Damien creates his own big break

Southbank resident Damien Lipp is one such character and his film, Beckoning the Butcher, is gaining traction in Melbourne’s film landscape.

After entering the horror film into a Monster Pictures festival Beckoning the Butcher sold out the Cinema Nova in Carlton and received a number of positive reviews.

Damien said the film was an off-the-cuff decision, after he had hired a camera.

“I just went out and got a camera and rang a mate of mine and said: ‘let’s make a movie!’,” Damien explained.

“He got back to me with a script in about a week!”

From there the location of Kerang was decided on, a country town in northern Victoria, where Damien grew up.

“The whole town got behind the movie and we were given access the to house we wanted to shoot in which made it nice and easy,” Damien said.

Damien works for his family’s truck driving business, a job that he described as “an actors dream”.

He works mornings mostly, leaving the bulk of the day to chase auditions or make movies.

It helps that driving is something that Damien also loves, a fact that becomes abundantly clear when Southbank Local News asked whether he’d always dreamed of becoming an actor.

“No, I actually wanted to be a V8 Supercar driver and really, I still do. My thinking was I could get famous in Australia acting, then they’d let me drive in the celebrity V8 race.”

You can’t help but wonder what the careers counsellor at school would make of that plan.

For more information of Beckoning the Butcher, head to the Facebook page www.facebook.com/BeckoningTheButcher