Camp

Camp is a 2003 American musical comedy-drama film, written and directed by Todd Graff, about an upstate New York performing arts summer camp. The film is based on Graff's own experiences at a similar camp called Stagedoor Manor, where many scenes of the movie were filmed.

Anna Kendrick portrays the role of Fritzi Wagner. Other cast members include Robin de Jesús, Don Dixon, Sasha Allen, DeQuina Moore and Steven Cutts.

## Premise

After a series of Broadway flops, songwriter Bert Hanley goes to work at a musical camp for young performers. Inspired by the kids, he finds an opportunity to regain success by staging an altogether new production.

## Cast

* Daniel Letterle as Vlad Baumann
* Joanna Chilcoat as Ellen Lucas
* Robin de Jesús as Michael Flores
* Anna Kendrick as Fritzi Wagner
* Alana Allen as Jill Simmons
* Vince Rimoldi as Spitzer
* Don Dixon as Bert Hanley
* Tiffany Taylor as Jenna Malloran
* Sasha Allen as Dee
* Eddie Clark and Leslie Frye as Mr. and Mrs. Malloran
* David Perlow as Ben Lucas
* DeQuina Moore as DeQuina
* Steven Cutts as Shaun
* Stephen Sondheim as himself

## Production

The film was produced by Jersey Films, IFC Films, John Wells Productions, Killer Films, and Laughlin Park Pictures. All production took place in New York.

## Release

Camp is available to stream for free on Pluto TV and Flex or to purchase on AMC+, YouTube, The Roku Channel, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube TV.

Todd Graff promoted an Indiegogo campaign in 2015 to fund a sequel. Rather than treat the original as a previous year at Camp Ovation, the plot would frame Camp as a movie filmed on the campgrounds.

## Trivia

* The movie is notable as the film debut of future Academy Award nominee Anna Kendrick, future three-time Tony nominee Robin de Jesús, future The Voice contestant Sasha Allen, and future Broadway performers DeQuina Moore, Steven Cutts, Tracee Beazer, and Brittany Pollack.
* When Fritzi reintroduces herself to Jill at the start of the movie and Jill fails to remember her, Fritzi reminds Jill that the previous summer, they had been in the play "'night, Mother" together. The joke is that "'night, Mother" only has two actors in it, and is an extremely intense, wrenching, emotional experience (it is about an adult daughter preparing her elderly mother for the fact that the daughter is going to commit suicide), so there is no way that Jill could have forgotten having already met Fritzi without Jill being incredibly self-absorbed.
* In her December 2016 New York Times essay about the making of Camp, Anna Kendrick said that at 16 she was anxious to downplay the implication that her character, Fritzi, was sexually attracted to her roommate (and eventual nemesis), Jill. "Today, I would be thrilled to play such a twisted little character. At the time, I just wanted to wear makeup and have my hair done, like the other girls in the cast....I still had to go back to high school once this was over, and I so badly wanted to be the hot girl in a movie, not the girl who washes the hot girl's underwear by hand."
* Todd Graff was the 11-year-old Robert Downey Jr.'s camp counselor when he was at the summer camp that inspired the film.
* In a December 2016 New York Times essay that Anna Kendrick wrote about the experience of making Camp, she said that "people have either never heard of it, or they want to tell me that it changed their life, no matter how inappropriate the circumstances."
* During a 2016 interview with Terry Gross on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," Anna Kendrick said that when she performed "Ladies Who Lunch" for this movie at 16, she had never seen "Company," the musical from which it comes. But she had seen the song's original performer, Elaine Stritch, sing the song three years earlier when both Kendrick and Stritch had been performers in a Broadway revue at Carnegie Hall called "My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies." About the experience of being in the same rehearsal and performance space as Broadway legend Elaine Stritch at just 13 years old, Kendrick said, "she did walk around in just a man's shirt and tights, which, you know, was a dream come true to watch her in action actually doing that.....to have seen how unapologetic she was off stage as well, that was very inspirational for that moment in my - in my teen performance of that song. ....she kind of threw herself around and, you know, any room she entered she just announced what it was that she needed. I mean, we - you know, we were doing a performance. It wasn't like we were hanging out at dinner, and she just came in and was like, somebody get me some bread. But she was - I don't know - she just seemed like very comfortable with the fact that she was a living legend. I mean that in the absolute best way."
* During the month-long rehearsal period in Manhattan, the (nonunion) producers of Camp had to find affordable housing for their non-New Yorker actors, which led to Anna Kendrick living in the pantry in an uptown apartment that was already shared by three students.