Fame and Fortune

So I've had this blog since last January and I haven't done this yet so I hope you'll forgive me. I promise this blog will not turn into a "Cameron is so cool and amazing" type of blog dedicated to all things cool about me (even though it kind of already is).

If you've known me for any length of time, you know that I've always "joked" about how I want to be famous. In fact, the line I'd use was "In seven years you're going to need a VIP pass just to see me." I started using that line about 10 years ago and if you've seen me lately, you know that you did not, in fact, need any sort of special permission and/or paperwork to see me.

I met my friend John Maxim (previously Henderson... you should ask him about THAT story if you haven't yet) while serving in England on a mission for my church. Our meeting is a funny story in and of itself, but I won't go into that here. John and I learned quickly that we both had a mutual love and respect for all things cinematic. This friendship blossomed into a passionate love triangle between me, John, and the movie theatre.

John and I both knew that we wanted to be famous and we felt the best way to achieve our goal was to be extremely entertaining. So we started out by paying $4000 to Century 16 movie theatre in Salt Lake so we could put up an advertisement on the big screen as part of their commercialized slide show playing before each movie. We got quite a bit of feedback from this attempt. We both started getting phone calls from people we hadn't heard from in years. They just wanted to tell us that they'd seen us on the screen before their movie. It was this taste of fame that made us want it even more.

We decided to make a movie titled Out of the Blue: Based on Actual Events. When Universal didn't call us and offer us a $5 billion dollar budget within two weeks of finishing our movie, we decided to try something else. We moved on to drawing a comic strip called "Out of the Blue". This comic ran in dozens of college newspapers all across the country for free. We didn't want money. We wanted people to know us and laugh at us and be entertained by us. This comic strip was the closest we'd come to accomplishing our goal. We started hearing people talking about our comic on campus. We received emails about our comic and we even had a few people write letters to campus newspapers trashing on our comics. It was awesome.


When we didn't get offered millions of dollars to continue our comic in thousands of newspapers around the globe, we moved on. A new radio station had just kicked off and John told me about how they didn't have a morning show... it was just a regular DJ. So one day (and I still don't know how John talked me into this) we went to the station, uninvited, and told the receptionist that we were their new DJ's for a morning show and that we were starting on Monday. I'm pretty sure we thought it would show some initiative and confidence if we introduced ourselves like that. The receptionist called the owner of the station down, because I guess we were pretty convincing and she didn't realize we being presumptuous. When the owner arrived, we knew we couldn't stutter through our introductions so we said the same thing we'd said to the receptionist... except this guy knew better. Needless to say, we were kindly asked to leave the premises.

We decided to try TV. I stumbled across a lame as hell movie review show on the government owned channel 17 in Weber County. It was pitiful. I forced John to watch a few episodes with me and we shook our heads in frustration as we watched these two imbeciles crash and burn over and over and over again as they talked movies. We knew we could do better.

We called the owner of the station. We told him we wanted our own show. He wouldn't let us do a movie review show since he already had one (that totally blew) so we pitched him a show called Odd Jobs, starring us. He was hesitant, but told us to film a few episodes and give them to him... so we did. He loved it. He loved it a lot. We couldn't get episodes to him fast enough. Literally. He wanted a new episode every week, but it took us at least a month to film and edit each episode. For that reason, Odd Jobs eventually died.

Now on to the point of this post. Recently John and I discovered that the movie review show that we coveted is no longer on the air. We immediately called Channel 17 and secured our spot as the new movie reviewers. One of the conditions of doing our movie review show was... get this... the owner wants us to film at least 4 episodes of Odd Jobs a year. That's how much he loves that show.

So John and I are in the process of getting our movie review show, The Cinematic Experience, on TV. The process is tedious, but in the meantime, I was hoping that YOU, my blog readers would do me a solid*. The Cinematic Experience is currently on You Tube and we're uploading new reviews every week. Would you be so kind as to log on and watch some of them. We try to keep them each under 5 minutes so it shouldn't suck up too much of your day.

We are also extremely interested in any type of feedback you may have. We've received some good and some bad and I can assure you that ALL OF IT is extremely helpful. We've already started incorporating some suggestions we've received into the show.

If you have a Facebook account, we've started a group called The Cinematic Experience. You're welcome and encouraged to join the group so you can receive future updates about our show as well as how our goal of fame and fortune is coming along.

Once the show is On Demand, I'll send out an announcement via Facebook telling everyone how to access it. The more "hits" we get through Comcast On Demand, the more likely we'll be able to buy each and every one of you a house in a decent neighborhood or at least a condo with covered parking.

Sorry if this post was too long and boring, but I've included several links that will help you access and peruse our previous accomplishments.

I hate it when people tell me to "spread the word" so I won't do that... ahem. I won't do that.

The link to our show will always be on the top left of my blog main page. Have a great weekend.

*solid = Pop Culture lingo meaning "big favor".