Surfing Channels with Cubbison

Lifelong moviemaker/lover/protector, Cameron Cubbison has been writing consistently for Poptimal.com since its inception, contributing more than 150 pieces on all things film and tv. He has been published in several film journals and has worked on film and video shoots all over the country.

A longtime resident of both Colorado and Washington D.C., Cameron currently lives in Boston, where he is finishing his final year studying film at Emerson College. He is writing his senior thesis on how the Rambo films blend frontier mythology, cultural revisionism and the structural and archetypal elements of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces. He’s hoping Sylvester Stallone will read it and offer Cameron a job working on the next Rambo movie.

Cameron is also putting together his first feature, an action movie about a military washout and a construction worker who get into all kinds of trouble trying to help an illegal alien find her missing sister. Investors are welcome!

By this time next year he will be a permanent resident of L.A  He loves dogs (especially his Chihuahua Chaco, who doesn’t wear sissy outfits and is as tough as they come), detective novels, Batman, Scooby-Doo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Darkwing Duck and eating cold Chinese food in his bathrobe.

He will never watch Donnie Darko no matter how many people tell him to, and is deeply chagrined by what reality television, texting and online social networks are doing to America. Some of his idols are Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Christopher Nolan, and Humphrey Bogart.

When he’s not making/watching/reading/writing about movies, Cameron enjoys rock climbing, camping, pogo stick riding, amateur boxing and martial arts, and pretending that he’s still in the same shape he was in during the ten years he spent as a competitive gymnast.

His favorite movie genres: action, Westerns, and crime dramas.

His favorite tv genres: procedurals and dramas.

His current coverage: House, Bones, Dollhouse, Chuck, and The Amazing Race.

In his own words—Cameron’s thoughts on . . .

The Decline Of The Modern American Action Movie: Most of them aren’t about people anymore. They’re rather soulless enterprises that have forsaken character development and themes for big honkin’ visual effects. And they’ve tossed credibility right out the window, they’ve just gotten too big, too ridiculous, too far-fetched. Lethal Weapon was about real, evolving people with complex emotions and inner conflict, as was First Blood and Die Hard and Cliffhanger and Face/Off. Even flogging boy Michael Bay used to care about characters (as in The Rock and Armageddon) before the money went to his head. Action movies need to get back to their original core values: real people doing real stunts in extraordinary situations. I hope to help nurse the genre back to health.

Defending Kevin Costner: I’ve actually gotten into fistfights over the years defending him and the choices he has made. I think he is a real class act and a criminally underappreciated talent. He has a sort of Zen stillness to him; he communicates so much about his characters just by how he moves. Look at how much you learn about his characters and what they’re going through in The Bodyguard and For Love of The Game just through his eyes. He reminds me of Gary Cooper and Steve McQueen—just real cool, decent guys. And he’s the only superstar who never made a paycheck movie. He’s never made a single sequel; he never tried to cash in on a franchise. Passion drives every choice he makes both as an actor and a first-class filmmaker. He was weaned on the epic film, and he loves to make lengthy narratives that give the characters time to develop. It’s not his fault if people don’t have attention spans.

The Lack of Any Worthy Young Stars: Orlando Bloom, Tobey Maguire, Ewan McGregor, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zac what’s his name…they’re all pretty boys and they have no juice. I can’t stand any of them. This new generation of so-called stars can’t hold a candle to any of my guys.

Why Westerns Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Die: The Old West, the frontier days . . . they weren’t just a period in our history that is receding further and further into the past. The frontier was a state of mind that is still so important to who we are as Americans. The West was about self-reliance, it was about packing a saddlebag, mounting a horse and changing your life. They’re not just history lessons, they’re an exciting and still ripe with potential form for making movies. They were the first action movies in a lot of ways.

Why You Shouldn’t Go With The Flow: I’ve always thought that was a really dumb saying. In any movie, when a character falls into a river, do they come to the surface and smile and say they’ll just go with the flow? No! They start paddling like hell in the other direction, against the current. You go with the flow long enough, you either go over a waterfall into a pit of jagged rocks, or the sewer.

Ten Favorite Movies In No Particular Order: Rocky, Lethal Weapon, In The Line of Fire, Dances With Wolves, Die Hard, As Good As It Gets, North by Northwest, Batman Begins, Man on Fire, Open Range.

You can read Cameron’s articles here.

Read about last week’s Featured Writer: Jaimie Campos