Seth Packard knows the expression hottieboombalottie all too well, “that was a term that hot girls like the cheerleaders and dance company [used] for guys they thought were really hot. It was never me but I always wished that it was.”
The slang, straight out of his hometown of Provo, Utah, makes a fitting title for Packard’s debut film about a high school kid named Ethan who loses the affections of his lady love Madison Sweet to his cooler older brother.
HottieBoombaLottie marks the 25-year-old’s first feature film as writer/director/producer and star and his initial introduction into the film festival circuit.
Hollywood.com chatted with the young multi-hyphenate about the journey and the film that led him to the Los Angeles Film Festival narrative competition.
Hollywood.com: You just celebrated the HottieBoombaLottie premiere at the L.A. Film Festival. How was it?
Seth Packard: It was cool because a hundred or so people from Utah shipped over to come and watch it. That’s where we made the film and everything so I had a huge amount of support on my end…I was a little bit nervous but it was great. Everybody liked it, they were laughing the whole time it was really cool. It was a really good feeling and there was a really good applause at the end. I think it went really well.
HW: With all your friends and family in town, it must feel like summer camp!
SP: It seriously is like summer camp at my house right now. I have like 8 buddies at my house right now and my family is all scattered, yeah so it is going to be a fun couple of days.
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HW: Were all the people working on the film friends of yours?
SP: My co-producer is my best friend that I grew up across the street from since we were 2, literally. We’ve been best friends since elementary school, junior high and high school and college…I’ve been an actor in Utah for like five years and so they were all people I’ve worked with multiple, multiple times on other movie shoots as an actor. So when we were producing this thing I was like, dude we really want to get this sound guy or we really want to get this hair and makeup guy. I knew exactly who I wanted to work with so in that sense, yeah it was kind of like my little posse.
HW: What can fans expect to see in this film?
SP: I play a kid who is in high school and he is really obsessed with Madison Sweet, the hottest girl in the world to him. He spends like every waking minute trying to get close to her. He’s kind of awkward and he has a way cooler older brother who ends up hooking up with her instead of him and it trips him out and he tries to win her over. During the film he ends up getting shipped off to live with his cousins in California for something that he did and his cousins end up being his allies and trying to help him. So, it is pretty much about a nerd trying to win the cute girl over.
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HW: Could you relate to the sibling rivalry?
SP: Yeah totally, I come from six. I’m one of six…back to the Utah thing again. You tell someone here and they go, that’s a lot and you tell someone in Utah and they go “I come from 14.” Six is like nothing there, but it felt like a lot to me. The older brother that I wrote I actually based off of my older sister who was so popular in high school and so cool and always had these really cool friends, like guys and girls over. She would do little things to embarrass me, like I just hit puberty and I’d walk out and she would be with all of her friends and she’d be like “Hey Seth, have you started growing armpit hair yet?” It killed me inside because she had all her cute friends there and the coolest football guys there and I would cry and run up to my room.
HW: Did you tell your sister this was based on her?
SP: I did and she said “Did you really think I was mean?” That was when she had just read the script and she watched it now and I think she feels pretty proud of it because my littlest sister, actually when I ask her who her favorite character is, it is him my older brother in the movie who is a cool guy who likes messing around, but he genuinely has a good heart and just likes messing around with his little brother.
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HW: Is anything else in the script from your real life experiences?
SP: For example there is a scene where he goes inside this flower shop and he wants to find out the girl’s favorite flower and that’s where she works. So he goes up to her and he fakes that his mom is really sick and needs some flowers and asks “So, what is your favorite kind?” and he ends up giving them to her [instead of his mom], but she gives them back and is pissed at him. That happened, to one of my best friends in high school…I wasn’t that stupid, but I was standing next to him when he did.
HW: Have you been taking advantage of all the festival has to offer?
SP: Yeah, we are trying to make sure we go to all the other films in the narrative competition. There are seven of us in the competition slot. So I want to make sure that I go and support all the other ones and see what’s out there too. In terms of speakers, we went to the Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in Northern California for a couple of days. The filmmakers went up there so they brought in a bunch of producer types and some directors. Everybody just shared their experiences and it was all somewhat under the radar so everyone was being really honest about their experiences and they were sharing some of the worst times they’ve had and how they got out of them. It was really cool, it feels like I’m learning a lot, which wasn’t what I was expecting at a festival.
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HW: Who has been your mentor?
SP: I’ve taken on a lot of roles, but it is true I’ve had some incredible help. My father helped me from the very beginning and my wife too. They both have helped a ton. My dad has a PHD in film and philosophy and I graduated in Philosophy and I was ready to drop out of college. I said “Dad, I’m getting some pretty big parts here and I want to go into film and this isn’t really doing a ton for me.” He said, “Seth if you stay in this last year-and-a-half you’ll learn more and we’ll learn more together about acting, directing and writing than you would if you just left.” I trust him, he’s one of the best guys I know. I just did direct study classes with him in his office like everyday for about five hours a day, just discussing different aspects of things just really trying to dig in and watching film and scripts and going over everything we could. That’s when I started writing my stuff, out of all that learning. I had some incredible support throughout the whole thing…He was there yesterday, happy as can be.
HW: Who are the writers and directors that you look up to?
SP: The films that I watch that I feel like I really resonate well with … in terms of writers, I love the writing that feels very real and I can sense a lot of truth in it, like Little Miss Sunshine and Juno. The directors I really like, have you seen I Heart Huckabees? I know it is a weird film and a lot of people didn’t like it, but I loved that, the performances the director got out of that…David Russell, he’s just fantastic like that. He’s a writer/director too, which I like because then you feel the same voice throughout the whole film.
