Written by Jonathan Klotz | Published
Everyone knew who Ernest was in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. Playing the role of veteran actor Jim Varney, a dim and accident-prone character who had starred in local commercials along the Gulf Coast before becoming very popular, Disney executives decided to make him the focus of a feature film. Ernest goes to camp It launched one of the most profitable comedy franchises in history, spawning nine new films in 11 years, but today, the movie that started it all has been erased from history. The reason he was locked in Disney’s basement was due to Hollywood’s long history of casting Native American characters and how one of his friends deceived Walt Disney himself.
Your standard 80s summer camp adventure
The long exile of Ernest goes to camp He is not related to Jim Varney, who died in 2000 and was, by all accounts, a decent human being. The film is a standard 1980s summer camp movie, following a group of outcast kids called the Second Chancers as they attend Kamp Kikakee, a struggling summer camp run by Chief St. Cloud, a Plains Indian. It’s the usual plot between outcasts and evil industrialists, with Sherman Crader wanting to shut down the camp and extract its resources, though it’s elevated thanks to Varney’s portrayal of Ernest as the camp’s maintenance man.
If the far-fetched depiction of Native Americans is the only sign against it Ernest goes to campwill be broadcast today; After all, Ernest goes to AfricaAvailable on AppleTV. The problem is not that how The film depicts Native Americans from He plays Chief St. Cloud, that’s the problem. Iron Eyes Cody, a 1940s Hollywood Western star, plays Camp Chief St. Cloud, and the controversy surrounding him led to the film being blocked.
Iron Eyes Cody Scandal
Ernest goes to camp This wasn’t the first movie that Iron Eyes Cody played as a Native American, and you probably know him from the famous “Crying Indian” commercial about littering. Iron Eyes Cody, a close friend of Walt Disney, was a Hollywood favorite for Native American roles, but in 1996, it was revealed that his real name was Espera Oscar De Coti, and he was Italian. This was after he spent decades living as a Native American, wearing “traditional” clothing in his daily life, and fooling everyone, including Disney. Espera denied the allegation until his death in 1999, although his family provided a baptismal certificate in his real name.
While Jim Varney’s portrayal of Ernest has had diminishing returns over the years, it’s unfortunate that his hit film, one of the surprise comedies of the 1980s, has been locked in the Disney vault alongside him. Song of the South Through no fault of his own. Disney produced Ernest goes to camp Under the Touchstone label, and was created by then-CEO Michael Eisner and Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, which, combined with Walt Disney’s close friendship with Iron Eyes Cody, made the film a PR nightmare. For a brief period, the film was available on DVD and Blu-Ray, but those print runs ended more than a decade ago, making it difficult to find today.
The importance of being Ernest
Nevertheless Ernest goes to camp It’s not streaming, despite a brief moment last year when it was released on Hulu before a Disney executive realized what they’d done, but other Jim Varney classics are available. In fact, fans of the character will argue that the first film is one of the worst due to Ernest being more naturalistic and not quite the live-action cartoon Varney would play as he would later be, particularly in Ernest goes to prisonWhich some consider the best in the series. Hollywood has given up on comedies, and we’ll never get another franchise like Ernest, although Larry the Cable Guy has attempted to do so, but that doesn’t mean he has to bury the past, regardless of how modern audiences view him.