Mark Damon, the former spaghetti western leading man who turned to a pioneering career in independent sales and financing and was a fixture at the film markets, has died on the eve of Cannes. He was 91.
Damon’s representatives confirmed he died in Los Angeles on Sunday (May 12).
Damon produced, packaged and sold numerous films and led Producer Sales Organization (PSO), Vision International, MDP Worldwide, Media 8, and most recently Foresight Unlimited.
He attended Cannes dozens of times and produced or served as executive producer on more than 70 films.
One of his most illustrious producer credits came at Media 8 with Patty Jenkins’ Monster. The 2003 crime biopic earned Charlize Theron the lead actress Oscar for her depiction of serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
Damon also served as executive producer on and licensed the 2005 Mike Binder comedy drama The Upside Of Anger starring Kevin Costner and Joan Allen, which New Line distributed in the US.
He went on to establish Foresight Unlimited in the mid-2000s, which brought a late career producing highlight in the form of 2 Guns, Baltasar Kormakur’s action comedy thriller starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg on which he served as executive producer.
It was the last studio film Damon worked on and it pre-sold strongly when he introduced the project at the EFM in Berlin in 2012, going to Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions in a multi-territory deal, and to Universal for US distribution. The film grossed more than $130m worldwide.
Other films he produced and helped to make included Oscar-nominated Das Boot, 9 ½ Weeks, 8 Million Ways To Die, Short Circuit, High Spirits, Choirboys, The Lost Boys, and The Jungle Book.
Damon was born Alan Harris on April 22, 1933, in Chicago. He moved to Los Angeles and got an English degree and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management – both indicative of his natural talents and where his career would take him.
He had taken theatre classes and became a contract actor at 20th Century Fox in the 1950s. In 1961 he won the Golden Globe for most promising newcomer in recognition of his performance in the Edgar Allan Poe adaptation House Of Usher, produced by New World Pictures’ Roger Corman, another independent film pioneer who died on Thursday aged 98.
Damon moved to Rome and established a highly successful career as a spaghetti western star in the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in films like Johnny Yuma, Dead Men Don’t Count, No Killing Without Dollars, They Called Him Veritas, and Death At Orwell Rock.
It was in Italy that he spotted a market for independent international distributors eager to acquire top American films. He returned to the United States in 1977 and founded PSO with the goal of licensing rights to commercially appealing, independently made US cinema.
As such PSO became the first company to compete with the major Hollywood studios, and Damon was credited with inventing the independent film sales model. He was also one of the founders of the American Film Market and Independent Film & Television Alliance.
He is survived by his wife, Margaret Markov Damon, and his children Jonathan and Alexis.
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