Meet Me in the Middle of the Lake, My Love

Writer/director/actor Jacob Medjuck's debut film, Summerhood, opens with a question from an undersized, overly stressed 9-year-old called Fetus (Lucian Maisel): "Does camp seem like prison?" He receives a response from his friend, Reckless (Scott Beaudin), as Reckless pokes him in the ass with a squash: "No, but this does." With this reference to prison rape, a handful of camp pranks, and a love story involving a little girl named Sundae (Reva Timbers), Medjuck reshapes his own childhood experiences at summer camp, effectively modernizing the themes in coming-of-age classics like Wonder Years and Stand by Me.

"I wrote it as a nostalgic piece for my generation, [using] our music. So we could remember what it was like in the Eighties," says Medjuck, who based much of the film on entries from a Pink Panther diary he kept at age 10. One entry about a childhood crush developed into the main plot involving Fetus and Sundae.

"I'm a fan of 24 and action films," says Medjuck. "I love a suitcase nuke and a bomb and when a bus can't go under 50 or it will blow up. But that isn't my day-to-day life. I don't have that in my life. What I do have is: I like girls, and they don't like me. I try to face them, and it's embarrassing." Fetus' challenges mirror Medjuck's, and the film comes to a climax during an equally autobiographical moment when Sundae takes Fetus' hand for the first time. "I've been through college," explains Medjuck. "And I've been on the circuit and around the world. I've seen pictures of the Playboy mansion and done everything else you can do as a grownup. And I'll get married soon. But very little compares in my life to the first time a girl took my hand."

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Saturday, Oct. 18, 7pm, Bob Bullock IMAX Theatre.