We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mike McCarty a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mike , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I think speaking for both of us. Mike D McCarty and my brother James Knight. It’s something we always wanted. We started as kids with a deep love for film and moviemaking. In the case of Mike McCarty, he started learning from books and videos that he could be creative and artistic in the world of makeup FX. As for James Knight, he was used by his brother at an early age as an actor and sidekick in makeup FX. Every good effect needs an actor to sell it and the brothers sure had their share of fooling the parents or the neighbors. These are the kinds of things that would never “fly” today. People these days are quick to get upset and one brother looking like he’s killing another on the front lawn would definitely not go over well. LOL

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We have a podcast called, The Head The Tail The Whole Damn Thing, which is a quote from Jaws one of our favorite films growing up. It’s a genre movie review podcast where we pair a new film with an older one, usually 10 years or more. I think both of us (brothers) have basically practiced our entire lives for the podcast. We grew up with such a strong love for film. Probably spurred on by Myself (Mike) teaching my brother James about the classics. James got inspired early on and took to acting so much so, that he would continually get the lead in most things in school and went on to not only be in many Shakespeare plays, but also teach some as well. He traveled and toured with plays while I (Mike) worked for years in Hollywood as a makeup FX guy with some of the world’s top directors. James went on to do voice acting, ad and promo shoots, TV series parts, short films and more.

The fun thing that makes our podcast different is the massive amount of behind-the-scenes information we both have. You’ll find it challenging to find a podcast with so much insider information and two hosts that know each other so well and play off each other expertly.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Honestly, I think for both of us it’s connecting with the fans. What we are building is a really great community of like-minded fans. The people who have joined our Patreon. patreon.com/TheWholeDamnThing all get an invite to a private Discord server where James and I get a chance to interact with everyone. Sometimes we have them vote on films or fun pairings they want us to review. We also live stream movies now and again as a group in Discord and we do a mini live show along with it. There are multiple channels where everyone can iunteract with funny memes and jokes, like ruining a horror movie title with one word. Occasionally we create AI posters for these made-up movies. It’s really a fun group experience that we only see getting bigger and better.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Honestly, our goal is simple. We want to be synonymous with Movie review podcasts, we want to be talked about in the same groups as “How Did This Get Made” or “Blank Check”. We know our show is good and people who discover it stay to continue listening. We were lucky enough to be on Comedian Dana Gould’s Halloween episode last year because he liked our show. That exposure alone helped us grow our little community so obviously part of the path we need to traverse to grow our listenership wider, besides interviewing with people like yourself. Is to guest on other podcasts to get our name out there. That’s the hardest thing about having a podcast is “no one” knows it exists unless they stumble on it or hear about it. So go search it out. I guarantee if you like genre movies or especially horror. You’ll absolutely love this podcast. Search it out everywhere from Apple to Spotify and beyond. The Head The Tail The Whole Damn Thing!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thewholedamnthing13.podbean.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewholedamnthing13/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576851455221
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thewholedamnthing13
• Other: https://thewholedamnthing13.podbean.com/

Image Credits

The Head The Tail The Whole Damn Thing logo art by Madison Burger.