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man camp

why this story?

Beyond a story about a bunch of booze fueled man-children acting like idiots in the mountains, Man Camp is, at its heart, a film about the extended process of growing up, shedding the roles we played as children, and the difficult process of learning that your parents are human beings with faults, needs, desires, and dreams of their own.
    It’s no secret that our generation, the Millennials, have had a difficult time stepping into adulthood, and the Mann Boys are right in the thick of some seriously stunted emotional puberty. This movie explores what it might be that’s turned our generation into a hoard of Peter Pans with beards, and what it might take to shake us out of childhood and into real life. While many films centered around millennials glorify this immaturity, this will be a film that pokes fun at it, while challenging our generation to move forward.

 

    Man Camp is a uniquely millennial story that confronts this issue by looking at a group of adult siblings that have no choice but to learn to see their mother as a whole person, outside of her familial role, when they walk in on her with a new man, getting ready to get down in a situation that has nothing to do with them. She’s not just a mom making PB&Js anymore, she’s a person who gets naked for other reasons than taking a shower. Over the course of the movie, they must confront what it is about this shift in perspective that bothers them so deeply, and whether or not that feeling is fair to hold on to. 

 

 


    Our story also deals with our tendency to turn those we have lost into false idols, in this case their dad, and what happens when we are forced to reckon with the fact that our dearly departed weren't always the saints we remember them as.
    While most movies dealing with loss and grief take place in the immediate aftermath, our story takes a closer look at where we find ourselves years down the road, and how dealing (or not) with that loss shows up over time. Maybe we try a little to hard to imitate their best qualities. Maybe it takes us a little longer to learn things on our own than if they had been around to teach us. Maybe, fearing loss, we avoid falling in love with a beautiful, kind hearted neighbor girl by pretending that she’s a physically deformed monster. Could be anything, really.

dead people are people, too
moms are people, too
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