Next stop, Sundance Film Festival

McCarthy spent much of last February and March at Kaldi Coffee & Tea in Atwater Village. He arrived each day in the early morning, ordered coffee with cream, stuck a dollar bill in the tip jar, spread out his work on a metal table and began plowing ahead, often not going home until night. It took him six weeks to finish the screenplay for “The Pact.”
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McCarthy directed and edited “The Pact” last summer and fall. The 89-minute feature will premiere at Sundance. When McCarthy was 8, he sat next to his big sister at a theater in their New Hampshire hometown, watching “Jaws.” It filled him with terror and fear -- and gut-busting laughter, too. It jolted him with a force he’d never imagined. “It was a roller-coaster ride,” he said. “I left ‘Jaws’ completely energized. And completely obsessed. That was the start.”
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McCarthy watches the feature-length version of “The Pact,” starring Caity Lotz, one last time at Secret Headquarters, a post-production company, before shipping it to Park City for the premiere. McCarthy’s short version of the film played at Sundance last year. He had hoped that it would launch -- finally, after so many failed attempts -- his dream of making it in Hollywood. But he came home with only one offer of a meeting, from Jamie Carmichael, president of Content Media’s film division. Carmichael loved the eventual feature-length screenplay, and his company arranged financing.
See full story  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

In the summer of 2000, McCarthy moved to Los Angeles. He was 29, with no job, no permanent place to live. He slept on his sister’s couch for a while; she had moved here to work as a business executive. But he wanted none of that life. He found a $500-a-month apartment on Sunset Boulevard and struggled to pay his bills. There were years without health insurance, months without work. In 2001 he was hired as an office assistant at a company making a video called “Flesh + Steel: The Making of RoboCop.” He got fired after six weeks. His escape, as always, was the movies. When he wasn’t watching them (sometimes 10 a week), he was talking about making them. He now lives in Silver Lake.
See full story  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

McCarthy helps his daughter Agatha, 2, brush her teeth before taking her to a weekly gymnastics class. McCarthy married a college friend, Alexandra Lisee, in 2007. She has been willing to support his dream to make a film, agreeing with this his plea to put the latest effort on a credit card. The result was “The Pact,” a haunting short that follows a woman struggling to deal with a traumatic past after her mother’s death -- and the mystery behind a locked basement door.
See full story  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)