Saturday, April 6, 2013
Jacob Roebuck Talks about His New Film, CAMP
The movie CAMP is screening in theaters nationwide and
should be on screens through May. CAMP is the story of Eli, a ten-year-old
child who has recently entered foster care. He attends a week at Royal Family
Kids Camp, where counselors try to provide children in foster care with a week
of safe fun and unconditional love; unfortunately, Eli’s counselor Ken signed
up for the wrong reasons. Ken is exasperated at Eli’s behaviors, but as he
comes to understand Eli’s experience, his heart softens and he begins to form a
bond with Eli. While Ken transitions from selfish ignorance into true caring,
Eli transitions from mistrust to trust. In my recent review of CAMP, I recommend it for adults involved with or considering foster care, and their
friends. CAMP is playing at select theaters, so check to see where it’s playing closed to you.
Adoption at the Movies’ Addison Cooper spoke with writer and director Jacob Roebuck about the stories he drew from while
writing CAMP and his hopes for the film.
Addison: Jacob,
you said in a press release that there’s no other medium like a movie that can
entertain
Jacob: As a
filmmaker, people are paying me ten dollars or eight dollars, or whatever, and
they’re paying us to entertain them for two hours, and that’s my job. If I do
my job well, I get the opportunity to discuss something that is important to
me, with my audience. We really hope that the film causes people to dig a
little deeper, and to say, “What’s going on in my community with these kids,
and what can I do to help?” The first time that I sat down and watched this
film with a group of people who weren’t already involved with Royal Family Kids
Camp, there were a couple of people who came up to me afterwards, almost immediately,
and said, “Hey, I want to go to camp.” I think that the great thing about Royal
Family is that a lot of people get involved with camp and lots of people don’t
[otherwise] get involved with foster kids.
The film is primarily from the perspective of – and we
journey with – Ken, and that is somewhat on purpose, because we want the audience
to admit we’re like him in some ways. I don’t know if you know anybody, but
very few people who I know did Royal Family because they were just awesome
people, at first. We all got our arms twisted, especially some of the guys.
Someone dragged us along; we knew it was the right thing to do, yadda yadda
yadda, but our hearts weren’t really into it. That’s true of my story, and some
of the guys I’ve met through the film. The first year, somebody made me go, or
my wife made me go, or my friends were in, so I went. But it becomes part of
their life, part of their rhythm every year going to camp. And I think going to
camp is huge in so many ways.
Obviously, it’s a huge benefit for the kids. It’s one week,
and you can’t reverse years and years of abuse in one week, but you can mark a
turning point, you can give a kid hope, you can give a kid a new perspective, a
different handle, a different way to view the world. I think one of the most
telling things, and I’ve heard this story so many times, is that a kid will ask
a counselor, “How much do you get paid?” Because the kids know, whether they’re
well meaning or not, their social workers are getting paid, their teachers are
paid, their foster parents get money, you know, everyone who cares about them gets
paid. If you think about it, what’s the most important thing that our parents
give us? It’s unconditional love. You know – that you are worth something. When
they find out that the counselors are there, just for them, it shows them that
they have meaning to somebody – that they’re more than just a way for somebody
else to make money. So it’s huge for the
kids, of course.
But the other thing I think is really important, especially
if you look at the overall challenge of adoption, and I know that varying
places have various success and not success with kids who’ve been abused or
neglected and kids who are in the system, but the reality is, if you look at
the numbers, if you want to look at tomorrow’s prison inmates, go look at
foster kids. That’s just the reality of it.
The other thing is something that happens to the adults. It’s
very difficult for me to go and sign up to be a CASA, or a Big Brother / Big
Sister, or major programs. Those programs are huge commitments. I’ve actually
wanted to be a CASA for some time; I still haven’t figured out in my schedule,
how to make that happen. But adults can say, “I can do a week,” if they can’t
meet a kid every other Sunday. Camp is a week. What happens is – and this is
why camp is important to the kids and the adults – is it opens the adults
hearts to the kids, in a way that you can’t do otherwise, except by spending a
week with them. And out of that, and it doesn’t happen every time, but tons and
tons of volunteers end up taking the next step. They become mentors, they end
up as foster parents, they end up adopting the kids. They do more because their
hearts have been opened. Ultimately, we want kids that can be adopted, to be
adopted into loving homes. That’s the best thing for them. That’s the top of
the funnel. You go down, and there’s mentors, etcetera. I view Royal Family
Kids Camp as the wide end of the funnel. It’s a way to get a lot of people
involved in these kids’ lives. Some of them can only do a week, and that’s
great. But it does open their eyes and open their hearts to what more can be
done for these kids. We want more camps to get started, we want more volunteers
to go to camp, so more kids can go to camp. And it’s not just Royal Family,
there’s other great organizations that work with kids, too. Everyone that works with this demographic can
relate to the film, because they can relate to the kids. That’s a long answer
to your question…
Addison: No, that
was wonderful! So, Ken came in as an investment advisor, Samuel’s a retired sergeant.
In the credits, the volunteers were from all sorts of walks of life. In your
experience, what makes a good counselor?
Jacob: Oh gosh. I
guess the most important thing is, at Royal Family, once you realize that you’re
not their parents, you don’t have to be their teacher, you just get to be their
friend. We get a lot of teachers as volunteers, and they think it’s great; in
the school year, they don’t get to play with these kids. To make a good
counselor, that’s the first thing you’ve got to let go. You have to realize you can’t fix this kid in
a week. And that’s not your job; your job is not to fix them.
Because you can’t.
And the most important thing in a counselor is that they’re someone that has
this understanding, that I can’t fix this kid’s life in a week. And a lot of
people want to. We’re over-achieving Americans, and they want to go in and fix
the problems, you know? Availability is important; I think the other thing that
makes a good counselor is that you can’t go into it with a lot of your own
baggage, wanting to get something out of the relationship. I think a lot of
people are like, “I’m going to go, and be really nice to this kid, and then I’m
going to get a lot of affirmation; I’m going to be a hero to this kid.” That
happens sometimes. But a lot of times, it doesn’t. In fact, this one girl came
back and worked at her camp, and she’d been a kid there. And she told the story that she’d never said “thank
you” to her counselor. She was angry at her counselor the whole time. It was a
protection mechanism for her. She didn’t want to get close to people. Now, camp
had a profound effect on her, but her counselor didn’t know it at the time,
because she was mean to her!
We have the story of Samuel in there, based on a true story,
as part of his back-story – that he spit on his counselor when he was a kid
there, and never said thank you to his counselor. So if you go as a counselor expecting to get something,
you know, kudos from kids, they will sometimes, but if you’re counting on that,
you might be in for disappointment. A lot of times, these kids just can’t trust
anybody, so they automatically don’t like the focus, and they push you away, or
they’re mean to you. That’s why it’s important to be able to say, as a
counselor, “Hey, we’re just here to have fun and to love them.” When you start
to try to mold their behaviors like a teacher or parent is supposed to do, then
you have an adversarial relationship and it makes it difficult.
Addison: One of
my favorite scenes was how Ken was talking to Tammy about Eli, saying, “You can’t
just throw out right and wrong, there’s rules that you have to follow,” and
Tammy coming from a spot of understanding where Eli is coming from is able to
kind of scale back and say, “Well, no,” and be more lenient.
Jacob: Yeah; he’s
not working from the same set of experiences. But if you understand their
motivation… I’ll tell you this story real quick… The first time I went to camp,
there was a kid there named Jose, and he was mean! He was like a bully. He
bullied the adults and he bullied the kids, and I said, “I hate this kid.” I
didn’t say it out loud, just to myself. And midweek, we’re in the pool with
them, and I’m talking to him, and I noticed marks on his legs, and I almost
said it out loud, “Hey, what are those marks on your legs?” Then I realized
they were cigarette burns. And in that moment, my whole worldview changed,
because how quickly I was to label this guy, “I hate this kid; he’s an annoying
little brat;” but then I understood, the people that were supposed to love him,
like your parents love you… They screwed him, and in ways you can’t imagine.
You have no idea what this kid has gone through. You’re not in a place to judge
this kid. It really broke my heart. It also broke my heart for me on one level,
because I can’t believe I was such an idiot.
We tried to put it in the movie – in the scene with the
magic blanket – that sometimes something happens, and it triggers some fear,
and all of a sudden it’s like it’s out of left field, and you understand that
seriously bad things have happened to these kids.
Addison: Yeah;
one of the things that I would counsel the foster parents that I worked with
was that, yeah, this kid’s behavior doesn’t make sense to you, but from within
their world it does, and as a parent, or a counselor, or a social worker, or a
teacher, part of your job is to really enter that kid’s world, and understand
the meaning of everything they’re doing.
Jacob: Yeah,
there’s usually a reason for their behavior, especially the extreme behavior. There’s usually a reason for it. And it’s not
just, “fair’s fair.” But when you have an understanding it gives you the
ability to have compassion and a way to respond to the kid in a way that’s
positive. It’s not like, “Jose, you can go and bully those other kids because
you’ve always been bullied by your parents,” But at the same time, [when you
understand,] you approach that situation a lot differently.
Addison: I think
sometimes people worry that if they try to understand why a kid’s doing what
they’re doing, they’ll be making excuses for him and condoning his behavior,
but really, making excuses and understanding are two definitely different
things; one encourages irresponsibility, and one actually allows for
responsibility.
Jacob: Yeah.
Yeah.
Addison: Many of
the characters in the film pray, there’s an allusion to the story of Joseph and
his brothers, and I’ve seen as a social worker that many foster parents who
navigate the system with the least amount of stress are those who view what
they’re doing as ministry or at the very least, as something selfless. What’s
your experience of the role of faith in camp, care, and kids?
Jacob: My main
experience with kids is through camp, so I can only tell you what I’ve seen,
but I think a pretty interesting thing is the faith aspect - in some ways, it’s
harder. And we touched on it in the movie a little bit. Because if you believe
in God, then you have to ask hard questions, “Why do you let this happen?” For
the adults, it really forces you to confront your faith... What do you really believe? Which I think is
great! It’s important for people to understand what they believe and why they
believe it. That’s one of the good things about camp. And certainly, the people
I’ve worked with, the faith that everyone can be redeemed, I think is
important. I think that every human is in the image of God and has a quality
that can be redeemed no matter how badly they’ve been damaged. There is hope
for them.
When I talked about it with a church group, I said, “Hey,
these kids have been marked by darkness, they’ve been marked by the enemy –
they’ve been marked with abuse and marked with neglect, and their marks are due
to their experience of evil in the world. And what we do at camp is we try to
mark them with life and mark them with hope. We try to give them a different mark and help
them have that chance. I always get a great laugh in the credits when the
lifeguard says, “It’s like you’re punching the devil in the nose.” I think we
all struggle with evil in this world – what is evil? I think if you have faith,
in the Christian faith, the belief is that there is evil – and well, OK, this
is something we can fight against. I think that’s an important concept, versus
if you don’t have a faith it’s like, “Oh, this is just a human system, it’s
just cause and effect,” then there’s no way to win.
Addison: One
thing I wanted to ask really quickly, I know in the film, Eli’s birthparents
were negligent and abusive, and even the father showed up unauthorized at camp.
Have you experienced any redemptive stories involving birthparents, or is that
good news yet to come?
Jacob: My wife
worked at a pregnancy center and a lot of the girls in these situations and the
guys with them are from messed up places, or they got pregnant when they were
fifteen or sixteen. When I got to meet some of these kids – they’re just kids,
and they’re scared. It’s a very challenging thing when someone who’s not
equipped to be a parent becomes a parent. If you don’t have the proper tools,
if you don’t have a model, how can you be a parent? No one taught you to be a
parent. We all learned to be parents from our parents, and people around us.
But these moms have been in abusive situations with their own parents, and now
they’re having a kid, and they have all these things that they want to be doing,
so I have a lot of compassion on those parents. I’ve seen a couple times when
these kids have given up their babies for adoption, and that to me is the most
courageous thing. If you’re in that state, you don’t have strong, developed character
to make hard decisions that hurt you, but they’re for the best. But those that
were able to do that, and make the decision, and say, “I think this kid will
have a better life. I’m not at a place to be a parent, I can see that. I can
see how that’s going to be bad for me and bad for the kid.” I think those are
the amazing stories that I’ve seen. I’m not a social worker, I don’t interact
with a lot of caseworkers and parents, but I spent a lot of time with my sites
at camp. One thing we do want to do in the film is say, “Hey, even the parents –
at one time, they were kids, too, and they were in that situation, and this
problem has a cyclical nature.” I think it’s about 35% of foster kids grow up
to abuse their own kids. That’s a damning statistic. With the film, we don’t
want the parent to be a stereotypical, drunk dad. In the first scene with Dad, he comes up and
hugs the kid.
Addison: Oh,
yeah, and Eli responds to him with happiness and joy.
Jacob: And even
though he beats him, Eli still calls him. Kids want to be loved by their
parents. The
parents were in similar situations that the kids are. The Mom character
was interesting. I don’t think she was inspired by it, but one of the stories I
thought about was - in Southern California, there was someone on our church
staff who was a foster parent, and they had foster kids, and the mom died in a
terrible way. For some reason, she jumped out of a moving limousine on the 405.
Think about these stories – what was his mom doing in a limousine? You realize that, wow, these people have
complex issues. And now these kids, their mom’s gone, because she was out
partying, or high, or committed suicide – we don’t know. Just trying to deal
with life. I guess for me, that’s one of the things with the parents, we didn’t
want them to be just evil people. There’s more sides to them.
Addison: I think
you captured that – they’re people with feelings and histories too. So, last
question, after families watch the film, how can they connect with Royal Family
Kids Camp?
Jacob: There’s a
website we’re doing right now called HelpFosterKidsNow.org – and we’re also
adding other organizations local, because a lot of places don’t have a Royal
Family Kids Camp. I think the important thing is, the first step, is I really
want groups to come to the film, even if it’s a Bible study group or whatever,
then they dialogue about it, then they do something about it. If it’s a couple
or an individual, the reaction is internal and they don’t dialogue about it,
and if you don’t verbalize it, you won’t do something about it. You’ll just
think about how the film affected you. Hopefully groups go see it, and they
say, “Hey, what are we going to do about it now? Are we going to go to camp?
Are we going to start a camp? How are we going to help? And that’s what we want
people to do – first dialogue, and then, as a group, take action, whether it’s
a family, or a church group, or whatever.
Addison: On my
site, I usually end my reviews with questions for families to wrestle with, and
I think that’s a great one for families and groups to wrestle with after seeing
CAMP is, “What can we do to help, and what’s our responsibility?” Jacob – I’ve
really enjoyed talking with you.
Jacob: I’m always
to help out in any way I can.
Jacob Roebuck is the writer and director of CAMP,
currently screening in theaters nationwide. Learn
more about CAMP at www.thecampmovie.com
and more about Jacob at Roebuck Media's website www.roebuckmedia.com
Addison Cooper is a licensed clinical social worker and therapist. He writes Adoption Movie Guides at Adoption at the Movies (www.adoptionlcsw.com)
*Most photos from The CAMP Movie's Twitter feed @CAMPMOVIE
*Photo of Jacob Roebuck can be found @JacobRoebuck
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Find this interesting? Make sure to check out Adoption at the Movies' review of CAMP.
You might also like Adoption at the Movies' interview with Nia Vardalos about her book, Instant Mom.
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