Joe Camp, a Texas adman turned filmmaker who bootstrapped his way to a smash-hit with "Benji," the 1974 live-action film starring a shaggy-haired pooch, after being turned away by Hollywood studios, died Friday at his home in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. He was 84.
His son Brandon Camp said he died "after battling a long illness."
In a statement, Camp's family noted his "unwavering belief in the power of storytelling." That devotion, they said, "propelled him into a career that challenged and ultimately triumphed over Hollywood convention."
"Joe knows how to tug the heart strings," media executive and former Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg once said about him. "He's a very emotional guy, and for a filmmaker, that's a positive trait."
Camp's breakthrough movie grossed more than $270 million in today's dollars and spawned five sequels, not to mention television projects, toys, books and other merchandise. But it almost never made it to theaters when Walt Disney Pictures and a host of other studios passed on the movie after it had been shot in McKinney.
The cold shoulder left Camp with only one clear choice to get the movie in front of an audience: Do it himself.
"Everybody told me, 'You don't know anything about distribution,'" he told a Dallas Morning News reporter with a smile in 1987. "But then we didn't know anything about making a movie either."
Less than a decade before the film's release, the family was living a typical suburban life. Camp worked as an advertising copywriter and Carolyn, his wife, was a stay-at-home mom in Richardson.
But Camp had a childhood dream of making movies. He grew up on Disney films. "Walt Disney really was his idol," said his son Brandon, himself a director. "'Lady and the Tramp' was one of his favorite movies, and he began to wonder why there had never been a live-action version of 'Lady and the Tramp,' and specifically what he meant was a film in which the dog was truly the protagonist, not just a helper, or some sort of hero that went from one place to the next and pulled someone out of a well."
Studying the family's Yorkshire terrier, Benji, one night, Camp fleshed out his idea.
"I watched him react to whatever I was doing, to sounds outside," Camp said in 1987. "And I realized that dogs do talk. They talk with their eyes."
Joseph Shelton Camp Jr. was born April 20, 1939, in St. Louis. He grew up in Memphis with hopes of studying filmmaking at the University of California, Los Angeles, but his parents persuaded him to enroll at the University of Mississippi for at least two years. He tried to transfer, but his grades weren't high enough. He settled on a major in advertising.
After working at the ad agency McCann Erickson in Houston, he opened his own small ad outfit in Dallas, Mulberry Square, which later became the entity through which he produced the "Benji" films.
While working at Mulberry Square, he made a habit of waking up at 4 a.m. each day to work on screenplays. The first draft of "Benji," he told The Dallas Morning News, came together in a single one of his early-morning sessions.
"I did it in longhand because I couldn't type as fast as the story was coming out," he said.
The response from potential buyers was not encouraging, so Camp shelved the script and focused on his day job. But in 1969, a 10-minute film Camp made promoting the city of Denton led to another project. Eventually, he got a job offer as a commercial producer/director. Two years later, he formed Mulberry Square Productions, and after a period of early struggle, landed a major investor. Then it was off to the races.
Camp tapped veteran Hollywood animal trainer Frank Inn to help him find his star. By the time he arrived at Inn's home, he had already auditioned hundreds of dogs. Inn showed him 250 more. On the way out, a 13-year-old Mutt named Higgins caught Camp's eye.
"What can that dog do?" he asked Inn.
"He can do anything," Inn said.
Rescued from the Burbank Animal Shelter, Higgins had been a regular performer on the sitcom "Petticoat Junction" for seven seasons. After Inn put Higgins through his routine, Camp signed the paperwork.
Back in North Texas, shooting began on a limited budget. "He couldn't afford dollies. He was shooting with wheelchairs and whatnot," said Brandon. Crews shot the opening scene of "Benji" 84 times, eventually settling on take 79.
"I'm a difficult person to work with," said Camp. "I'm an absolute perfectionist, and I believe in putting one step in front of the other, detail by detail."
"He can be curt," said his wife Carolyn, a producer on the "Benji" films who handled other related business until her death in 1997. "But it's more of an attitude. He gives people the feeling that he expects more than they produced. It's almost intimidation. And yet, when it's all over, he praises those people to the sky and calls on them to help the next time he has a job to do."
After a strong reception in Dallas, Camp took the movie "market-by-market," according to Brandon, assembling media campaigns in individual U.S. cities before eventually taking the movie overseas in a strategy that would be virtually impossible to execute today.
"'Benji' was a local success city by city. It wasn't like this global box office phenomenon," Brandon said.
Camp went on to turn "Benji" into a franchise with "For the Love of Benji" in 1977, "Oh Heavenly Dog" starring Chevy Chase and Jane Seymour in 1980, 1987′s "Benji the Hunted" and 2004′s "Benji: Off the Leash!"
"After he found success, he had been offered any number of movies to direct in Hollywood, had been offered all kinds of opportunities that would have forced him to move his family to Hollywood. And he rejected those offers. He loved the South. He loved Texas, loved Dallas. That's where he wanted to raise his kids, and he just refused to get sucked into the Hollywood machine," said Brandon.
Camp is survived by his wife, Kathleen, his two sons, Joe and Brandon -- both filmmakers -- and his stepchildren David, Dylan and Allegra.
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