A large man is hugging a smaller man and a woman with sky and a rainbow in the background.
'Moku Moku' is set on the island of Maui.
Brad Starks and his team were one episode away from completing filming on a new comedy show, Moku Moku, which focuses on the lives of three native Hawaiian friends, when the wildfires hit Maui on Aug. 8.
He recalls that for three days, several members of his production crew “didn’t know if their kids and loved ones were alive or dead, because there was no way to call them.”
Starks, 56, has lived on Maui — where he runs a television and movie production company — for about 10 years. “We found it impossible to continue,” says Starks. “The community that championed us and gave us such positive reviews for what we are doing with this show, for them we had to halt production and give back.”
He and the production crew turned their headquarters into a donation center and helped a friend who owns a small restaurant cook free meals for first responders and people whose homes had been destroyed. Four of the Moku Moku team members lost everything.
Starks is currently in Madison, where he lived during his grade-school and middle-school years, visiting his mother, Marci Kunene. He tries to visit several times a year “like a dutiful son,” he says, laughing, but this trip is combining his usual family visit with promoting the show and raising awareness of those on Maui affected by the wildfires.
He will be showing completed scenes and behind-the-scenes footage from Moku Moku on Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. at Capitol Lakes, 333 W. Main St., in the main ballroom, just off the lobby. He will also show footage from the wildfires, demonstrating “how windy it really was.”
Starks began his career as a fashion photographer primarily in New York, where he worked for three decades until the financial crisis of 2008. He then moved to Hawaii and for the last decade he’s been involved with film production, an endeavor in which he wears “many hats.” He is an executive producer for the show, which means overseeing relationships with vendors, seeking investors, and networking. He also works as the second assistant director, which involves everything from getting the fully made-up cast to the set to keeping random people from wandering into the shot. He’s also behind the camera doing interviews to create the “behind the scenes” videos that often run after episodes of shows like Succession.
“It really allows me to utilize a lifetime of skills,” Starks says.
Starks and longtime friend Kawika Hoke met working as production assistants for projects, including several Hallmark movies, filmed in Hawaii — but with a mainland point of view. None of these projects “accurately described what it is like to live in Hawaii as a local,” Starks says, and just reinforced Hawaiian stereotypes, from women wearing “coconut bras” to the idea that everybody lives near the beach.
A man with a film clapper in front of two actors with a microphone in the foreground.
Brad Starks, left, on the set of 'Moku Moku.'
He and Hoke, a native Hawaiian, put together a group of ideas for film projects that would be an accurate depiction of local Hawaiian life. What many people don’t understand about Hawaii, Starks says, is that there are more Hawaiians living on the U.S. mainland than there are in Hawaii. Only somewhere between 250,000-300,000 Hawaiians live in the state, in part due to rising real estate prices. “They’re priced out of paradise,” Starks says. Moku Moku tries to deal with some of the social problems in Hawaii through comedy, somewhat in the way classic sitcoms like All in the Family did.
Moku Moku is about three friends “trying to live an everyday life in up-country Maui,” Starks says. There’s Leilani, a “thoughtful and smart” woman who’s also a bit of a tomboy with somewhat of a mysterious background. Kimo, the lead male, is — like many Hawaiians, Starks notes — from a single parent home and being raised by his grandmother. He’s somewhat of a slacker, and is questioning if he is “Hawaiian enough.” His best friend is Pili, a large and jovial presence who is somewhat of “an Ed Norton to Kimo’s Ralph Kramden,” referencing the classic sitcom The Honeymooners. The fourth character is Kimo’s grandma, Oleana. Most importantly, the action is seen from the Hawaiian, and not the outsider’s, viewpoint.
Starks, who is African American, says he understands the struggles of native Hawaiians. “The BIPOC culture, people of color, we all in some form experience the same type of lives, and all deal with the same types of prejudice and hardship.”
Ultimately Starks wants to open a studio and hopes that Moku Moku can become the basis of an “economic engine” on Maui that will support both the show and feature films.
There is a possible partnership with Hawaiian airlines in the works to have the first season show on its nationwide flights. Starks is working to get Moku Moku picked up by a streaming service like Hulu, Netflix or the like. But those platforms are in limbo right now due to the writers’ and actors' union strikes, and although Moku Moku is not a union show or part of the studio system, Starks says, “there is no established new way forward, of how the streaming networks are going to be paying studios or production companies.” And until that happens, nothing is happening. How and when Moku Moku films its last episode is up in the air.
