‘Camp’ Was My Gateway Drug to Musical Theater

Buffalo is a long way from New York City. They’re about as far away from each other as possible while still being in the same state, each one practically jumping into a body of water to get away from each other. Which may explain why, growing up, my family never jaunted down to Manhattan for a weekend to see the sights and do something that I’ve come to realize a lot of families of even middle-class means did: take in a Broadway show. Musical theater was not something that was a part of my upbringing, and so, being the subculture that it is, it stayed mostly foreign territory to me. I’d see performances from various shows on The Rose O’Donnell show semi-regularly, but they were mostly out of context, and I never quite understood the appeal of listening to a cast recording without being able to see the production in full (still don’t, for the most part). Besides a school trip in junior high to see The Phantom of the Opera in Toronto, I wouldn’t see a professionally staged musical until I was out of college, and I wouldn’t see anything on Broadway until I moved to New York City at age 27.

All of which is to explain why the 2003 indie Camp — released 15 years ago today — was such an influential piece of pop culture for me, and my guess is I’m not alone. It’s also a self-defense mechanism for when I admit that Camp was the first time I discovered who Stephen Sondheim was. Like, ever. At first blush, a movie like Camp seems like an odd introductory class since the whole premise of a musical-theater camp for performing-arts-oriented kids (read: young gay boys and extroverted girls) relies the hyper-familiarity that the campers have with every corner of the theater, which forms the basis for a lot of the film’s comedy. This is a movie with a Night, Mother joke to beat the band and the world’s only post-credits scene indebted to Edward Albee. It’s relying on your familiarity with the works of Sondheim and Bacharach and Dreamgirls (three years before Beyoncé did it) and black-box experimental theater. You’d think it would be for obsessives only. Turns out, though: being thrown into the deep end was a great way to learn how to swim.

Camp isn’t perfect, but it’s the kind of movie that earns its audience’s loyalty so thoroughly that its imperfections instantly become a part of its charm. Like many a summer-camp movie before it, it focuses on a small group of campers whose crushes and longings and makeout sessions and resentments. Vlad (teenage dreamboat Daniel Letterle) is a unicorn at this theater camp: “an honest-to-God straight boy.” And everybody — boys, girls, the staff — just kind of swoons and falls at his feet. In particular, he ends up coming in between best pals Ellen (Joanna Chilcoat) and Michael (future two-time Tony nominee Robin De Jesus). It’s an underrated commentary on how straight people can still take over queer spaces, but it’s also impossible to hold it against Vlad because he’s just so sweet and his intentions are so good. Still, credit to writer/director Todd Graff for holding onto the thorny nature of the crushable straight boy throughout the film.

Besides Vlad, the major storylines involve these kids coming into their own in an environment that allows them the freedom — the exciting, scary, often terribly embarrassing freedom — to be themselves. Michael came to camp fresh off of showing up to his high-school prom in drag and getting beaten up for it. Jenna (Tiffany Taylor) has had her jaw wired shut, an attempt by her parents to get her weight under control. There’s also the character of Bert Hanley (Don Dixon) an almost-was composer who’s fallen to rejection and a drinking problem. Bert initially gawks at these kids like animals in a zoo and then frustratedly berates them for living in a fantasy bubble. The real world does not care about their cast-recording collections of familiarity with musical-theater esoterica. The real world, Bert says, is going to leave them broken and betrayed. Of course, Bert has his own trauma to deal with, and you really shouldn’t expect a movie like Camp not to engineer a happy ending for him as well.

If it seems at times like the kids (and staff) are a parade of sad stories waiting for that moment of inspiration when they finally believe in themselves, Graff provides a bracing antidote in the ongoing, self-consciously All About Eve-baiting rivalry between Jill (Alana Allen) and Fritzi (Anna Kendrick, who picked up an Independent Spirit Award for her breakthrough performance). Jill is one of the star campers and by all accounts a terrible person. Fritzi idolized her talent and eats up whatever Jill flings at her, until she’s pushed too far. That Fritzi’s revenge comes in the middle of Jill’s performance of “The Ladies Who Lunch” in Company has become the signature moment from Camp, replayed in gay bars and passed around via YouTube links like the gay version of The Ring.

The “Ladies Who Lunch” number holds the appeal of Camp in a nutshell. The entire idea of a bunch of teens and tweens performing Company — any Sondheim musical would have been wildly age-inappropriate for these kids but with the exception of Passion, Company is the most amusingly insane fit — is lunacy enough, but to witness this number, one of the most jaded and world-weary songs in musical theater, performed by a pair of feuding girls putting on their best Bette Davis and Anne Baxter sneers, it’s like the Inception dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream of gayness.

For a few of these set pieces, the fact of the performance is more entertaining than the actual performance. White-girl Ellen belting “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” with her Dreamgirls beehive, singing furiously to the 8-year-old who’d been cast as Curtis (whose older brother had been agitating for more roles for campers of color) is everything you need; ditto when Ellen is later shown singing the resilient-showgirl anthem “I’m Still Here” from Sondheim’s Follies.

But don’t let that fool you into thinking Camp can’t turn out a Broadway-worthy performance number. Graff wisely keeps the entire performance of “Turkey Lurkey Time” from Promises, Promises in the film, because he knows it’s important to see that beyond having a niche obsession that makes them all act and speak like world-weary Upper West Siders, these kids have some big talent and an enthusiasm to put on a show that is nothing less than admirable.

It’s no surprise that Camp earned a cult following from exactly the kinds of people depicted in the film. This is theater-kid filmmaking about theater kids for theater kids. But it’s also been an evangelizing force for a subculture that often demands love over admiration and enthusiastic immersion over detached evaluation. “The Ladies Who Lunch” is a song that sneers at the those who are blissfully unaware of how unhappy they should be. For all its reverence of Stephen Sondheim, Camp is a movie about riding that bubble for as far as it’ll take you.

Stream Camp on Hulu