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How does your faith affect your filmmaking?

Camp: Without the faith, and without knowing that God is in control and that he is going to do with this what he wants, I'd be a basket case. So that's the key. God continues to amaze me because of the way he directs things, even when folks aren't listening. It's a constant reminder to me that I perhaps sometimes should pay more attention.

The Benji website said test market audiences overwhelmingly loved the film.

Camp: Everywhere we go, the people love this. Adults love this, which is very important because adults are the ones who are, supposedly, in control of kids' lives. And so it's important to me that they get the message of this movie, too. We've had a lot of good response to Benji movies in the past, but never anything quite like this both from an audience standpoint and from a critical standpoint, because Benji movies have never been big favorites with the critics. At best I'd say we probably split even.

I hear Benji's sidekick, Shaggy (who plays "Lizard Tongue" in the movie), is from Chicago, not far from our offices. How did Benji and Shaggy work together?

Shaggy as 'Lizard Tongue'

Camp: They were great. They both live with us now. And the biggest problem that we have is they like to play and Shaggy has a very coarse coat, and Benji has a very fine coat. When Shaggy gets a hold of her, she just turns into one big, huge mat. And believe me, we discourage the kind of roughhouse play that they like to do, but they do it anyway. And we have two other dogs, two cats, and three chickens, and so it's something of a zoo at our house.

What are some of the challenges of working with animals for a movie?

Camp: I've been doing it for a long, long time—working with the emotions of dogs and so forth. The biggest challenges came from other circumstances—like heat. We were shooting in Utah, and they had the hottest summer in the history of Utah—a long string of days over 110 degrees. It was just ridiculous. And we're sitting there trying to keep Benji's tongue in her mouth so she can act.

We understand you're very involved with shelters and homeless pets.

Camp: We've had several benefits for shelters around the country where we go in and do a screening of the movie. They then bank the money from the screening to benefit the shelter. We have formed the Benji's Buddies Foundation that we will be devoting time to, after the movie. The Foundation will focus heavily on branding dogs in shelters as "Benji's Buddies." What we find is every time we put Benji and media together, adoptions go up. The problem is when you go away, they're right back down. Benji's home shelter in Mississippi had the biggest month in its history right after she was adopted. In fact, they emptied the entire shelter. So, what we want to do, through corporate sponsorship, is develop programs with a continuing message going out to folks; so that when that spontaneous moment happens, they will think of the shelter first rather than last.

When you first pitched the Benji idea more than 30 years ago, it wasn't that well received, but you made it successful anyway. How have you dealt with the criticism?

Camp: I think that's pretty much the story in all of the Benji films: Don't give up. And if you believe strongly enough in what you're trying to do, and you have a strong and faithful belief in God and believe that this is what he wants you to do, then you'll find a way. When you come up against a wall, you've got to find a way. You've got to dig under it, go around it, go over it, start chipping away at it so you can get rid of the bricks, something. You don't just walk away.

Is Benji in store for more adventures?

Camp: That all depends on August 20th. We beg, we plead, we ask, we cajole people to get out there on that first weekend, because we as independents don't have a Shrek 2 that we can hold over the exhibitors' heads. We have to do well the first weekend, or it will be gone before word-of-mouth has a chance to build up.

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Related Elsewhere:

Benji: Off the Leash!	Printer view