Camp opens this weekend in Chicago.
Filmmaker Todd Graff holds a fondness in his heart for camp—summer camp. During the 1970s, Graff spent summers at Stagedoor Manor, a theater training center in Loch Sheldrake, NY. There, campers between 8-18 perform shows every three weeks, take classes in all things theater and acting, and find first loves and lusts, plenty of it queer. So valuable, ambrosial, and impacting were these experiences that Graff strove to make a film about them and Stagedoor Manor. Camp, a rousing IFC release brimming with song, dance numbers, dramas, and gayness is the result of his labors.
Camp takes place during a summer at fictitious Camp Ovation. Gay camper/drag queen Michael (Robin De Jesus) is aflutter for sexy roommate Vlad (Daniel Letterle). Unfortunately, Vlad identifies as straight and hooks up with nice girl Ellen (Joanna Chilcoat), and bad girl Jill (Alana Allen). Meanwhile, young Fritzi (Anna Kendrick) indentures herself to Jill—even washing her underwear—until circumstances lead to a literally poisonous rivalry. And Ovation's guest director, bitter former Broadway success Bert Hanley (Don Dixon), goes head to head with Vlad, who's determined to drag Bert out of retirement ... and his copious liquor supply.
'The personal reason [for making the film] was obviously I lived that story,' Graff, a Tony-nominated Broadway actor (Baby) and established screenwriter (The Vanishing), admits of his cinematic directorial debut. 'Beyond that, I had for a long time wanted to make a movie for and about kids, but not a She's All That version of a teen movie. Camp's setting seemed like a place where kids are outside the mainstream to begin with, so I could avoid some of the more done, mall movie [trappings]. There's not a lot of 14-year-old girls washing out the underwear of 16-year-olds and then poisoning them in She's All That!'
Camp's journey to screen officially began five years ago, when Graff wrote the script on spec and brought it to Danny DeVito's production company, Jersey Films. 'They came on board right away,' Graff recalls, 'but we needed money. At that time the budget was four times as big and here I am with gay musical theater kids, so it just wasn't going to happen.' Hoping to impress investors and garner industry interest, Graff convinced Jersey to cough up enough funds so that he could mount a 'workshop' of Camp, which would be performed as a stage show. The workshop proved a success—and helped develop the material further: a number of the actors taking part in the workshop appear in the film (although, regrettably, 'some of the kids got too big').
With Christine Vachon's Killer Films also in the producer stable, and a tight budget cobbled together, Camp was filmed over 22 days in August of 2002 on Stagedoor Manor's grounds with blessings from—and no charge by!—owner Carl Samuelson (he makes a cameo as a stagehand during a dressing room scene). Through the years, Graff had been keeping tabs on Stagedoor and its ever-evolving populace, which has gotten gayer and gayer—at least openly. 'There's drag queens there now.'
Tha cast, few of whom were Stagedoor Manor campers, was shipped to the Catskills—a sleepy, traditionally Jewish resort area—and the true Camp experience and culture shock commenced. 'Down the street [from Stagedoor] was a kosher chinese restaurant called Mazel Wok,' Robin De Jesus recalls, laughing. 'Just cracks me up!' For De Jesus, the openly queer Norwalk, Connecticut-raised actor who plays Michael, this was his first time staying at such a place. 'I wish I went somewhere like that when I was growing up,' he says of Stagedoor. 'When I was a kid I went to 'ghetto camp.' It was a city-funded camp for kids who couldn't afford to go to a real camp. It was at a local school, I would walk there, all we did was play four squares, go in the playground.'
Although Graff says Camp's storylines are essentially fiction, the characters are based on people he's known and even himself. For example, 'the Michael character for a long time was me,' he proffers. 'That weird doormat-y, 'I'll do anything if I can be your roommate and catch a glimpse of you leaving the shower so I get to see you naked.'' Conversely, Vlad, the apple of Michael's eye, represents much of how Graff was at that age. Which is to say charming, slutty, manipulative ... and straight?
'No,' Graff clarifies. 'And I don't know that Vlad is [straight] either. I was with women for the majority of my life. I would be all things to all people, but not honestly.'
Daniel Letterle feels that Vlad's flirtations with Michael and queerness is exactly that—simply attempting to be all things to all people. 'I think it's less about sexuality and more about being an attention whore, thriving on other peoples' affection,' he opines. 'Negotiating anything to just be the apple of somebody's eye. I definitely had my experience when I was the raging hormone guy doing some theater tours in Europe. I flirted with gay boys, but not for bad intentions.'
Apparently, the 24-year-old managed to pique the interest of gay boys on Camp's set as well—'The first day of rehearsal some of the guys thought you were a cutie!' De Jesus tells him today with a massive grin—and had both genders speculating about his sexuality. But Litterle assures his performance in Camp was anything but method. 'I slept a lot, I think I shot every day of the schedule,' he insists. 'I made my rounds and was a horny guy and having fun [in the past], but it wasn't about that during Camp.'
Not that teen dramas, romances, and little scandals didn't occur offscreen. 'The 12-year-olds were drinking jack and coke in the freaking barracks!' Litterle laughs. 'Yeah, that was happening.'
A few scripted dramas were unfortunately cut from Camp—its original cut clocked in at two hours and 40 minutes. Amongst the cuts: interviews with Stagedoor alumni—including Robert Downey Jr.—and scenes from shows performed at Stagedoor in the past; a whole plotline involving Petie (Kahiry Bess), an aspiring tap dancer; scenes involving another gay camper, Spitzer (Vince Rimoldi); a hysterical softball game sequence in which Ovation's kids were matched against a more traditional summer camp's. 'Ovation's kids are all in black, the uniforms are patterned after the costumes in Chicago, Spitzer is practicing hitch kicks, two of the Black girls are doing cornrows at first base,' recalls Graff; and a shot in which Vlad—fresh from skinny dipping—is seen completely naked.
'You saw his ass,' Graff notes. 'At the end of the day I didn't want the movie rated R. I didn't want the very kids who were the inspiration for making the film in the first place not be able to see it or have to go with somebody they wouldn't feel comfortable experiencing it with as themselves because they're with somebody they're always sort of masked around.'
Which is true to Stagedoor Manor's—and Samuelson's—intentions and spirit, as was Graff's aim all along.
'I remember saying to Carl 'are you worried that one of the things this movie will say in a very big open way is if your kid is gay it's OK to send him here?'' Graff says. 'That may scare away parents of kids with parents who don't want their kids to be gay or around gay kids. And he said to me, 'those kids and those parents shouldn't be here. And I really don't want them here.' He doesn't need the money, they have a waiting list as long as your arm, he could fill the place four times every summer. He wants Stagedoor to go to people who should be there. And I think that's very admirable.'
