The Feedback: Amy Nicholson on Embedding in the Community of ‘Happy Campers’

Though veteran director-producer Amy Nicholson has crafted feature-length films (2012’s Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride, 2005’s Muskrat Lovely), she first appeared on my radar in 2016 with her memorable short Pickle, which was nominated for an IDA Documentary Award and the Cinema Eye Honors, and went on to be featured in the New York Times’ Op-Docs as well as on the Criterion Channel (alongside Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven no less). And while Nicholson’s latest work of cinematic nonfiction does include her trademark approach of “chuckling along with” (never at) her sometimes offbeat characters, Happy Campers is actually much more elegiac in tone. This is understandable since this 2023 DOC NYC debut follows the final years of the soon-to-disappear blue-collar community of Inlet View, an RV park off the coast of Virginia that the director herself embedded with (i.e., bought a camper and moved in); and has since been sold to developers looking to cash in on its multimillion-dollar locale. But rather than focus on any battle against The Man (spoiler alert: there is none), Nicholson instead chooses to train her lens squarely on the longtime denizens to be displaced, many of whom have been summering there for generations and have morphed into one big loving family. And thereby capture a view money can’t buy. Documentary recently caught up with Nicholson, fresh off the film’s festival run, to learn all about Happy Campers, which has journeyed from a 2022 DocuClub NY work-in-progress screening all the way to acquisition by Grasshopper Film. It plays theaters in NY and LA this month.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.