I first became aware of Damon Packard three
years ago when a great friend introduced me
to Reflections Of Evil. Obtrusive over
dubs toward the beginning of 'Reflections'
were hilarious. References to
1970's commercials and ABC Movies of the
Week reminded me of watching TV as a child. I almost felt a friendship to the
director. For the next couple years, I
would occasionally wonder if Damon had more
work to be released. After much
anticipations, in May, 2007,
Damon released his latest work "Space Disco
1." With an extra $10 in my Paypal
account, I sent payment to him and anxiously
awaited my DVD.
Being critical, I must say I like his
earlier work better. However, Space
Disco 1 shows the professional growth Damon
has experienced. His technical work is
better. His splicing and overdubs are
less obtrusive. And, with even more
dark-haired, brown-eyed, cute, perky
actresses in the mix, his casting continues
to improve. I look forward to
future projects.
I was able to touch base with Damon to judge
his willingness for an interview.
Would he be an introverted, reticent,
L.A. film maker dismissive of anyone lacking
a complete understanding of his work?
I worried about that a bit. However,
when we finally made a connection by phone,
I discovered a humble, good-natured man who
genuinely loves playing with cameras and
creating films of his own distinct
interpretation.
The following interview took place on July
18, 2007.
Keith Harper: I would
like to ask you a few questions as a history
lesson for all Damon Packard fans.
When did you get your first film camera?
I imagine it was an 8mm.
Damon Packard: Yes,
it was a super 8. That was back in
'82. I won a video game contest.
Keith: At an arcade?
DP: Yes, an arcade.
I won an arcade machine in a Defender
contest and I put it in a location to try
and make money off of it. I wasn't
making that much money on it and I wanted to
buy a new camera. So, I sold it and
bought a Canon 1014 XL-S or something like
that.
Keith: I wish I had all the
money back I spent on video games
in the 80's.
DP: Oh God, yeah.
Keith: What format are you
shooting these days? Are you 100%
Digital?
DP: Yeah, out of
necessity. I'm shooting on miniDV.
Panasonic DVX100 Camera. 24P Cameras.
I had a lot of film equipment I sold after
Reflections. I had a ton of 16mm and
Super 8 film equipment. Since then I've been
doing these DV experimental pieces like the
StarWars Mockumentary.
Keith: Have you used
any of the Canon XL series?
DP: Yeah, I just
don't like those cameras. The XL-1's.
They are a bit bulky. I suppose as far
as prosumer cameras they are just as good as
the other ones. They have a nice lens.
I prefer film if it was affordable. If
I could shoot on film, I would. Digital is
getting better and better. If I had the
budget, I might shoot on....AreoFlex makes a
nice 24P digital camera. It really
looks like film.
Keith: It's well
known you were greatly inspired as a youth
by Steven Spielberg? Were you
influenced by any horror directors of
the late 60's early 70's. One director I
would like to ask about is Andy Milligan.
He did a movie called "The Ghastly Ones."
DP: The Ghastly Ones?
I've never seen that. I've seen the
Man With Two Heads. Hmmm..Filthy
Slime, that sounds familiar.
Keith: I know you
love ABC Movie's of the week. My
favorite Movie of the Week was Don't Be
Afraid of the Dark. Have you seen that
movie?
DP: Yeah, I have
that. That was a popular one.
Keith: I remember the
instamatic camera that Karen Black (Edit:
Kim Darby played the lead roll, not Karen
Black) would use
with the flashbulbs to scare off the trolls
at the foot of the stairs. I think
they lived in an abandoned fire place or
boiler. My Mom had a camera just like
that when I was a kid and I would pretend
trolls were after me and I would waste all
her flash bulbs trying to scare them off.
DP: (laughs)
Keith: Who are your heroes of
today's cinema.
DP: (thinks hard)
Lars von Trier, although the last few things
he did, I'm not crazy about. I loved
Dancer in the Dark. I'm sure there are
other people. I just can't think of
anyone off hand.
Alexander Sokurov. He did Russian Ark.
Pretty amazing.
Keith: Is it right you spent many of your formative years
in Chatsworth California? Chatsworth
is well known for its roll in the porn
industry. Have you ever been tempted
to direct in that genre?
DP: It wasn't really
like that back then. It's only become
that way in the last 15 years. That is
a whole different Universe. The porn genre
is purely business. I've worked
on porn productions for the money.
It's pure business. There were some
companies around in the 70's. But it
wasn't the mecca that it's become today.
Keith: I guess the local
government understands the tax base.
So they are lenient about the work that goes
on there.
DP: Well, Chatsworth
is very conservative. There are lots
of retirees from aerospace companies who
live there.
Keith: Reflections of Evil.
Was that movie inspired at all by Michael
Douglas' portrayal of William Foster in
Falling Down?
DP: uh....no, not at
all.
Keith: Well, I think William
in Falling Down and Bob in Reflections both
suffer from a similar form of Societal
Paranoia.
DP: I wasn't
thinking that at all. I'm not sure if it
was directly inspired by any movie in
particular. I didn't want to play the
part but I did have a Chris Farley type
character in mind. Chris Farley was
the inspiration for the character.
There were various homages throughout the
movie. The golden guru, I got that
from this film called Psychout of the late
60's, a Richard Rush film. Bruce
Dern's character turning around in a robe.
Keith: This might be
a personal question. Have you,
directly or indirectly, suffered from
substance abuse?
DP: (laughs)
No.
Keith: I'm attempting to nail
down what drove his (Bob's) character in
your mind.
Dp: Substance abuse?
Keith: Yes. He was
definitely sugar addicted.
DP: Oh, yeah.
Keith: Was that a euphemism?
DP: No, just a
character. Nothing real-life going on
there.
Keith: I just finished Space
Disco One. I enjoyed the Big Brother,
English Socialism...
DP: It was made
for no money over a short period of time.
Keith: The English Socialism
portrayed in 1984; do you think that is more
prevalent today than in the 1940's when it
was written?
DP: Well, it depends
what part of the world. In Nazi
Germany, no it's not more prevalent today
than then.
Keith: In my town, they now
have traffic light cameras at every
intersection.
DP: Oh, cameras are
everywhere now.
Keith: It seems like the with
the ubiquitousness of cameras on the one
side they are used to observe us but on the
other side they are welcomed by the general
population. We love sitting around
watching YouTube but we don't necessarily
want to be filmed ourselves.
DP: And it will only get
worse.
Keith: Yes. Well,
cameras are so cheap now.
DP: And, you know,
it's private companies behind it. It's
not the Government.
Keith: It is also private
individuals too. While I welcome the
ability to buy a webcam, I don't like the
idea that there are public and private
cameras spying on everything I do.
DP: I'd rather my
neighbor set up a spy cam than traffic cams
that are monitoring all our activity and
sending out tickets in the mail.
Keith: There's a
section of road in my town where they have
installed 4 speed cams. If you are
speeding through that entire section, you
will receive up to 4 tickets for $200 for a
single incident.
Keith: Getting back
to Reflections of Evil. Did you turn a
profit on that movie?
DP: I made some money
back on it but no where near the amount that
was spent on it. I didn't calculate
how much was spent on it. Somewhere
around 100 Grand. It was shot on film.
That right there, you can run up a minimum
of 60 grand when you add it all up.
Keith: Do you think you will
turn a profit on Space Disco?
DP: Well, you know I
may have already. I only spent a couple
hundred dollars on it and I've made a couple
hundred on it. I've broken even at
least. It's hard to calculate trickles
of sales coming in. In general though,
it's extremely difficult. I mean, the
amount of money you spend making a film,
there's no money in film making unless
you're a genius at marketing and you have a
good pickup deal.
Keith: Or an inroad with big
companies.
DP: The more horrible
the film you can make for a studio, the
better your chances for financial
success. The better the film, the worse
your chances.
Keith: It seems filmmakers
are searching for the lowest common
denominator. They are trying to
make huge profits the first two weekends of
the release no matter the quality of the
film.
DP: It's true
Keith: Back to R.O.E.
It might not have turned a profit itself,
but it has gained you a growing cult
following which will help you in future
endeavors. Do you welcome that
groundswell of fame?
DP: Yeah. Yeah,
it's amazing
Keith: Do you worry about the
scrutiny it will bring?
DP: I guess the only
draw back to low grade celebrity status is
that you will get the occasional nut cases
that will call you and won't stop bothering
you. But, no, not at all.
Keith: It's obvious
watching R.O.E. and SD-1, the filming
technologies and production have seemed to
improve and the editing and special effects
have also improved.
DP: That's
interesting because R.O.E was filmed in 16
and some super 8, and a bit on digital 8,
mixed format. But, that's interesting
you would say that. It's a camera
everyone's using now. DVX Panasonic.
You can pick them up for about a grand now.
The GL2's are much better also.
Keith: You were not
in front of the camera as much in SD-1 as
you were in Reflections.
DP: I wasn't in front
of it at all.
Keith: You had a couple of
cameos. I saw you in the square when
they're looking at the monitor.
DP: Oh, okay, you got
me there. What other scene did you see
me in?
Keith: You were in the
spaceship, too. When they're in the
special effects lab.
DP: No, I wasn't in
that. [thinks for a minute]
Ohhh....okay, I'm forgetting about piloting
the spaceship in the behind the scenes
section. I must have erased that from
my memory.
Keith: Do you enjoy behind
the camera work better or in front?
DP: Behind. I
hate seeing myself, as many actors do,
seeing myself on screen. Most actors
do. I like acting, it's fun.
But, you're limited as an actor. It's
embarrassing. If I transformed and
became chiseled and muscular like Vin
Diesel.
Keith: He's
celebrating his 40th birthday today.
DP: Today, really?
Keith: There were a couple of
cut-in scenes. I believe I recognized
a couple of cut-in scenes from NASA footage
of the Six Million Dollar Man.
DP: You're the first
person that mentioned that...that recognized
that. Space Disco, right.
That was from the pilot episode of the Six
Million Dollar Man. The ChemTrail Air
Traffic control sequence. They took
that footage from a test flight. Do
you know what that was?
Keith: I don't have
it in my head right now. I remember it was
an actual crash of an actual test fighter.
The pilot jettisoned and he survived but I
don't remember exactly what crash that was
from.
DP: Fit right into the
chemtrail shot.
NOTE: After the
interview, I used Wikipedia to discover that
the crash was footage from a 1967 real-life
accident of the Northrop M2-F2 lifting body
caused by pilot error. The pilot
survived mostly unhurt although he did lose
an eye in the hospital due to infection.
Keith: Something I meant to
ask earlier that the chemtrail scene
reminded me of. Your last two movies
R.O.E. and SD-1 both look at chemtrail and
conspiracy theory. Art Bell has
announced his retirement again. Are
you bummed about that?
DP: He's retired so
many times that I don't really care anymore.
Since he went to weekends, his shows seemed
to be mostly science and weather. George
Nory has taken over the regular slot of
Coast to Coast.
Keith: I enjoy Nory.
But, no one will replace the Art Bell shows
of '98 and '99.
DP: Yeah, and some of
the earlier shows too.
Keith: Back to the Six
Million Dollar Man. They are making a
remake of the Bionic Woman. I'm not
sure it will recapture the magic from the
1970's
DP: They're remaking
everything.
Keith: Are there no more
original ideas at all?
DP: No, there aren't.
It's a combination of the risk factors.
They don't want to risk anything that
doesn't have a built in audience or name
attached to it. They're just making
remakes of remakes of remakes now.
Desperately grasping to little things that
haven't been done yet. They've done
all the major comic book characters so now
they move to the minor characters
now...Green Lanterns and the minor things
sitting on the shelf in limbo they haven't
done yet.
Keith: We're all looking
forward to the Simpson's movie but it makes
me hope they will have a quality movie
instead of just a captured audience off
which they will make $100million.
DP: I don't know.
There's just nothing left. There's no
new, big named product that they can come
out with. There's nothing left.
One more Indiana Jones film. That's
about it.
Keith: Any idea on
the next shooting phase for you?
DP: My next film? I don't
know. It's kind of a limbo phase right
now. It takes money and if I had money I'd
be hard at work on something. I would
like to film something in England.
There are some things going on there.
I'm actually going to be cutting and editing
a piece next month for a curator of a
gallery. They are looking to get
funding for a future project. I'll be
actually shooting some original footage to
go with this. A New York gallery
commissioned project. A project
similar to Bugnuts. Similar to that. Taking
some bland footage and editing other footage
with it to make something interesting out of
it. Lost In The Thinking was along
those similar lines. Shoot a film in 4
days and edit it in 2 days. Multi-collage.
I'm doing work with 5 hours of raw footage
of skateboarding shows. He wants me to
add footage to it and mash it up. He
doesn't want a skate video, or a
commercial, or a trailer or anything like
that. Maybe an epic driven around the
Arthur Frank character of Zardon. It's hard
to explain. It's somewhat of an art
experiment where you can take footage and do
something different with it. Take
footage and add something different to it to
see what you can come up with.
Keith: Damon, it has been
great chatting with you. I need to wrap this
up. Thank you for your time and I look
forward to speaking with you in the future.
DP: Oh, thank you.
Please keep in touch.
Copyright 2007 Keith Harper is a genuine
fan of Damon Packard as well as of all
independent film makers. Keith uses
the idea of making his own films as an
excuse to buy more expensive cameras than he
truly needs. Contact Keith at his My
Space page: www.MySpace.com/CallMeKeith or
email:
CallMeKeith@Gmail.com
