Special Report: Permanent Damage (2026)

Oh jee is, folks, it's showtime. People say, good might to see this movie? When they go out to a theater. They want clod sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters. In the Projection Booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.

Got it off? Hey, folks, Welcome to a special episode of The Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I am talking with Seth A. Smith all about his new film Permanent Damage.

It just had its premiere over at the Fantasia Film Festival. Film stars Stephen Dorf and Kayla McDonald had a lot of fun talking with Seth, and I hope you have a great time in listening to this. Thank you so much. Seth. Tell me a little bit more about you and how you decided to become a filmmaker.

How I got started was I'm in a band called dog Day. I think we formed, I don't know, fifteen years or more ago, and we hired this guy to do our music video. And I put a lot of work into it because I'm a visual artist, So I did all the backdrops and I did a bunch of masks. I got all these extras together and it was a real big production at this big church that we used to play in and were a cool song too, And yeah, we shot it and the whole thing was really inspiring. I hired this guy to film it.

I knew nothing about that kind of stuff. And the next day I, when I went to the tried to get in touch with the guy who filmed it. He was just it was kind of I was just being ghosted. And day after day I was like, I want to see this footage, buddy, it was nowhere to be found. He vacated his apartment and then later I found out he moved to Australia and we had paid him like three thousand bucks.

So that for me at that time was like a lot of money, and I was broken hearted also very angry about it. But then I kind of just gave me that spark that I should just tried just filming my own music videos myself and not relying on people. And so that's what kicked me off onto that path. And then eventually I just wanted to experiment a little more, work in some narrative, try longer durations. And yeah, my first film was in twenty eleven.

We filmed it on weekends. We shot it with friends and I'd write the script every week and we kind of go off and on sequentially like that. And that was called Low Life. And yeah, we made it for five thousand bucks and we premiered it in Fantasia I think two twelve. So it feels great to be back at Fantasia with my new film.

It's like a nice little kind of circle back. It was the warmth that the festival really kind of encouraged me to, Okay, maybe I can do this. You know. Tell me a little bit about your co writer Darcy Speidel. I've known him for a long time.

He's one of the most interesting people I know. He's one of the first times I met him. He was it was there a cafe I was. I saw him playing this show. He was a performer and he was playing this really expensive old stratocaster with a butcher knife and he was just with very fierce intensity and he was cutting his hands and screaming into the MinC He's wearing a sche mask and done and dam shit cook and I just was really struck by.

Also, it was to an audience nobody, the only person, and I was just I thought, this guy's very interesting, and yeah, we became good friends and really great writer as well, and he's still a great performance artist. He has very interesting he's doing a lot of interesting stuff online and on his tours. And yeah, we just we were you know, we both have we take turns writing and coming up with the ideas. And I also I think he's a great actor as well. He has a real presence and physicality that's just interesting, like a Charlie Chaplin type of physicality.

And he starred in all of my films and he plays a character named Chair in this one. I want to know more about your twenty twenty film ten Can, because it feels like it was a pandemic movie, maybe made before the pandemic. Yeah, it was. I'm a guy who kind of gets bored easy, and I think that's why I've kind of gravitated towards films because there's so many different stages and I get to do something different every time. So yeah, we like doing different genres as well within the genre spectrum, and so yeah, that was a sci fi film, and I just I don't know, I want to shy my hand at doing something very otherworldly and surreal, completely detached from reality.

But yeah, it was pre pandemic and it would That experience was a little weird because I spent a long time filming this fake pandemic and it was in his dark warehouse, was a little bit. It was kind of humid and dark, and so it wasn't the most lively production. And then spent a long time editing it and then feeling like I was editing. When you're in the dark room, that almost feels like you're under lockdown, and then the pandemic happens, So it was like a little extended for me. I wasn't working with Canadian legend Michael Ironside.

Oh he is cool. He was an interesting character. He has some similarities to Stephen Dort, who I worked with in this film, Aren't Side. He's one of those guys I really loved his films growing up, Scanners and Total Recall. He was just that bad guy and I remember calling him and trying to convince him to be in this weird film.

He's a Canadian too. I think he's from Montreal and he lives in the States now. But yeah, I remember trying to convince him to be in this movie, and he was. He liked the script. I still kind of agree.

So he wasn't sure about me, but he was like, I'll do it if I can be burned a lot. And I was like wow, without spoiling it too much, he was just the only character I wanted in the movie to not die, just to want to remain in this in captivity. And I was like, sorry, Michael can't die. And he's like, well, what about burned in an acid? And he's I kind of realized, yeah, I started.

Really, he does kind of collect all these deaths. He dies really brutally and most of his films, so he likes collecting me. But yeah, it's almost like a debate between us, did he die or didn't do best? No, he's got a good presence, and yeah, he's a sweetheart. I want to know how the idea for permanent damage came to you.

I wasn't a point where I was trying to think of the new projects, because usually I have a lot lined up. At that time, I didn't something else, I couldn't make one, and I was like, okay, I got to think of a new project quickly, and I was talking to Darcy and I was building this art studio, a little art ceo, and yeah, the Fohmers were I had these spray fomers and they're spray filming the foundation And for anyone who doesn't know what spray film is, it's like this this liquid insulation and it really has this expansive quality. They put an kind of like spray it like glue, and then it foams up and really expands like a mushroom cloud. You can really get carried away if you're not careful. But yeah, they were just kind of spraying the foundation, and for some whatever reason, the thought it would be interesting in a movie to bury a body.

That's what came on on. And then Darcy was also renovating his house. He has a really ancient old house, and yeah, we both started thinking about home renovation. And there's also a lot of housing stuff going on in our town, a lot of we're in this really growth phase right now where they're kind of trying to build a lot of housing in Nova Scotia, that's where I'm from, and yeah, to make more housing, and so you see a lot of old places come down and a lot of new places pop up. That kind of setting kind of definitely leaked in, and so we started thinking about doing something not about the housing crisis or but as a backdrop for a particular type of film of broken characters.

Actually there's the townhouse complex where we shot at was. We were able to shoot in this place because it was actually totally vacated and slated for demolition. They're they're to build more housing, which is good. But yeah, it was really interesting shooting in this It was almost like this wild West ghost town where we could be loud, we could run around. It was very eerie in a time where housing is scarce, vacancies are scarce, and to have this place that was we only had a week to shoot those scenes.

So yeah, it was like it was an interesting time. Then, I want to know a little bit more about your cast, because you already mentioned Stephen Dorf. It's always great to see him show up and stuff. But I'm so curious about Claire Coulter, Klea McDonald just really great performances in this. Oh thank you.

Yeah, I'm just very happy with the performance as we got. For Sure, Kaylin, Claire, Olivia Gay meet Sure in school to a giant trees. He's like a really cool legendary bodybuilder in Halifax. He like I think he won sixth place in the Olymen Dunes and yeah, chair my co writer, it was the cast was. I was just very proud of him.

We did a huge, massive call out for auditions just because I just I knew we had a bunch of quirky characters and I just wanted to make sure we could find the strongest people we could. I wasn't picturing this as a There's a lot of roles, so I wasn't going to get big names for all these but yeah, okay, I'll just pick a couple. But Kalem was. He's actually from where I lived with Halifax, Nova, Scotia, and he was in my friend Jason Eisner film Kids Versus Aliens, where he plays a lot of a different character and I liked him, but you know, because he played such a different character, I wasn't sure about this film, but he kind of tried up in the casting and yeah, he him and Olivia both they really just got the characters as they were written in the script, but they also offered this really interesting a lot of new elements that really brought life to the characters.

Olivia brought a lot of motion, movement and energy, which is really cool. And yeah, Klein, yeah he really developed some this kind of insecure, passive kind of demeanor that really worked on screen. And yeah, the relationship too. You always get like these good leads, but for a romantic film like this, you have to have like, if there's no chemistry, it's just it's not going to work at all. We yeah, we had a few came reads with different people, but they together, they really were.

And as we filmed more and they were hanging out there, you know they're best friends in shooting. Yeah, the I thought they had a tripic chemistry on production and on screen. And the whole thing was usually I make my films, I'm making very dark, kind of depressing films general, and sometimes it can weigh a lot. On this one we did. Darcy and Harward decided, we let's write something a little more light, harder, but doesn't take itself too seriously.

Maybe it won't be such a bad ending. Then when we're going through like this for four years of developing and producing it, we won't feel so bad. But part of that I realized is when you actually shoot the thing with a bunch of people, when you're hearing these jokes and the lines and people are laughing, it does I can see why I'm making shooting comedies. It becomes real party. Yeah, our film was at least every day felt like a party that we were just okay, we got to get a little work done to you here, guys.

You know, it was a bunch of laughs, and yeah, we're all still very good friends. A lot of them came up to the premiere here in Fantasias. So yeah, it was to reconnect. I believe you. But I have a hard time picturing all the laughs whenever I see that performance from Stephen Dorf because he's so freaking intense all the time.

Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that maybe that wasn't the case when you called cut. Well, you know what, that's a good point. But the thing is, just the way productions go, you have to you know, you can't shoot in order all the time. So we actually just we shot most of the film without him, and then I think he just came for a week or so just at the end, so that, yeah, it was we kind of had a I'm not saying it wasn't a party when you was there, but the tone changes a little because then that's where all the conflict starts happening and Yeah, it's a different tone, and so you get a little of that when you watch the film. It is a bit of a it's like a carnival ride.

It's like it's fun and bubbly and there's a lot of partying, but then there's some dark moments as well. It kind of goes up and down, which is what I was trying to do, And yeah, I think I'll put it off. Doorf did a terrific job bringing that aggressive, just that menacing character that was needed. We had looked at a couple other people, but I feel like if we had from with anyone else, it wouldn't quite be the same, because, Yeah, he really knew what to do with that guy. He has it.

I think he was interested in he told me was in the script when I first approached him, because he hadn't quite played a character like that or it's kind of but he also is familiar. He's been in John Waters films and in s FW. He's familiar with kind of like this elevated kind of way of acting, almost like it's a comic book where things are just a little over the top, and I see the films of fairy Tale, so it's not a realistic movie. So but he was able to bring a little dread in some of this tension, but also kind of played up a bit. And I think even you know, if you look hard on it, he has some heart in the film as well.

Yeah, and you mentioned comic book him as Deacon Frost from the original Blade. That's one of my favorite performances. Okay, that's right, Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, he's cool that. Yeah, he's just done so much him and a true detective as well as a great performance.

I feel like he's one of these guys. He grew up in the time where when they were making films they chose him. Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio and those other two kind of went off in the Hollywood direction. He kind of stayed in the shadows a little bit. But I think he's a bit of an untoucheddown because I think he's a real talented guy.

And speaking of talented, I mentioned Canadian superstar Michael Ironside before, but I am so curious what was it like to work with Stephen mccattie. He was cool, I really yeah. I get along with him, Caddy. He's an interesting cat for sure, And see before I casted him, I did you know I was doing holding wide auditions for that and I was getting it's a funny role. It's just this kind of eccentric pet store owner.

And I just saw so many different takes on it, which was really cool, a lot of texts and accents for some reason. But he yeah, he's been in a lot of films. I really like, in bigger films, and I didn't really get a chance to auditioning and now just you know, I asked him, would you'd be interested, and he was interested in the script and it wasn't until he came to set that we could actually see how which direction we're going to go with this, and I mentioned, yeah, I kind of I saw a bit of you know, David Lynch in Andy Warhol and the character. But what ended up I think what ended up happening is he was kind of drawing more to look at William Burrows approach, and I thought it was fantastic and yeah, a yeah, it was a large ass.

He's in a tough up for a long time. It was quite a long shooting. We were lucky to have him though, because not every actor we wanted to do what he did but yeah, I really loved what he did with the character. And we also had this there's this thing for people when they see the movie, there's this truck but that it alters your voice, and yeah, I wrote this thing about it for every all the actors to see. But it kind of makes your tongue stand erect in your mouth, and that's how it distorts your voice.

And then subtitles kind of pop up if you if the viewers can't understand. But yeah, it was really important that all the actors be able to do that together the same and yeah, even though they were all kind of in at different times, Yeah, it all seemed to work out really well. I know you don't know any different than this because you've done this for so many of your movies. But what is it like scoring your own films? I love it.

Maybe there is some day where I won't score my own thumbs and like it might be a challenge for me too, like because for me it's just so integral. I think I'm planning the music as I'm writing a lot of times I'll have a metronome by me and I'll just be tapping on it, thinking of pacings of the scenes. But also with Tim Can. We did a lot of heartbeat, the synchronization and light lighting, light timing, there's a lot of flashing lights on musical beats and stuff. I come from a music video background and music as well, but so I do see it all as kind of one thing, the music and the sound, even the dialogue.

Sometimes I really I do my own sound design as well. So I just I really I feel I have more control the sculpt everything and the sculpe of the kind of tone an atmosphere with it, and it is like a it's a little fun reward. Yeah, shooting shooting the in a production phase is very athletic. It's a hustle, hustle, and then editing you're it's you're sitting on a couch and it's more grueling and there's a lot of problems you have to solve. But after that's done, Yeah, just kind of do laying some music and everything's already there, all the tone and that feelings and the mood, but you can guide it a little more.

I wouldn't some people use music to manipulate the audience that try to actually do the opposite. If it's going one way, I might go the other. But I do find it fun. It's a release for me. Knowing problem is it's sometimes it's it's the last phase of filming, so it gets a little rushed.

Sometimes you have to whip through it. But yeah, a lot of times I'll even some of the pieces I'll have written before I even shoot. And you're talking about shaping the film, and so much of that for me is editing. You've done a ton of editing of your own work. Did you edit this one as well?

Yeah? Wow, it's another thing. I'm definitely in control freak. I'd like to work with an editor because I think you can get trapped in a hall of mirrors. You know the material very well in the script if you're a writer as well, which I am, and then you shoot it all and you're also doing what you want there.

But it is there is a lot of value in the editing phase. I would think to have other eyes on it. And what I do is I edit it and then I'll will have a test screening or other people look at it, and then there's a lot you kind of get in. You get tunnel vision. Sometimes you get obsessed with certain things, you like certain things, but it's sometimes when you just work on each thing and you're not taking a break, it's hard to see what your surroundings were are.

So I'd like to work with another editor someday closely. It's just I have a very specific kind of taste and it would have to be the right person. But I do find doing all these things it's great when you get a lot more control in your vision, but also it just takes so much time. This film took a long time to come out, just because a normal film would do all these post production things simultaneously, whereas I have to kind of do one once that's done to the next, and it kind of gets prolonged that way. When was it that this person absconded with your money and headed out to Australia?

What was that? It was in the two thousand? It was part of all that was It was in another band actually that was the Burdocks. Now then i'm thinking about it, yeah, and she shouldn't say the name, but yeah, it still haunts me to this day. I'm just amazed just how you're like, Okay, out of necessity, I need to learn how to use this camera, and here you are sitting on like what feature films and no no stopping you, right, So it's just wild.

Yeah, that's right. I just and I say it's the people, because I really didn't have much at all. And I think people just when I see new filmmakers, I just that are getting word. They're worried because they can't get funding, or they can't get the right gear, or they need some fancy thing. It's just make do something.

Make something with what you have, see what you can get away with. You can shoot films on phones now, I'd be doing that if phones were like that. When I was at that stage, I for low life. I didn't have any gear. I basically ran into a guy at a party and he said I could borrow his camera to film it for a couple of weeks.

I ended up holding on sec camp for a year, and that guy was Mike Klattenberg's, the creator of Trailer Park Boys and If It and Yeah, I bored a mic to record the audio and little steps and then set the movie. After that, I still couldn't get funding, and I just I got a little royalty check from my music and dog Day and I just shot up the film in an airbnb just in a few weeks. And then once that film started, I was showing around. Then I was able to get some finishing funds and so try to build up them up. All movies don't have to be made in a cookie cutter format with a thirty person crew and all the bells and whistles.

There's I think there's a lot of different formulas and the ways of making them. For sure, I love that. It comes from like that punk rocket they aesthetic, I would. Think, absolutely, Yeah, I believe in the in punk rock yeah attitude for sure. PMN and get it done.

Sid, where's the best place for people to keep up with you and with your films. We have a couple of websites and things, so I just probably just the socialism, just sefe smith all on word into a film. We're gonna have a premiere at a hometown show at the Atlantic International Film Festival, which is always a good time, and then we're hoping for a nice one in the US, and then yeah, releasing the movie. I don't know, me being the winter i'd expect, so just keep a look good. I guess I'm most prevalent on Instagram, but yeah, we'll see what happens.

Well, Seth, thank you so much for your time. Especially taking the time out during the festival. I really appreciate this. Oh yeah, thank you, thanks for checking the film out. And I'll love talking to you about this and let's do it again sometime next one.

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