PLAYBOY INTERVIEW: DAMIEN HELLER
Damien Heller is another of that breed of celebrity who seems bulletproof. First rising to prominence as a child television star in the 1980's, Heller's until-then-unimpeachable psychic method was debunked in front of a nationwide television audience by James Randi, in New York City in 1991. Emerging a few years later as the host of "In the Afterlife", an afternoon talk-show wherein he'd allegedly put people in contact with relatives who'd passed on, Heller juggled that with a full Las Vegas stage show, before becoming the pitchman for Spektor & Raithe, Inc., a line of specialty hotels.
When I met with Heller, he was the picture of relaxed composure in a very expensive suit. While the tone of the interview might read as antagonistic or chiding, Heller has a method of saying things so that it feels like you're both in on a very old and private joke.. and it's damn near impossible to get in print.
PLAYBOY: Let's get right to the meat of the matter. You first entered the public eye when you were twelve years old as an uncannily-talented child mentalist and psychic whose abilities seemed beyond debunking. What was it like, being a child star?
HELLER: My parents were very driven, goal-oriented people. As soon as they discovered I had a talent, they were keen to help me develop it to its highest degree. Really, all I did was show up where and when I was told to, and do what I was asked. It was that simple, and so therefore a pretty easy job, really. But I sense that you want my version of what it was like to be a kid, and famous. Which wasn't what you asked.
PLAYBOY: Very well, then. What was it like for you to be a child, and famous?
HELLER: Invasive. My first television series had an exhausting shooting schedule, and in the beginning I did a bunch of pro bono work for the police and various governmental agencies, finding bodies and suchlike. It might've been an excellent way to build my reputation, but there was no alone-time for me at all. That's the price of fame, really. No privacy.
PLAYBOY: Do you regret it?
HELLER: That's kind of like asking someone blind since birth if they miss sunsets, really. I didn't know any different. Although I do kind of wish I'd had the opportunity to get slapped in the face while fumbling around under Mary Jane's blouse in the back of a car by a lake somewhere. Everything .. and I do mean everything was arranged for me.
PLAYBOY: You're referring, of course, to your highly-public relationship with teen pop-idol Violet Hayes. You and she were teenage royalty in the early nineties. She had a number one album and several well-paying movies under her belt, and you were the king of family television hour. Damien and the Dead was a consistent prime-time draw for years...
HELLER: God, I hated that title. Made what I did seem like a circus act, instead of what I actually accomplished, which was to help a lot of people get over things which had been holding them back from moving on with their lives.
PLAYBOY: Fair enough. Can we talk about the years after New York City?
HELLER: You mean after James Randi disproved me in front of an audience of millions, on live national television. Okay. By that point, I was sick and tired of being a talking chimp.. I mean, really, the handlers on the show were having me find Al Capone's hidden vaults and speculating on what happened to Amelia Earhart. Did you know that there was some talk about going off to British Columbia to track Sasquatches, for season five? I'm glad we never got past season four, because I don't know shit about monsters. Apart from the fact that there's no such thing, of course.
Anyway. Yes, the day that Randi showed me as false was likely the best day of my life, in retrospect. Sure, my credibility was ruined. I felt like I'd been betrayed by everyone I knew, and that was a hard pill to swallow... it literally seemed like everyone's opinion of me turned on a dime. Violet made a good show of standing by her man for a couple of months until she didn't look shallow for breaking up with me. It took me a while to realise it, but at last I was free to do what I wanted.
PLAYBOY: And what did you decide you wanted to do?
HELLER: All I'd ever known was showbiz, so that's what I stuck with. I took a couple of years off, and really worked on my street and stage magic act. I got a small lounge show in Atlantic City, and built my repertoire from there. I knew Angel and Blaine and a lot of those guys while we were all up and coming; in fact, for a while there we had this sort of 'poker night' where we'd all get together and try out new gags on each other. It was a good, constructive time with good friends. And as you can see, hard work pays off. Criss has got his own show, David does all of these crazy stunts for a living, and most of the other guys are packin' 'em in, doing two or three shows a night wherever they go.
PLAYBOY: You've done pretty well for yourself too, it should be mentioned. Most recently, you were the host of "In the Afterlife" and the face of the ultra low-budget "Magnus Manor", the most successful viral ad campaign since Blair Witch. Can you give us an idea of what it was like to work on that?
HELLER: The idea, as with most filmmaking, was to immerse the audience. "Magnus Manor" had its own folklore when we found it, this big old manor house on a hill surrounded by a country block of land, up in Canada. The place practically screams 'resort', but it had fallen into disrepair because of the unfortunate nature of its vacancy... see, the whole thing about James Magnus and his wife Ayeisha is true... they were serial killers who didn't wait around to go to prison. He murdered her in the basement of a ruined farm out in the back country of their land, and then killed himself in their bedroom. Their dogs were left to starve in the basement, and when police went to investigate they found the bodies of several dead women later discovered to be missing prostitutes. We originally went up there to investigate the alleged haunting, and the producers thought it would be better story to have had Magnus be some sort of black magician with a demon-wife who'd bound his soul into the stones of the place. It's a touch of the fantastic which takes a bit of the grim sheen off of the event.
Try pitching that to a major studio, and you'd have Sam Raimi directing it. Since Spektor & Raithe kept the production in-house and lo-fi, we were able to concentrate more on authenticity of the thing. The result, as you can see, is quite alarmingly vivid.
PLAYBOY: We'll say. There had been noises made that "Magnus Manor" should've been in contention for the 2008 Academy Awards for its chilling portrayal of supernatural murder and the authenticity of its performances.
HELLER: I've always thought that was preposterous. The movie was a commercial for the hotel, nothing more or less. Honestly, if you'd seen it on a big-screen in a crowd of people instead of on your monitor late at night, do you think it would be as visceral, or as scary? Spektor and Raithe know what they're doing as far as marketing goes.
PLAYBOY: How do you answer the growing movement which suggests that perhaps it wasn't faked, but that you were in fact the only survivor of that excursion?
HELLER: By making a call to one of the other primary cast members so that anyone who asks can talk to them directly. It's important to note that these guys weren't actors, and that we didn't tell them anything going in apart from having them sign a non-disclosure agreement. The performances are as good as they are because these guys didn't know what was coming, so what you're seeing isn't acting but genuine human response to something terrible. All of the gory stuff was cut in later, but it was still a bit of a mean trick to pull. While they're all fine and well-compensated for their labour, Spektor & Raithe respects their privacy. After all, not everyone wants to live under the public eye. But I grew up here, so it suits me fine.
Damien Heller is another of that breed of celebrity who seems bulletproof. First rising to prominence as a child television star in the 1980's, Heller's until-then-unimpeachable psychic method was debunked in front of a nationwide television audience by James Randi, in New York City in 1991. Emerging a few years later as the host of "In the Afterlife", an afternoon talk-show wherein he'd allegedly put people in contact with relatives who'd passed on, Heller juggled that with a full Las Vegas stage show, before becoming the pitchman for Spektor & Raithe, Inc., a line of specialty hotels.When I met with Heller, he was the picture of relaxed composure in a very expensive suit. While the tone of the interview might read as antagonistic or chiding, Heller has a method of saying things so that it feels like you're both in on a very old and private joke.. and it's damn near impossible to get in print.
PLAYBOY: Let's get right to the meat of the matter. You first entered the public eye when you were twelve years old as an uncannily-talented child mentalist and psychic whose abilities seemed beyond debunking. What was it like, being a child star?
HELLER: My parents were very driven, goal-oriented people. As soon as they discovered I had a talent, they were keen to help me develop it to its highest degree. Really, all I did was show up where and when I was told to, and do what I was asked. It was that simple, and so therefore a pretty easy job, really. But I sense that you want my version of what it was like to be a kid, and famous. Which wasn't what you asked.
PLAYBOY: Very well, then. What was it like for you to be a child, and famous?
HELLER: Invasive. My first television series had an exhausting shooting schedule, and in the beginning I did a bunch of pro bono work for the police and various governmental agencies, finding bodies and suchlike. It might've been an excellent way to build my reputation, but there was no alone-time for me at all. That's the price of fame, really. No privacy.
PLAYBOY: Do you regret it?
HELLER: That's kind of like asking someone blind since birth if they miss sunsets, really. I didn't know any different. Although I do kind of wish I'd had the opportunity to get slapped in the face while fumbling around under Mary Jane's blouse in the back of a car by a lake somewhere. Everything .. and I do mean everything was arranged for me.
PLAYBOY: You're referring, of course, to your highly-public relationship with teen pop-idol Violet Hayes. You and she were teenage royalty in the early nineties. She had a number one album and several well-paying movies under her belt, and you were the king of family television hour. Damien and the Dead was a consistent prime-time draw for years...
HELLER: God, I hated that title. Made what I did seem like a circus act, instead of what I actually accomplished, which was to help a lot of people get over things which had been holding them back from moving on with their lives.
PLAYBOY: Fair enough. Can we talk about the years after New York City?
HELLER: You mean after James Randi disproved me in front of an audience of millions, on live national television. Okay. By that point, I was sick and tired of being a talking chimp.. I mean, really, the handlers on the show were having me find Al Capone's hidden vaults and speculating on what happened to Amelia Earhart. Did you know that there was some talk about going off to British Columbia to track Sasquatches, for season five? I'm glad we never got past season four, because I don't know shit about monsters. Apart from the fact that there's no such thing, of course.
Anyway. Yes, the day that Randi showed me as false was likely the best day of my life, in retrospect. Sure, my credibility was ruined. I felt like I'd been betrayed by everyone I knew, and that was a hard pill to swallow... it literally seemed like everyone's opinion of me turned on a dime. Violet made a good show of standing by her man for a couple of months until she didn't look shallow for breaking up with me. It took me a while to realise it, but at last I was free to do what I wanted.
PLAYBOY: And what did you decide you wanted to do?
HELLER: All I'd ever known was showbiz, so that's what I stuck with. I took a couple of years off, and really worked on my street and stage magic act. I got a small lounge show in Atlantic City, and built my repertoire from there. I knew Angel and Blaine and a lot of those guys while we were all up and coming; in fact, for a while there we had this sort of 'poker night' where we'd all get together and try out new gags on each other. It was a good, constructive time with good friends. And as you can see, hard work pays off. Criss has got his own show, David does all of these crazy stunts for a living, and most of the other guys are packin' 'em in, doing two or three shows a night wherever they go.
PLAYBOY: You've done pretty well for yourself too, it should be mentioned. Most recently, you were the host of "In the Afterlife" and the face of the ultra low-budget "Magnus Manor", the most successful viral ad campaign since Blair Witch. Can you give us an idea of what it was like to work on that?
HELLER: The idea, as with most filmmaking, was to immerse the audience. "Magnus Manor" had its own folklore when we found it, this big old manor house on a hill surrounded by a country block of land, up in Canada. The place practically screams 'resort', but it had fallen into disrepair because of the unfortunate nature of its vacancy... see, the whole thing about James Magnus and his wife Ayeisha is true... they were serial killers who didn't wait around to go to prison. He murdered her in the basement of a ruined farm out in the back country of their land, and then killed himself in their bedroom. Their dogs were left to starve in the basement, and when police went to investigate they found the bodies of several dead women later discovered to be missing prostitutes. We originally went up there to investigate the alleged haunting, and the producers thought it would be better story to have had Magnus be some sort of black magician with a demon-wife who'd bound his soul into the stones of the place. It's a touch of the fantastic which takes a bit of the grim sheen off of the event.
Try pitching that to a major studio, and you'd have Sam Raimi directing it. Since Spektor & Raithe kept the production in-house and lo-fi, we were able to concentrate more on authenticity of the thing. The result, as you can see, is quite alarmingly vivid.
PLAYBOY: We'll say. There had been noises made that "Magnus Manor" should've been in contention for the 2008 Academy Awards for its chilling portrayal of supernatural murder and the authenticity of its performances.
HELLER: I've always thought that was preposterous. The movie was a commercial for the hotel, nothing more or less. Honestly, if you'd seen it on a big-screen in a crowd of people instead of on your monitor late at night, do you think it would be as visceral, or as scary? Spektor and Raithe know what they're doing as far as marketing goes.
PLAYBOY: How do you answer the growing movement which suggests that perhaps it wasn't faked, but that you were in fact the only survivor of that excursion?
HELLER: By making a call to one of the other primary cast members so that anyone who asks can talk to them directly. It's important to note that these guys weren't actors, and that we didn't tell them anything going in apart from having them sign a non-disclosure agreement. The performances are as good as they are because these guys didn't know what was coming, so what you're seeing isn't acting but genuine human response to something terrible. All of the gory stuff was cut in later, but it was still a bit of a mean trick to pull. While they're all fine and well-compensated for their labour, Spektor & Raithe respects their privacy. After all, not everyone wants to live under the public eye. But I grew up here, so it suits me fine.
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