JULY 4, 1997 GAY PEOPle's ChronICLE 23
EVENINGS OUT
Gay boot camp satire is a love story with a good laugh
Butch Camp
Directed by Alassandro de Gaetano Drexel East Theater, Columbus
Reviewed by Kaizaad Kotwal
The word camp can connote something very masculine and reeking of testosterone, as in military camp or survivalist training camp.
STEVE BECKER
Paul Denniston attempts to endure the physical abuse of Butch Camp.
On the other hand, the word camp also suggests something flaming and outlandishly dripping with satire.
What happens when both meanings of that word collide is the basis of Butch Camp.
In Butch Camp we find a perplexing world set in Chicago, and filmed for the most part in the city's Boys Town gay neighborhood. The hero, Matt Grabowski, knows he's gay, but is
so strait-laced that in his presence a bouncy perm would go limp.
Grabowski's world is shattering around him as his roommate takes off with all the furniture, and his boss-who later turns out to be a cross-dresser-is threatening to fire him because of his performance at the bank.
The last straw comes when Grabowski is attacked by a serial gaybasher. He decides to take things into his own hands, and heads for a camp where gay men who have grown up with all the hurt and hate of being called weaklings and sissies can get a spine-lift. The camp is run by a real task-master named Samantha Rotweiller, who promises to whip her cadets into shape in eight weeks.
Rotweiller's mission is to take Grabowski's "H & R Block butt" and turn him into a selfconfident gay man who can take on the "heterowhores" of the world.
On his journey, Grabowski runs into one apparent hetero-whore" named Rod Cazzone. But Cazzone is no whore-and certainly no
one only wishes there were more of her in the film.
STEVE BECKER
humor and its fair share of nudity and sex.
hetero. The film follows these two as they Judy Tenuta and her class of butch campers. come to terms with what it means to be gay and fall in love in a real way for the first time. The film is clearly low budget, but a valiant effort nonetheless. While it plods along due to some unwieldy directing and monotonous editing, the love story and Judy Tenuta's Rotweiller are well worth the price of admission.
Tenuta, best known for her stand-up routines, takes this role over the top and there's nothing to stop her. She camps it up, dressed in a neo-fascist outfit of deep red and black camouflage fatigues and a white vinyl bustier. Her trademark voice and accent are well used in this film, as well as a delightful in-joke about her accordion, much like someone who gets glee out of scratching nails down a chalkboard. She has the funniest lines, and
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Chicago actors Paul Denniston and Jason Teresi play Grabowski and Cazzone respectively with a delicate balance of vulnerability and slapstick humor. Denniston's Grabowski is funny, awkward and boyishly charming.
Teresi gives Cazzone the right touch of machismo, mixed with a touching inner awakening. Together their chemistry is hot, and a nice counterbalance to Tenuta's brash and bold barking.
The film has many subplots and supporting characters, from Cazzone's girlfriend who always falls for gay men, to Grabowski's clubdancer friend and cross-dressing boss. This film has a menagerie of characters, plenty of
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Butch Camp is an urban tale of gay love and sexuality wars. There are no victims spared, and the director attacks everyone just the same. This is also a film of trying to find power at an individual and a collective level. While Butch Camp tries to get political at times, it doesn't work because it doesn't blend in with the extremely tongue-in-cheek tone of the rest of the film. Nevertheless, as Pride celebrations have just wrapped up across the country, Butch Camp affirms the need to be fabulous in a perplexing and not so perfect world.
Kaizaad Kotwal is a Chronicle contributing writer living in Columbus.
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