There’s a moment in “The Floaters” when Nomi (Jackie Tohn) would seem to be speaking on behalf of the film’s director Rachel Israel, trying to inspire the collection of teens in front of her by appealing to their more rebellious side at Camp Daveed. At a place where there’s no doubt raging hormones and specious supervision, this kind of motivation usually isn’t a concern, but at the Jewish summer camp where Nomi has been instructed by her friend Mara (Sarah Podemski), who recruited her to work with the kids after being understaffed, “We need safe Hava Negila BS” to please the donor class in their end-of-summer stage production and the campers seem content to follow suit, the punk singer-turned-counselor encourages the youth to be a little more daring with this opportunity to show their creativity, preaching “Art doesn’t need to be palatable to be good.”
Israel may not have written these words herself — the script for “The Floaters” is credited to Amelia Brain, Andra Gordon and Brent Hoff from a story cracked by Hoff and siblings Becky, Lily and Shai Korman, the last three of whom were inspired by their own experience at a camp such as Camp Daveed. However, the words still speak to the same salty streak that kept the director’s debut “Keep the Change,” a love story between two people on the autism spectrum, from ever becoming saccharine. As with that film, Israel shows a refreshing refusal to play it safe with the summer camp comedy when presenting a community that doesn’t always get much attention from the big screen, but is clearly worthy of it when shown in all its dimensions, introducing Nomi as the spark plug to bring the rest of the Camp Daveed to life.
Her arrival couldn’t come at a better time for the camp, which could use the $30,000 up for grabs in a competition with the rival Camp Barak over who can put on the best show as part of their version of the Maccabean Games, but Nomi is only available after her band ditched her as their lead singer to go on tour with an influencer who offers a greater guarantee of filling concert venues. As part of picking herself up, she’s put in charge of lifting the spirits of the kids known as “the floaters,” which as Mara puts it are the ones that haven’t signed up for any group activities and less inclined to follow the rules, reminiscent of the type of teen Nomi once was and probably still is, hopeful that there’s a common bond there. Although “The Floaters” keeps it kosher, going so far as to spend plenty of time in the kitchen where there are separate stations for dairy and meat prep, it is nonetheless tackles a few sacred cows elsewhere as Nomi enables the campers to see the value in their voice when it is often underestimated, particularly Jonah (Judah Lewis), the chief author of the play.
When the story calls for big personalities, “The Floaters” has assembled a gregarious ensemble starting with Tohn and Podemski and coming to include Aya Cash as the camp’s rabbi, Steve Guttenberg as a fellow counselor and Seth Green as the head of Camp Barak, and Israel brings out the best in them, offering them the room to run as she herself uses the full extent of the fairgrounds to play, staging ice cream cartography contests during the day and dance parties at night. The fun is infectious and bound to spread amongst the crowd at this year’s Bentonville Film Festival where “The Floaters” is set to make its world premiere and en route to the Geena Davis-founded festival in Arkansas, Israel took the time to talk about her attraction to the material, filming at the real Camp Tel Yehudah in New York and the one shot that it took the whole production to get right.
How did this come about?
I was connected to the producers through my agent, so it was just a great alignment there. I never went to Jewish summer camp, so it was a new experience for me, but we got to shoot at an actual camp in Barryville, New York where three of our producers [Becky, Shai and Lily Korman], their parents met there and they went and they’re sending their kids there [now], so it was this great connection to that world that I hope comes off in the screen and allows it to be a really authentic experience.
On “Keep the Change,” it was clear how much you let the environment play into the production. What was the process like here?
Yes, I think the word for me and my process is immersion. I don’t like to be in the thinking space as a director, particularly initially. I love to just be in the feeling space, so having a world that brings all of its different textures and emotions there and absorbing myself in it is really how I get started. How I approached “The Floaters” is by spending time at the camp and feeling what that world is like and then with our incredible cast, we really lucked out in some really strong talent and everything that they brought to the film into a full dimension.
You’ve mentioned that you wanted to show the diversity of the Jewish community. How did that guide the casting process?
That was something that was the center of my heart as a Jew wanting to see — to represent the Jewish community in a way that feels true to me, which is that it is diverse and it is wide and it is a welcoming space and I wanted people to see themselves in the film.
There are some scenes involving hundreds of campers and the place has so much character, as you can see in the lodge where they rehearse the play and there were a number of paintings. Was that something you brought or was the camp actually in session?
In our edit, there’s a great sleight of hand in incorporating some footage that we were able to acquire from the camp itself of actual campers with our shooting where we could use the background actors that we could afford to use, so hopefully those materials mesh together well and it feels like it did because you feel like there were hundreds of campers there.
We had a wonderful production designer Jordan Janota, who did so much with a tight budget. He amplified that world so beautifully. But we did have this great camp to work with, so the room that you’re referencing, which is called the Beit Am, it is gorgeous and filled with all this history of all of these plaques. We added some of our own, but yeah, but we really did benefit from shooting in an actual camp and all of the rich detail that they had there.
Was there a particularly crazy day of shooting on this?
There’s a scene that happens in the film, which involves an art piece that one makes out of ice cream, and I feel that scene was the absolute craziest. There’s chaos in that scene that we captured. Filming it also felt incredibly chaotic because it has a lot of different components that we had to accomplish in that day. Throughout the whole run of the production, there was one shot that when we first shot it, we hadn’t got of our hero Jonah, played by Judah [Lewis], looking at the whole scene [of this ice cream cartography contest] happening, standing under a tree. And we spent the majority of the production, [thinking] when are we going to get that shot? The weather had to be right, so that it matched. Eventually, it was very close to the last day of shooting and we got it. Then we were like, “Okay, the movie’s in the can.”
Was there anything that happened that you may not have expected, but you actually could embrace?
So much of that. For our cast, there are backstories that some of our actors created for themselves that come out in the course of the film that were not written in the script, but it’s their depth and intelligence as actors that they came up with this for themselves and it creates some of these beautiful little character arcs in the film that I won’t give away. You’ll have to watch, but that just gives me the greatest joy.
It really is sprawling and you’re able to fulfill everybody’s character arcs. Was that difficult to balance in the edit?
That is a trickier thing of balancing an ensemble and keeping characters alive through a film, but it was just so fun that I don’t think of it being particularly difficult. We had such great actors to work with and they made it so delightful.
What’s it like getting ready to share with the world and to have under your belt? I’ve heard from filmmakers, the second feature can feel more difficult than the first.
I’m so excited and so proud. Going to your premiere feels like driving your kid to a great college and getting to experience it with an audience is super exciting. And I’m also very proud and excited as a filmmaker to see the different stories I’ll get to tell. I know my range and what I can do, but I think feels very different from “Keep the Change” and the next one that will come out will feel different from that, so it’s just fun to explore the different sides of yourself.
“The Floaters” will screen at the Bentonville Film Festival on June 18th at 5:30 pm at the Fermentation Hall at the Momentary.