‘Blockers’ Director on Making the Female Version of ‘American Pie’

At a time in Hollywood when women and people of color are increasingly making their voices heard, Kay Cannon is bringing her perspective to the new comedy “Blockers.”

“If a man is dictating a story, he’s doing it from his own personal experience. Of course he makes the girls objects of desire because that’s what he’s going for,” the director told Variety in a recent sit-down. “So when you see an ‘American Pie,’ it’s not a surprise that the female characters in that movie are objects of desire because you’re coming from the male perspective.”

In response, this film, which is about three high school girls who plan to lose their virginities on prom night as their parents try to stop them through a series of hijinks, gives the female perspective to a similar story.

“A young woman is saying ‘I’m going to lose my virginity,’ she doesn’t make the guy an object of desire so much, it’s more about her chemistry with that person or if she’s in love or she’s doing it for her own reasons,” Cannon said.

Cannon, who also wrote the three “Pitch Perfect” films, explained that despite it’s comedic and slapstick elements, the themes in “Blockers” reflect those of the recent Time’s Up and women empowerment movements.

“All of things myself, as a woman, were interested in telling story-wise are in the movie. This is stuff we’ve been feeling forever, for generations and generations and generations and kind of no one’s been listening or even allowed us to tell the story,” she said. “Ideas of consent or women having agency over their own bodies or acknowledgement of this double standard or questioning the double standard.”

Cannon added, “As a filmmaker, as a storyteller is like, ‘Oh, I want to dispel some of these myths and shake it up a little bit.'”

“Blockers,” starring Leslie Mann, John Cena, Ike Barinholtz, Ramona Young, Kathryn Newton and Geraldine Viswanathan, opens in theaters April 6.