Lady Shoots The Blue

With Blockers, Kay Cannon joins the smallest club in Hollywood: women directing R-rated movies

- Anna Menta

   KAY CANNON WAS ON VACATION in Maine when she was offered a new job: directing Blockers, an R-rated comedy about parents trying to “cock-block” their daughters. It would be her directing debut after a decade of writing scripts nonstop, including three Pitch Perfect movies and back-to-back gigs on 30 Rock, New Girl and the shortlived Netfl ix series Girlboss. Cannon had sworn to her husband and his parents that she wouldn’t work on her first family break in six years, so she read the entire script on her phone in the middle of the night.

It was as funny as some of her favorite boundary-pushing comedies. “I will never forget my first experience watching American Pie in a sold-out theater in Kansas,” says Cannon, who doesn’t like the phrase “raunchy comedy” because it undersells the genre. “Everyone was laughing so hard, and they were so happy when they left the theater. Isn’t that what you want?”

If she directed Blockers, she would be adding her name to a very short list of women who have helmed R-rated comedies: Lucia Aniello, for 2017’s Rough Night; Jamie Babbitt, for 2000’s But I’m a Cheerleader; Tamra Davis, for 1998’s Half Baked; and Amy Heckerling, for 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And Cannon did agree to the job, but with extensive caveats, particularly regarding the teenage girl characters. “They were basically interchangeable,” she says.