle, frankly, in developing the script. There is something a little bit contrived. I think it works with the tone, but it is sort of a crazy amount of stuff to happen in one night of a TV show. I think it’s okay with the tone at the end of the day, but Michael and I were just talking endlessly about how we get all of these little plot machinations in there. Michael was really trying to bring it back to, like, “Who is Jill? Who is this woman? What’s her damage? What does she want?” We mostly just talked and talked and talked. And then I sort of was the keeper of the script, and I went off and would write the drafts. He was sort of emotional support and story by support. There were just so, so many drafts. And with AFI (The American Film Institute), you have to have all these official script meetings. And then eventually you lock the script at about eight weeks out. But of course, it doesn’t get locked. You’re still changing stuff up until the day, which was hard in our case because we had the music as well, and the music needed to be finished by the time that we shot. But also, the script kept changing, so it was sort of a game of chicken of, like, okay, we need to lock this enough so that the songs can stop morphing and stop changing to reflect wherever the script is at.

I Heart Noise: Are these original songs for the movie?

Kate McCarthy: Oh, yeah, big time. Our composer, Simon Haynes, based in New York. Check him out. He’s basically just an insane savant. And we’ve been friends for years and share a musical affinity. We’re both huge Burt Bacharach fans, so we’ve got a Burt Bacharach number in there. We both love Glen Campbell. And he took the musical prompt and ran with it. He was like,” got it!” And knew exactly how to do an homage. Not parody, but homage to each form. He nailed The Partridge Family type song. He studied the Cowsills. The Cowsills were a big inspiration for me as well. That’s the family that inspired the Partridge Family, the real-life family. The script did keep changing. The Glen Campbell song at one point needed to feel sort of like Rhinestone Cowboy. No, that would be a later Glen Campbell. It was like, do we want it to feel like Wichita Lineman? Then one day I came upon The Everyday Housewife, which is a Glen Campbell song. And I was like, okay, now can we make it feel more like that, and can the lyrics reflect this tone more? We just worked remotely and co-wrote some of the lyrics and he truly just did everything himself. There’s no music producer. He used his musicians that he collaborates with and handled delivering all of these amazing songs and we had them all ready to go when we shot.

I Heart Noise: I was really impressed with the music. I feel like sometimes, especially in period pieces, the music can end up feeling kind of contrived and pull you out of the story a little bit. But it felt so natural.

Kate McCarthy: Glad to hear that. Thank you. I remember when I first showed the demos to our film’s editor, he’s a tough man to please by the way. And he freaked out and he was like, “I am now more excited than ever before!” I didn’t know they were going to be this good. I think my team, they were trusting me and Simon, but I think they were like, okay, “We don’t have the biggest budget in the world and what can this guy really do? And everyone’s just blown out of the water by Simon’s music. Our editor Jen, he said, and I agree, “We never got tired of the songs.” Hearing them over and over, they are just endlessly ear worms and so well produced and so that we can’t take credit for that. That’s just Simon really giving it his all and really doing it thriftily on a budget too.

I Heart Noise:  Did you end up getting a grade on the project?

Kate McCarthy: No, actually, that’s what’s so funny. There’s no grades. It’s just your graduation requirement. You just have to turn it in, and you have to have a certain number of photos and a poster and all these other things, and then you’re free to graduate.

I Heart Noise: I think having it screen at Tribeca Film Festival is validation!

Kate McCarthy: There is something interesting about being in a graduate school cohort because you’re sort of comparing the accolades of this film versus that. I do feel like, school, you’ve got to be proud of us! We bring glory to your name, for sure!

I Heart Noise: Was it difficult to cast the children for the film?

Kate McCarthy: Oh, my gosh! It was completely its own journey. It happened in a really crunched time period where we just looked at so many children. There was a full week where it was just like, kids, kids, Zoom with kids, call back with kids. And we had an amazing casting director, Lisa Zambetti, who is such a pro and knew when it came to casting these kids that we needed kids, I was very afraid of Disney Channel-type kids. But Lisa was like, you need kids who can do that because that’s what it’s going to take to do the stage part. You need kids who can act like “I’m performing for tv”, but then off stage can be normal kids. So that was always the challenge. And then on top of that, you need kids that bear a passing resemblance, or at least you need to feel like they all were raised the same way in the same household. And this was not a feature film with a lot of rehearsal time. I knew that I couldn’t have one crazy Disney Channelfied kid and one kid who’s basically a non-actor who is super mumblecore.

 I needed them to have a similar level of naturalism and showmanship. And we just got really lucky with the kids we did kind of just pull the trigger on. They couldn’t have worked out better. There’s always a question of, “Oh God, will this work? Will they get along? Will they seem like a family?” But these three kids are just such stars. I think they’re the standout part of the film. And we just got really lucky that out of all the kids, it eventually becomes a sea of children’s faces. And you’re just trying to just pick the most talented kids. But also, it’s so much more complicated than that. And also, the parents. The parents have to be, “Are they chill and normal?” And we seriously couldn’t have found a better set of families.

I Heart Noise: Nice. That’s awesome. I didn’t even think about the parents, but that would definitely be a consideration completely.

Kate McCarthy: If they’re insane stage parents, that’s a problem for sure.

I Heart Noise: Do the kids play their instruments? It looked like the girl was drumming.

Kate McCarthy: Oh, I will tell Ella that it was that convincing! No, actually, none of those kids played those instruments. But we got really lucky, Ella’s father plays drums. That’s a complete lucky coincidence that we happened to cast her as the girl drummer because her dad was able to give her some basics. And then we also got some of our AFI friends to do a little bit of music coaching with these kids.  Manny plays the drums. He gave her some pointers. They just needed to know this one song. We got a lot of support for them, actually. And I think they all really pull it off. Even if they don’t technically know everything so much, they are such pros that they’re selling it on the bass and the guitar. Tristan and Charlie, those kid actors are just such little stars that they know how to sell it with their bodies and their faces. Its so funny to watch.

I Heart Noise: I thought they did a great job because sometimes that can really pull you out of something. I’m thinking of Saved by the Bell when they did their music episode and they’re pretending to play instruments and it’s the worst thing ever.

Kate McCarthy: That’s funny. I have to check that out.

I Heart Noise: Oh, for sure!

Kate McCarthy: There’s this one Partridge Family clip that I’ve been obsessed with for years. I always knew the little boy in our family band would be the one on the bass because there’s something so funny about a tiny little boy with a huge guitar. And in the Partridge Family, those kids are faking it pretty badly. At the end of the day, I was like, even if our kids don’t really look like they’re that real on the instruments, that might be almost its own sub layer, like, it’s never addressed in the film. But maybe these kids don’t even really know how to play their instruments. They’re lip syncing just like how the Partridge Family, they didn’t really know what they were doing either.

I Heart Noise: I thought they were believable. I thought they did a good job.

Kate McCarthy: That is a relief.

I Heart Noise: How did you get into directing?

Kate McCarthy: I’m a year out since I graduated 2024 with my MFA in Directing. I’ve always been doing something creative. Originally, I was a total theater kid in high school, and I got a straight up theater degree for college. But I’ve always been a huge film nerd, but also culture vulture. It’s always been really important to me to understand the history of movies that came before me and how life was lived before me. So that’s always been present in my life. But then there was this desire to perform. I used to do theater, then I was a huge comedy nerd. For a while, that was where I thought I was headed. I Alll throughout college, I was writing and performing comedy, and then during the Pandemic, I couldn’t do any of that. I had my first idea for a short, and I was like, “Wait a minute, I could totally be doing movies. Why haven’t I thought of that?” I felt really strongly about this short film, and so I decided to just work on it for a year. And I had a great time making it. My first short film! And I was really like, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is a way better fit for my skill set”. That’s the film that I applied to AFI with. My journey in film has not been that long, but I think that being a director satisfies a creativity in me, obviously, but it’s also a leadership role. There’s a certain amount of administrative work. There’s an amount of stick-to-itiveness and making your own work. I think it just really suits all of my sensibilities. I’m loving it so far, but we’ll see!

I Heart Noise: You are doing a great job. I can’t wait to see what you end up doing with it!

Kate McCarthy: Thank you, that means a lot. Tribeca Film Festival is some really great validation for all of our work.

I Heart Noise: Are any of the actors going to be able to make it for the premiere?

Kate McCarthy: I think almost the whole Hicks family; they’re going to be there.

I Heart Noise: That’s awesome!

Kate McCarthy: That’s really fun!

I Heart Noise: Nice. Oh, are you going to be showing any other festivals?

Kate McCarthy: Yeah, literally days after Tribeca, we’re going to have our international premiere because Tribeca is our world premiere, and then we’re going right to our international premiere in London at Rain Dance Film Fest.

I Heart Noise: Oh, that’s so cool.

Kate McCarthy: Then beyond that–we’ll see. Tribeca has been the big thing for so long, and we’ve had to turn down some other festivals to maintain that world premiere status. We’ll see what happens after that.

I Heart Noise: I love the world that you created, the banners on the walls– it’s just so immersive. It’s wonderful, the music is wonderful. I love the whole thing. Congratulations!

Kate McCarthy: Thank you. That means so much! I just want the tone to really grab people, so that means a lot.