“No good deed goes unpunished”: the movie production sued by Jessie Eisenberg
Having friends in high – or even high-ish – places can be of immeasurable benefit to an aspiring filmmaker. However, Jesse Eisenberg was so aghast at his increased profile being used to market a movie he barely appeared in that he decided to sue the studio responsible.
The actor was a known commodity when Camp Hell went into production, but he wasn’t quite yet a mainstream star, either. Having been gaining attention ever since his feature debut in 2002’s Roger Dodger, Eisenberg steadily gathered more notice through the likes of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale. Following that, two hit comedies in quick succession catapulted his star to new heights.
Adventureland and Zombieland were released within six months of each other in 2009. Beyond their shared earthy suffixes, it was further evidence that Eisenberg’s neurotic, awkward style was tailor-made for the comedic playground, whether it was a coming-of-age story or one predicated on the end of the world and ensuing undead apocalypse.
Eisenberg was familiar with Camp Hell writer and director George VanBuskirk after he’d produced the aforementioned Roger Dodger. Still, what he wasn’t prepared for was the sneaky way the home video release of the unremarkable slasher sought to capitalise on what was by far the biggest, most prominent, and acclaimed performance of his entire career.
Like so many B-tier slashers before it, Camp Hell didn’t make much of an impact at all when it played in cinemas in August 2010, thanks largely to the fact it was an amalgamation of a thousand different and equally formulaic terrors, 999 of which could justifiably be deemed superior. However, The Social Network sparked an underhanded idea in the marketing department, one which eventually made its way to court.
Eisenberg anchored David Fincher’s biographical drama on the origins of Facebook as Mark Zuckerberg, which ultimately secured him an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’. It may have hit cinemas after Camp Hell, but the latter’s impending DVD debut coincided awfully nicely with the post-Oscars bump that tends to greet many of the year’s most decorated films, with a May 2011 rollout pencilled in.
Brazenly seeking to strike while the iron was hot, Camp Hell was packaged and sold with Eisenberg’s face taking up almost the entire poster, with his name emblazoned above the title in giant letters. The only problem – which Lionsgate was unwilling to mention – was that he’s barely in the movie at all and is, in fact, the ninth-billed member of the ensemble cast.
Eisenberg definitely sat up and took notice, though, opting to sue Lionsgate for $3million in damages based on the fact he “is not the star of and does not appear in a prominent role in Camp Hell,” per the filing. As part of the motion, the actor revealed that he agreed to show up on set for precisely one day as a favour to VanBuskirk, only to get quite the shock when he discovered he was being shilled as the main attraction.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the lawsuit begins with an ominous intonation of “no good deed goes unpunished,” which was his way of drawing attention to the fact he worked for a single day on Camp Hell to lend an assist to a first-time director he’d worked with before in a different capacity. Regrettably, he was forced into mounting a legal challenge for false advertising when Lionsgate tried to repaint him as its focal point.
