When I look back on childhood, I realize that some of the best memories I have are from summer camp. There were the pillow fights, the scavenger hunts, the dance at the girls’ camp across the lake, and the zany hijinks we pulled during arts ‘n crafts. The look on the counselor’s face that time! And then, of course, there was my bunk-mate Rudy, who spent the first half of the summer dragging me along on zany escape attempts, but by Parents’ Day, we realized we were having the best summer of our lives!
Of course, it’s possible that I have internalized the unrealistic expectations set by my repeated readings of the children’s novel I Want To Go Home by Gordon Korman, a Canadian author whose books were the only non-comics that interested me as a kid. That camp seemed like a blast.
As for my actual camp memories, I recall a bench outside the mess hall that I always stuck my face up against for long periods of time because it kind of smelled like pancake syrup. There was a swimming hole I refused to go in, although it occurred to me some time later that it was probably named the “Meese Hole” after the owners of the adjacent piece of land and not because of an infestation by grammatically incorrect rodents. I remember an eleven year-old who was said to give out handjobs to younger boys, although I don’t think I knew what a handjob was at the time. That might be about all I’ve got, despite having returned to the same YMCA camp year after year. But, this stands to reason, as I only got a fraction of the true camp experience. Some kids were there all summer; I spent a week or two a year as a day-camper.
Each morning, I would get on the bus for the hour-long drive up the river to camp. We would rush through the standard pony-ride/ swimming/arts ‘n crafts/archery agenda and then return to town before homesickness set in. I think my Mom, who had attended the same camp in her youth, was disappointed I didn’t love it like she had and hoped, in vain, that I would eventually embrace the overnight camper adventure. But, every afternoon, I gave her a brief, reticent summary of my time at camp just as I would have had I spent the day at summer school instead. Or, at least that’s how it went until the day I told her I was going to be in the movie Krull.
Illustration by Clint Hardin
Just as a refresher, Krull, released in the summer of 1983, is today most notable for two things. First, it features a young Liam Neeson in an early, minor role that he clearly took only for the paycheck. This is, of course, long before he would go on to distinguish himself in films such as Battleship, The A-Team, and Taken 2.
Krull was also significant because it merged aspects of both epic fantasy and science fiction. This hardly seems like the world-shaking introduction of chocolate to peanut butter, but I have gathered that this was a big deal at the time. I can’t really say that Krull jams the two together in Reese’s Cup-like transcendence; it’s essentially just a standard hero’s quest tale with a prince and his band of swashbuckling guys versus The Slayers, alien invader worm-things with lasers. But on horseback. The movie opens with a narrator intoning the prophecy/spoiler that, “A girl of ancient name shall become queen. And she shall choose a king. Together they will rule the world. And their son will rule the galaxy.” I have to assume, however, that galactic rule would be dependent upon their son finding a mode of interplanetary transportation more effective than horseback.
All this is much more than I knew about Krull when our counselor herded us to the camp obstacle course one misty morning that same summer of ‘83. But Chip, the guy in charge of the course, filled us in on the basics with a movie poster as visual aid. Mostly, what I remember is that it prominently featured The Beast, leader of The Slayers and the major antagonist in Krull. His face, which looked as if a psychologically troubled child had tried to sculpt a bust of Darth Vader from day-old oatmeal, both horrified and fascinated me. I could neither look at it, nor look away, for too long.
Chip also told us about the Glaive, a mystical five-bladed throwing weapon, which Prince Colwyn would use in his fight against The Beast. As I recall, Chip had his own Glaive, although this doesn’t seem like a safe thing to have had around kids. Given what I’ve discovered from Google, there’s a chance that the portion of my brain responsible for memory is embellishing upon what was, in fact, an official Krull Glaive Frisbee, but let’s just say it was a Glaive.
I’m not really sure where I got the idea that I would actually be in Krull. Probably because Chip, who had decided to make the obstacle course Krull-themed, said something dramatic to set the scene like, “You are in Krull.” To me, this statement was not ambiguous.
The fact that there were no visible cameras didn’t seem strange. We young, inexperienced actors might find a busy movie set intimidating. Many of the “outdoor” scenes in Krull were clearly shot on a soundstage, but perhaps the director required so authentic a performance from the day-campers that these crucial moments would be filmed in the quiet woods of rural Appalachia. Or, more likely, things like the rudimentary logistics of moviemaking, such as the fact that the film was already in theatres, didn’t even begin to occur to a seven year-old. But, as someone who has ended up working in television, it’s become clear to me that even some adults have a tenuous understanding of media production.
Several years ago, I went with a producer to interview a man named Barry who had devoted himself to crafting an imaginary metropolis from paper and cardboard in the dusty basement of an antique store. Barry had hand-colored his massive model, painstakingly drawing hundreds of thousands of windows with ballpoint pen and meticulously assembling tiny vehicles in scale with the city. Given the lingering funk some might associate with outsider art, I don’t think Barry left the basement very often.
As we set up lights and camera equipment, Barry asked, “Why does a radio station need cameras?”
“This is going to be a TV interview,” the producer told him.
“I thought this was radio.”
“No. We’re with a TV station.”
There was a pause, then, “BUT, WHAT DOES A RADIO STATION NEED WITH CAMERAS?” Admittedly, Barry was maybe a little hard of hearing.
I did a few panning shots of Barrytopia, pulling the arm of the camera tripod with a heavy-duty rubber band.
“You’re using a rubber band,” Barry helpfully observed.
“It works like a shock absorber that helps make the motion smoother,” I explained.
“Why do you need a rubber band?! HA HA HA HA! BOING!”
Because I was perhaps even less media-savvy than Barry that summer at camp, I eagerly embraced my role in Krull. As best as I can recall, this involved jumping over some logs, ducking under others, running through some tires, possibly trying to climb something, and doing some put-as-many-people-on-the-tiny-platform-as-you-can teambuilding trustfall bullshit. As unimpressive as this sounds, it actually exceeds several of the stunts featured in Krull.
I returned to school that fall a jaded veteran of the film industry, and I used any opportunity to ask classmates, “Did you catch that movie, Krull? I’m supposed to be in that, but I dunno,” I shrugged. “I haven’t seen it yet.”
After a few weeks, my enthusiasm for the project died down, but whenever I would glimpse the hideous face of The Beast on the shelf at the video store, I would think, “Hey, sometime I should see if my scene made the cut.” It was years before this evolved into a realization that, given the absence of a director, lights, cameras, costumes, or a prop other than what might have been a Frisbee, there was a very solid chance that I was not, in fact, in Krull.
For a long time, I wondered why Chip integrated the Krull storyline into our obstacle course. Given the poster, the Glaive, Chip’s familiarity with the plot, and his enthusiasm for getting us to partially reenact it, the conclusion I first arrived at was that the movie studio tried to gin up buzz by sending Krull swag to places where kids gathered that summer. Years removed from this now, the real answer seems so obvious. Chip was just a nerd.
I knew dorks my own age; I was well on my way to becoming one myself. But I’d had very little interaction with the mostly grown-up variety. Back then, being a nerd was not something you would freely or readily admit to, but, orchestrating an army of seven year-olds in a Krull-themed LARP was like putting it up in blinking lights. Either professional decorum dictated that the other counsellors wouldn’t call Chip a dork in front of the campers, or maybe I just don’t remember it.
Thirty-ish years later, though, nerds have never had it better. Adults will proudly recall their geeky pasts and will comfortably wear that badge in the present. Massive fandom conventions pull in record attendance. Technology has caught up with imagination to the point where nerds can make movies for us other nerds and pull in brazillions of dollars from everybody else in the process.
So, of course there’s something of a backlash, much of it a reaction to the so-called “fake geek” phenomenon. A large portion of this hostility, a sticky, dark layer of misogyny surrounding a crunchy nougat of self-loathing, is aimed at young women, but many other newcomers and casual fans are also perceived to be interloping trend-hoppers, sporting the trappings of nerdiness like a hipster with an ironic moustache. Adults are actually squabbling over who among them may rightfully claim the nerd label, and, if pressed to argue for my own status, to some, I’d make a pretty weak case.
So many of the nerds I know (and I know a lot) are completely obsessed with what they love and their mastery of its arcana. I am not one of those nerds. I have a broad interest in the geek realm but lack the patience or passion to really drill down into much of anything. I’ve come to the realization that my continued interest in comics and monsters and action figures (and no I don’t play with them; I just arrange them in awesome poses and frequently swap-out their accessories) is a holding action against the pressures of being a grownup, and my enthusiasm has ebbed and flowed with the stresses of crappy post-college employment, episodic depression, job-hunting, relationships, car payments, marriage, bills, career disillusionment, buying a house, having a kid, fixing a house, fixing a house, fixing a house, selling a house, having another kid, and, goddamn, kids and houses, man.
Honestly, I feel that much of my geekdom is really just a retreat into nostalgia, a chickenshit refusal to plunge fully into the Meese Hole of adulthood. And that’s fine. I’ve mostly accepted this, although there are times I’m afraid I might be regressing into a Flowers For Algernon-esque idiot man-child. But, on the off chance that that’s the next thing to be hip, then I’m in pretty okay shape.
Chip dug Krull so much he would evangelize to anyone who would listen. Who cares if the congregation was captive and pre-adolescent, stranded without transportation in the Blue Ridge mountains? It would just have to do. I can’t help but feel a certain amount of envy for his zealousness; I would love to be obsessed with something other than my own anxiety. And then there’s Barry. I’ll bet Barry never needed to see a therapist.
“This skyline is seventy percent taller than New York City’s,” Barry boasted to me as he beamed over the paper cityscape.
“In scale…?” I attempted to prompt clarification.
“SEVENTY PERCENT TALLER!” Barry doubled-down.
I should probably amend that from “didn’t need to see a therapist” to just “didn’t,” but I digress. A man stuck in a basement can build a city. A teenager can send an army into battle. I still read superhero comics. Escape. Order. Obsession. The methods vary, but we all try to control something, even as so much else threatens to exceed our influence. When a nerd like Chip mustered his ragtag forces against The Beast, it may not have made the final cut, but that morning, at least, he was able to rule one little part of his galaxy. I can only speculate about what the other counselors thought of Chip. But, he had a Glaive, so who was going to fuck with him?
A slightly different version of this piece was originally published in Scene Missing Magazine. It was performed onstage as part of the True Story! Reading Series.
