Cannon’s ‘pitch’ to Comets: Find your passion

Long before writing for an award-winning television show, penning a “perfect” script, and making her directorial debut, screenwriter, producer and actor Kay Cannon roamed the halls of Reed-Custer High School.

Cannon, a Custer Park native and 1992 Comet alum, paid a visit to her alma mater last week, stopping in to visit with students to talk about Hollywood, working hard, and finding her inspiration for the box office success Pitch Perfect.

Cannon is one of seven children raised in Custer Park, where her parents still live.

Her accomplishments at RCHS include math team, business club, student council, speech team, NHS, Illinois State Scholar, volleyball, basketball, All State track, and Homecoming Queen.

She followed her time at RCHS at Lewis University, where she earned degrees in theater and English, and later a master’s in education.

Cannon took part in a Q and A session with her former teacher and coach, Deb Bugg. Mrs. Bugg is now the only teacher still at RCHS to teach Cannon, and the pair have remained close over the years.

While the success of Pitch Perfect thrust Cannon into the spotlight, success didn’t come quickly. Before becoming a writer for Emmy award winning 30 Rock, penning the Pitch Perfect series, and making her directorial debut this year with  the comedy Blockers, Cannon did what a lot of performers do: Worked hard and lived on a limited budget.

Cannon took classes at Second City and other improv schools, worked as a performer at Second City in Chicago and Las Vegas, and struggled to find work in Los Angles before getting hired on as a writer for 30 Rock.

“I was really poor for a long time, for a lot of years. I was just working so hard, taking classes, writing, and you’re not getting paid for any of that,” Cannon said. “And so, at some point I was teaching improv, that was my day job, I’d make it so that my day job reflected what I wanted to do. I had waited tables at the Macaroni Grill when I was in college, but when I was out of that, I just wanted to be doing all stuff that had to do with the arts and comedy, and so I just worked really, really hard. I was just really, really poor.”

Cannon said writing was her way of finding her voice in a field saturated by talented performers seeking limited roles.

“I loved working hard and I started writing for myself out of necessity, to write how I could be viewed as an actor. So, I started writing roles for myself. Then my writing got attention, and I got hired as a writer,” Cannon said. “I owe Tina [Fey] my career, really. She’s always been my mentor, she’s broken a lot of glass ceilings and kind of dragged me along with her.”

Cannon added that she takes inspiration from real life for the characters and situations she creates for the screen.

“I always try to write based off people I know,” Cannon said. “A lot of the Bellas from Pitch Perfect were from the team of mates that came from my high school experience or college experience. I ran track and played volleyball, and so I’m really familiar with that all lady group dynamic. I name pretty much all of my characters after my family members, my oldest sister is Stacy, so there’s always a Stacy in everything I write… I pool from things that happen in my real life.”

Cannon even added that a memorable scene, when the character Fat Amy is hit with a burrito in Pitch Perfect, comes from personal experience. Cannon said that very thing happened to her at Lewis University when, out for a run one day, riders in a passing car tossed a burrito at her, striking her in the chest. Cannon said the situation was so funny, she had to find a way to write it into a scene.

Asked if she ever knew that she’d make it big, Cannon said she still doesn’t look at her life as a full success story.

“I still don’t ever think of it in that way, at all, all I knew is that I wanted to be in comedy. That was something that I really loved, and I really connected to, and I never strayed from that focus,” Cannon said, adding that her unrealized goal was to be cast on Saturday Night Live.

Cannon is now a producer/partner at K&L Productions with fellow producer Laverne McKinnon.

Her advice for the next generation was simple.

“I think that whatever you decide it is that you like, whatever it is, try to find a thing where it doesn’t feel like you’re working a day in your life,” she said. “I worked a lot of jobs that I did not want to do, all with this focus of doing what I’m doing now. Are there long days and the work is really hard, yeah, but it doesn’t really feel like work because I love it so much.

“Find that thing that you love and then really work hard. A lot of people have a different definition of working hard, they think that it’s hard work when they’re not actually working hard, and I would just say, you just have to push yourself. Push yourself and have focus,” she continued. “It takes a lot of sacrifice to get the things that you want, but it’s so great when you get it.”

Cannon sat down with about 25 students for an intimate question and answer session after the presentation, discussing the transition from a small town to Los Angeles, goals for the future, working with celebrities, and what inspires her.

“Really try to figure out who you are,” she told the teens. “If you want to express yourselves, figure out what it is that’s inside you that you want to put out there.”

A shadow box featuring Cannon and a handful of her accomplishments since she left Reed-Custer is now on display at the front entrance of the school.