This weekend brings the movie "Bandslam" into the nation's theaters, and about the kindest thing I can say about it is that it's...well, not quite as awful as I was expecting. And yet, given director Todd Graff's track record, it's a shame it's not better. Below is a review of Graff's previous (and much better) movie, 2003's "Camp"; plus a short feature on local legend Don Dixon's star turn in it.
Don Dixon steals the show in "Camp"
By David Menconi, News & Observer
Aug. 29, 2003
The title of "Camp" has two meanings, both of which apply. There's summer camp, and also camp in the sense of the mannered theatrical style.
"Camp" combines elements of "Fame," "Dirty Dancing" and "Meatballs" in a tale set at a performance-art summer camp in the Catskills, where the kids are trying to sing, dance and act their way to Broadway. It's based on the real-life experiences of Todd Graff, who wrote the script and makes his directing debut.
The film has a lot going for it, starting with dynamite musical sequences (although they will strain the attention spans of "American Idol" fans used to 30 seconds of bombast). The characters are familiar enough, starting with the central trio of a straight boy, a straight girl and a gay boy whose relationships have confusing undercurrents. There's also the prima donna whose negative karma boomerangs spectacularly, the scheming and vengeful understudy, and the plus-size wallflower with an earth-shattering voice just waiting to escape her wired-shut jaw.
Despite its predictable story arc, "Camp" doesn't feel stale, thanks to energetic performances from the young cast of unknowns. Vlad (Daniel Letterle) is the straight boy whose clean-cut good looks hide an ugly manipulative streak. Surrounded by fabulousness at Camp Ovation, Vlad sticks out and causes one counselor to marvel during his audition, "An honest-to-God straight boy!"
Vlad's roommate is Michael (Robin de Jesus), who gets a savage beatdown when he shows up at his prom wearing a dress. Completing the triangle is Ellen (Joanna Chilcoat, looking like a younger Laura Linney), who is such a repressed geek that she has to bribe her brother to be her prom date. Vlad's eagerness to please runs headlong into Michael's need for love and Ellen's insecurity, a collision that forms the emotional heart of the movie.
"Camp" takes place in a parallel universe where Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim represents the toppermost of the poppermost. The real-life Sondheim's appearance as himself causes a commotion comparable to what you'd expect if rapper Eminem turned up in the food court of a shopping mall. There are lots of running in-jokes, including a wicked "All About Eve" subplot and the movie's repertoire of incongruously "adult" show tunes. When young Anna Kendrick hoists a martini glass and screams, "I'll drink to that" on "The Ladies Who Lunch," it's as disturbing as it is funny.
Ultimately, however, the most memorable actor in "Camp" is Triangle music figure Don Dixon. He steals the movie with his supporting performance as has-been playwright Bert Hanley (no coincidence, Dixon's mid-'80s radio hit "Praying Mantis" gets prominent play in the soundtrack). A camp-counselor job at Camp Ovation is Hanley's last bounce, and Dixon portrays him as the essence of burned-out nastiness.
Hanley spikes his cans of Coke with minibottles of vodka, rejects every civil gesture and mostly hides behind dark glasses. When Vlad has the audacity to play one of Hanley's songs, he comes out from behind his shades to snarl, "Who are you people?" That leads to a rant in which Hanley sputters that the campers' dreams of stardom will only lead to "waitressing jobs and bitterness and the obsessive, pointless collecting of out-of-print original cast albums."
Alas, Hanley's subsequent and inevitable redemption comes a little too easily. It's almost disappointing, because the character is so much more fun when Dixon projects self-loathing hostility. But just like "Camp" itself, Hanley is good-hearted even when he's being catty.
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Dixon gets movie gig
By David Menconi, News & Observer
Aug. 2, 2002
Don Dixon has done plenty in his 33-year career as a singer-songwriter-record producer. A godfather of the Triangle music scene, he has recorded a half-dozen albums, hosted National Public Radio's 1995 Christmas special and produced albums for R.E.M., the Smithereens and many more. But in all that time, he has made just one hit record of his own: "Praying Mantis," a modest radio hit in 1987.
So he won't have to stretch much for his first movie-acting role. In an independent film called "Camp," he'll play a cranky one-hit wonder who teaches at an arts camp.
"The movie is about kids at a performance camp up in the Catskills, singing and dancing and going for Broadway," says Dixon, who lives in Canton, Ohio, nowadays. "I play a guy who comes in to direct some shows, a guy who had one big hit in his life and is now reduced to directing kids at a summer camp. I think the whole idea was typecasting for a washed-up, old, embittered has-been, and my name came up in a meeting somewhere. Go figure."
The writer and director behind the movie is Todd Graff. "Camp" will be his directing debut, but Graff has a long list of writing, acting and producing credits going as far back as the '70s-vintage children's television show "The Electric Company" (he was a cast member of the show's "Short Circus" from 1975 to 1977). More recently, Graff wrote and produced 1997's "The Beautician and the Beast" and appeared in this year's "Death to Smoochy."
Rehearsals for "Camp" will commence in mid-August in the Catskills, with a month of shooting scheduled to start by the end of the month. Graff's cast is mostly unknown newcomers.
Dixon does have theatrical experience with "King Mackerel & the Blues Are Running," his musical with Bland Simpson and Jim Wann. But "Camp" will be his first time on a movie screen.
"If you get called up out of the blue and asked if you want to be in a movie, that's hard to say no to," Dixon says. "I don't know what the music will be like, but it's a good script. I've read a lot of scripts, mostly for musical reasons, and I've seen a lot of good scripts get turned into bad movies. But I've never seen it go the other way, a good movie from a bad script. I don't know if I'll wind up with a song in it; they haven't mentioned that yet, anyway. But, whore that I am, I'll try to get at least one song in."
In the interim, Dixon and his old colleagues in the band Arrogance will play a reunion show Saturday at the Amphitheatre at Regency Park in Cary. The follow-up to the group's successful 2000 reunion shows, this one marks the release of "The 5'11" Record," a collection of Arrogance rarities. Due out Aug. 27 on Gaff Music, it includes the original version of "Praying Mantis" and a bunch of other choice cuts from the vaults.
