FILM

Camping it up
Documentary on gay teen Christians has noble goals but fails as compelling cinema

JOEY DiGUGLIELMO
Friday, August 15, 2008

Sometimes artists, whatever the medium, have such noble intentions that knocking their creation feels curmudgeonly.

Who’d want to blast a documentary about a summer camp that helped rural Midwestern gay teens having crises of faith? Not I, so let’s get this straight up front — hats way off to the organizers of the gay Christian camp featured in “Camp Out,” a 78-minute 2006 documentary that was finally released on DVD last week (it was screened locally at the 2006 Reel Affirmations gay film festival).

It’s obvious from watching the movie that these gay camp counselors, primarily Rev. Brad Froslee, had the teens’ best interest at heart when he and a few other gay religious leaders hosted the kids at Bay Lake Camp in Deer Wood, Minn., in the summer of 2004.

Ten gay and lesbian teens, primarily from Minnesota and Wisconsin, spent five days together trying to reconcile their spirituality with their homosexuality. Many felt shunned from their home churches and needed a place, they said, to rekindle their inner spirituality.

So while the camp no doubt was a positive experience all around, the decision to make a documentary of the week backfired. It’s a tedious, sometimes-embarrassing bore to sit through, almost as painful as sitting through someone else’s home movies. Great times don’t necessarily translate into great cinema.

“Came Out,” directed by Kirk Marcolina and Larry Grimaldi, feels like amateur night at the film festival. There’s no particular story to be told, no momentum or climax to the proceedings and no resolution. We’re left fumbling through what feels like hours of haphazardly sequenced events that prove what a skill big-time networks bring to the table when they present reality shows like “Project Runway” or the now-defunct “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.”

It’s obvious the “Camp Out” creators were going for that reality show vibe but it proves elusive. The movie’s one truly touching moment — a scene where Froslee describes his home church ordaining him despite the denomination’s condemnation — is only indirectly related to the camp.

It is mildly entertaining fun getting to know the teens. Christine, a then-16-year-old Minnesota lesbian, is clearly the star. She rivals Rosie O’Donnell on the charisma meter and, though knowing her in real life would probably be wearying, she enlivens the proceedings immeasurably. The directors were wise to keep her front and center.

The most surprising thing about the movie was probably unintentional — “Camp Out’s” most lingering quality is the realization it brings that gay teens are just like straight teens (only they’re gay). They inevitably develop crushes on each other, form cliques, razz each other about day-to-day trivialities and have wide emotional pendulums that often leave them reeling as they experience the highs and lows of budding adulthood.

Manic depressive Tim, who appears to be struggling with transgender issues, develops a crush on hottie Jesse, a then-17-year-old and the gay equivalent of the jock everybody falls for in high school.

Purple-haired Scancy, a then-17-year-old lesbian who eventually passes on Christianity for Wicca, is like a dozen girls everyone knew who relish their fringe-y identity. Thomas (no last names are disclosed) keeps out-geeking himself whether it’s via painfully earnest on-camera confessions, ballet routines or leading group prayers and chants.

The overarching problems here are three-fold — the teens and counselors, save Christine, are not dynamic enough to anchor a documentary (there’s a reason landing on a reality show is such a rigorous process), the movie doesn’t have anything to say and is so poorly paced and constructed it would trip over its point if it had one.

Much was left dangling — how do the ministers reconcile the scriptures with their being gay? How do they convey that to the teens? Was this a one-time thing or did the camp continue? And what, exactly, were the leaders hoping to accomplish?

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