Cam Cannon was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta. As a child, he dreamed of being a smuggler whose best friend was a furry creature called a Wookiee. But in 1981, he saw “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and decided that he wanted to write movies. He’s never written one that anyone has seen, but he continues to work at it. He lives in Los Angeles where he enjoys plotting to force Judd Apatow to read one or more of his screenplays and spends time with his wife and two kids (his own, not Mr. Apatow’s), usually watching TV or hanging out at any number of L.A. skateparks.
Cam Cannon
Let’s Not Offend Hollywood’s Delicate Geniuses
by Cam CannonIn 2006, while accepting the Academy Award for playing a husky, grizzled version of himself, George Clooney famously gushed, “…this Academy, this group of people gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be a part of this Academy. I’m proud to be part of this community. I’m proud to be out of touch.”
My apologies for bringing up old crap, but Clooney’s statement, especially the part about how he’s so proud to be out of touch, is one of the most bafflingly odd things I’ve ever heard coming from Clooney, who’s also famous for telling anyone who’ll listen that everybody tells him all the time how brave he was for making a black and white movie about the red scare. It’s very revealing that Clooney would say this, to cheers, a mere three years after a child-rapist was handed an award by that same Academy. (more…)
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Movies We Like: ‘The Bad News Bears’ (1976)
by Cam CannonMorris Buttermaker was a fair to middling minor league pitcher in his day, whose claim to fame was once striking out Ted Williams in a Spring Training game. Now, he’s a whiskey and beer swilling, filtered cigar chomping pool cleaner who’s at once soft-spoken and gruff. You love him already, don’t you?
“The Bad News Bears” is subversive from the start, its characters realistic and flawed. Of course, the engine driving this train is the late Walter Matthau, whose Buttermaker was hired to coach a team of misfits who are so bad at baseball they’re only in the elite league because one the parents sued the league. Most of the Bears’ parents are conspicuously absent at practices and are rarely heard or seen at games. Leaving them out of the movie is a stroke of genius – we’re constantly wondering why one of them didn’t step up to coach the team. (more…)
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Michael Moore Goes After…Himself?
by Cam CannonLast weekend, Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott reviewed, among other films, Michael Moore’s latest farce, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” I don’t know their track records or political leanings, but Phillips for one noticed that Michael Moore is growing tiresome. He didn’t mention the blatant hypocrisy of a multi-millionaire who has reaped the benefits of capitalism calling for its demise, but still, he’s getting tired of the schtick, which leaves me hopeful.
A.O. Scott raved about the movie, and I agree on one hand that Michael Moore has finally chosen the most logical topic for his kind of film. At least Michael Moore has the nerve to finally say it: he doesn’t like capitalism. It’s absurd, it’s ridiculous, it’s akin to Lieutenant Kaffee rising and sleeping under the very blanket of freedom that Colonel Jessep provides, then questioning the manner in which he, Colonel Jessup, provides it. I’m sure Goldman Sachs would rather Mikey just thank them and go on his way… but I digress… (more…)
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Brad Pitt and Atheist Evangelism
by Cam CannonSo for the second time in about as many weeks, I’m hearing from Brad Pitt on religion. First, there was the absurd, “Eighty percent agnostic, twenty percent atheist” comment, and now he jokes that he’s running on the “no religion” platform in the New Orleans mayoral race. The leap from being atheist to being against religion fascinates me.
Why can’t you simply not believe in God? Surely atheism can exist without a hatred of religion. It’s particularly disturbing that the disdain atheistic non-religionistas have for religion is pretty much limited to Christianity – from my experience. I knew an atheist who was offended when someone at work played a CD by Christian rock band “Third Day.”
But I can sympathize to a degree, after all my son believes in this nut that dresses in a red outfit, is friendly with reindeer, and gives kids presents. Crazy, I know, but my kid runs around singing about this obese clown coming to town, or some nonsense — and IT JUST OFFENDS THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!! (more…)
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‘Selling Out is a Bad Thing’ and Other Absurd Cliches
by Cam Cannon“You made a movie about pimps and there ain’t no black people in it? I don’t know whether to slap you or kiss your face.”
Eddie Murphy said something like that to Ron Howard on SNL back when Howard was making the transition from Opie Cunningham to big-time Hollywood auteur. And now I know how Mr. Murphy feels: Fox has green-lit a sitcom called “Rednecks.”
When I saw the title, I winced, then thought, “I wish I could write for that show.” This illustrates the relationship I have with stereotypes and character-based clichés; I keep them at an arms length embrace. It thrilled me to see white trash characters north of the Mason-Dixon line in “Gone Baby Gone.” But you change the accents, swap Boston, MA for Austell, GA, and I’ll act offended while secretly admitting the portrayal is dead-on. “Rednecks” it turns out, is set in Buffalo, NY. Let the head-scratching ensue. (more…)
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What About the ‘R-Word’?
by Cam CannonBack before the show “Rescue Me” went completely off the rails, there was a great episode where Denis Leary and the boys in his firehouse were ordered to go to sensitivity training. The training session went awry when the racially-mixed fireman started keeping score on which ethnic group had the most offensive nicknames. They were talking volume and level of offense taken at the utterance of such epithets.
Me and my racially group of friends had these same kind of conversations, except that we weren’t racially mixed, we were a bunch of young dumb white guys. But I had black friends confirm our findings: there’s not really a racial epithet you can sling a white person’s way that carries the venom that a word used over-and-over-again by rappers carries for African-Americans. But my thinking has evolved.
There is a word you can call a white person that carries with it all sorts of horrible implications, and that word my friends is RACIST. (more…)
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Obama’s Jedi Mind Trick: We’ve Been Put on Notice
by Cam Cannon
That’s right. Obama’s putting everyone on notice. Dare not oppose him and bet not against him. Enough of the chatter.
I keep waiting for the liberal cynics to step up and be, oh, I don’t know…CYNICAL about this guy, but maybe George Lucas is right. Maybe Obama is a Jedi. Because when there is cynicism, it melts…
“Henry Waxman’s in charge of the health plan?” says the cynic, “Oh, Lord. He’s an idiot! This thing’ll never happen!”
Obama appears, waving his hand like Obi-Wan Kenobi, “I’m putting you on notice.” (more…)
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What Political Correctness Reveals About the Politically Correct
by Cam CannonJohn Nolte’s review of “Brüno,” a film I haven’t yet seen, tackles Sasha Baron Cohen’s previous film “Borat,” a film I have seen about twenty times. That being said, Nolte is dead-on in his appraisal of the film: it found favor with the left-wing elitists because it poked fun at us regular folk. But in praising “Borat,” they revealed something about themselves, something I’ve known to be true since the summer of 1994.
That was the best year for movies that I can recall. That summer alone we had “Forrest Gump,” “True Lies,” “Speed,” and everyone was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Cannes winner “Pulp Fiction.” And we also had “The Lion King.” I remember the critic for my campus newspaper, The Red & Black (Go Dawgs!), panned the film, noting that the “Circle of Life” song, sung by a gay man, was really about keeping groups of people, particularly minorities, in their place. I thought this was bizarre and brought it up with some of my classmates. (more…)
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‘Idol’ Reaction Proves Immutable Law: LLTL
by Cam CannonLIBERALS LOVE TO LOSE. When liberals lose, it enables them to feel more superior than they naturally feel. It affords them the opportunity to bitch about injustice and unfairness.
When they win, hell, it was a fair fight. They never, while basking in the glow of a victory, say, “Whew. Thank God the unfairness worked out in our favor this time!” or “The voting machines finally worked!”
They also hedge their bets before a contest, positioning themselves as the enlightened open-minded ones and their opposition as gun and religion loving inbreds before the actual contest has gone down, so in the event of a defeat, they’re prepared to act like victims rather than losers.
I’m referring, of course, to the phenomenal “American Idol” finale, an event that capped off an unbelievably good season of TV. From “Fringe” and “Idol,” to “Friday Night Lights” and “The Office” — and finally to “Lost,” I’ve loved the stuff on the tube this winter/spring. I treated last night’s “Idol” fantastically cheesy finale as a season ending celebration of great TV. (more…)
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The Left Loves Them Some Crazies
by Cam CannonIs it me, or do the Code Pinkers reeeeeally need to get laid?
I don’t mean to judge them too harshly, but that’s what we’d say about a dude that flipped out in public like those two whack jobs at the White House Correspondence Dinner who harassed Donald Rumsfeld and his wife as they entered the building – as invited guests. I don’t know who these women are – and if they’ve lost family in Iraq or anywhere else, God Bless’em, but…damn. They’re the type of crazy that makes you realize the word crazy is overused.
Cindy Sheehan reportedly saw it and said, “That’s some crazy-ass women right there.” Roseanne Barr was heard to reply, “No sh*t Sheehan.”
Crazy women are more off-putting than crazy men. That’s why “Obsessed” was such a hit, men are scared of crazy women. Like the Rumsfeld-Code Pink video, it featured two women, one crazy from the get go. The other one was rational, but by the end, said, “I’ma show you crazy!!” (more…)
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The Inevitable Apatow Backlash
by Cam Cannon
You could feel it in the air as Apatow basked in the glow of his 2006 double whammy, the hilarious “Knocked Up” and “Superbad.” By the time 2007’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” rolled around, the backlash was gathering steam.
I told a friend I’d seen it.
“Is it just more of the Judd Apatow formula,” he sniffed. It was, I admitted. But I like the formula. I like it a lot. And not to get too Harry Knowles on everyone, but I’ve liked it for a long while.
I liked “The Ben Stiller Show,” loved “Heavyweights” and what I saw of “The Larry Sanders Show.” Heck, I even chuckled at “Celtic Pride” and saw “The Cable Guy” opening weekend. Aside from the latter, most people didn’t see much of Apatow’s work, but those who had loved most of it. (more…)
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Episode IV: The Phony AIG Outrage
by Cam CannonNothing tickles the funny bone quite like phony outrage. You know, like Laurie David pulling up alongside an SUV and shouting down the driver for destroying the environment, when Ms. David herself is on the way to catch a private jet to a global warming conference in, I don’t know, somewhere where it’s unseasonably cold.
And we all remember Professor Kerri Dunn, who in response to racist vandals trashing her car, organized and led vigil after vigil denouncing hate speech. In voicing her outrage toward a covert group of white male racists on campus (them again?), she worked the community into quite a frenzy before, oops, it was discovered that she was the culprit. She vandalized her own car, I guess as some sort of publicity stunt. (more…)
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Liberal Bait and Switch
by Cam CannonI got a question about these embryos we’re going to destroy in the name of science. Are they white, or black? Hey, it don’t matter to me; they all look the same. But I really don’t want to get into hot water later. What kind of hot water? Well, the kind William Bennett found himself eyeball deep in when he said if “…[Y]ou wanted to reduce crime, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.”
Outrage, hysteria, fire and brimstone followed, most of it from Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, who demanded an apology. Never mind the fact that Bennett had clarified, “That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do,” this was a situation that, like slavery, apparently, could only be rectified with an apology. What good would an apology do, anyway? He still said it. It’s not like court, where it can be stricken from the record. And would it really satisfy Reid and Pelosi? Of course not, they just wanted to see a talk radio host begging forgiveness. (more…)
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Attacking Rush Limbaugh
by Cam CannonIt’s not that I’m offended by the idea of Obama pointing every barrel he can find in the direction of Rush Limbaugh. Seriously, that’s fine. What offends me is the lack of wit and charm in the attacks.
Obama got the ball rolling when he harumphed, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.
Some of the RINO’s fell for it, but to me RINO’s are like the kids in school who were on the fringes of being popular, but were nobody’s idea of cool. The cool kids let them hang around, because they knew they could talk the RINO’s into throwing rad parties, and the RINO’s would be the ones who got flak from the parentals. Sweet! (more…)
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Boycotts Are Funny
by Cam CannonWho else finds protests and boycotts a little, I don’t know, funny?
I remember when I realized that protests and boycotts first began to amuse me. There was a Domino’s Pizza down the street from my house in suburban Atlanta. This must have been about 1985, and some pro-abortion group got wind that the dude who started Domino’s gave money to anti-abortion causes. Well, this stuck in their collective craw, and they went and made them some signs, and proceeded to picket the location near my house.
Then the anti-abortion groups decided they’d counter protest, and they made up some signs of their own, and there everybody was holding up conflicting signs and ranting and raving. Thankfully, nobody got hurt, but more to the point, not one mind was changed as a result of this protest. My daddy, God rest his Georgia-Bulldog loving soul, pointed out the obvious, which is, “Nobody goes to Domino’s to order a pizza.” (more…)
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