INTERVIEW: In ‘Happy Campers,’ paradise is created by community
Photo: Mary and Joe are both featured in Happy Campers, a new documentary from director Amy Nicholson. Photo courtesy of Grasshopper Film / Provided by EG PR with permission.
Amy Nicholson’s new documentary Happy Campers, now playing in New York City and opening in Los Angeles on Aug. 21, follows the many stories that populate a communal oasis on an island off the coast of Virginia. Here one can find a network of mobile homes with prime real estate, and the families who call this little slice of beach home depend on one another. They have built and sustained a community, which is so rare in the United States. Unfortunately when Nicholson hits the record button, the developers have also come knocking, and the longtime residents find themselves facing eviction.
Happy Campers is both ebullient and elegiac in tone because the filmmaker is able to emotionally and resonantly capture the final days of this working-class mini-town. By recording and not judging, Nicholson moves beyond stereotypes and stigmas about people who live in a so-called trailer park; instead she investigates what works so well within the confines of this unique living. What she finds is both startling and everyday, instructive and celebratory.
Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Nicholson, whose previous credits include Pickle, Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride and Muskrat Lovely. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
When did you first find out about this community on the coast of Virginia?
I was raised in Baltimore, and Chincoteague is one of those places you grow up going to during the summer. My dad retired down on the Eastern Shore, and one day while visiting him, I drove down to the island to wander around and take photos. It was the dead of winter when I first stumbled into Inlet View. The place looked a bit rough around the edges, but I fell in love with all the campers — the original tiny houses — most of which had clearly not moved in decades. They had been altered and added on to. They had kitschy decorations and seashell-lined flower beds, and each one had the first names of the homeowners on them — carved into wooden crabs or pelicans. Years later, we were having lunch on the island, and I said to my dad, “Let’s go visit that crazy campground.”
Did you have to work to gain their trust?
Well, initially I wasn’t sure about filming anything. Our first summer, my husband and I rented a cabin, and it was pretty funky. I love that scary feeling of strangeness because once a place becomes familiar, you never have it again. I was there for the first night by myself, so I decided to walk the road to look around. I went around a curve and accidentally intruded on a yard full of gregarious residents enjoying the sunset. Someone asked me who I was and what I was doing there — because they wanted me to hang with them! That was my first clue that Inlet View had magic. What I know now is that the fabric of that community was created from decades of memories and deep, deep friendships. But they welcomed me in as if I’d been there the whole time.
That fall, I bought the camper in spot C27, and we hunkered in. I didn’t start filming until our third summer, when we all got notice that the place might disappear. I should have shot more than I did, but I was having a blast.
What do you believe this story says about the United States right now?
Although this is not a traditional impact documentary, there are some big issues that I gently shoved under a magnifying glass. The film’s core themes are economic inequality and the fading American Dream. There was a lot of focus on billionaires escaping to their yachts during the pandemic, and there’s been plenty of reporting since about their ever-increasing personal wealth. I’m most concerned with the everyday effects — on everyday people — of the insidious, relentless march of capitalism and its ruinous impact on sense of place. The corporatization of everything is my own personal beef. It seems like anything that’s organically good in the world gets branded, repackaged and resold to someone with more money than the people who made it good (or preserved it) in the first place. I live in NYC where every brownstone in my neighborhood has been gutted and transformed into a trophy property. They look the same on the outside, but their soul is completely gone.
It has also been my goal to challenge audiences to look beyond class divides and meet people they might never cross paths with. You can learn a lot from a retired truck driver with a ZZ Top beard, wearing a mud bog shirt, if you take the time. We selected anecdotes and visuals for act one that purposely lean into established stereotypes. The idea being, we’d gradually shift those preconceptions. I’m both amazed and saddened by some of the comments we’ve gotten about the protagonists (many of whom are now my dear friends) from supposedly tolerant, open-minded viewers. And a lot of those assumptions are dead wrong.
How would you define this community? And is this sense of community rarer to find in the world?
Living for three years at Inlet View was life changing for me. It was an opportunity to experience a world where no one cares who you are, who you know or what you have. It was like going into a bubble where you’d be judged more for not stopping to visit or not waving at a neighbor than you would for being broke. Tammy would say, “There are rules, but there’s no rules.” I think the physical closeness, the fact people who like to camp in RVs are usually really friendly, and that those unwritten rules were formed over multiple generations, baked a certain openness into Inlet View that was palpable. We made an editing decision to exclude any obvious characterizations, but I can assure you that they were all the same. Come as you are, help anyone who needs it, offer whatever you have, look out for kids and the elderly, make the best of it, and be respectful. It’s so rare, it’s kind of hard to believe. I have been asked if I left out all the fighting and animosity.
What were the challenges of filming the documentary in and around these homes?
I didn’t know how to use a camera or record sound, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to bring in a crew — even a small one. I did a lot of homework to figure out a camera package I could (sort of) handle. I wheeled my gear around in a garden cart, which turned out to be a fantastic way to meet everyone. It’s always a bit awkward to explain to someone why you want to film them, but it’s a lot easier when you share both the love of a place and your mutual impending displacement. One of the biggest challenges I had was allowing people the space to enjoy their last summer. The idea of having to leave was understandably overwhelming for so many. My husband and I felt the same heartbreak. There were many moments I would have loved to have captured, but giving everyone room to process and/or have one last blow-out without a camera around was more important than logging footage.
There was also: living in a 23-foot camper, the raccoon that invaded my production shed (literally a shed), constant wind and vicious mosquitos. By the end, I was often filming in my bare feet.
What do you want audiences to take away from the film?
I hope this film isn’t written off as just another gentrification story. I hope it amplifies the need to recognize and respect basic human dignity. I hope it paves the way for more documentaries that maybe aren’t bringing attention to the latest dire social injustice, but are simply exposing audiences to the value of people or places they might never “see” (with a friendly sense of humor, of course.) And I hope just one person watches Happy Campers and comes to the conclusion that what you don’t need is as important as what you think you have to have; that consumption is a sad substitute for feeling comfortable enough to go to the neighbors in your pajamas, or sit around Joy’s kitchen table laughing at stories until your stomach hurts.
Fix yourself a plate. Pull up a chair.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Happy Campers, directed by Amy Nicholson, is now playing in New York City and opens Aug. 21 in Los Angeles. Click here for more information.
