Boogaloo-ing to the Cannon Groove, Part 2: Getting Inside the Go-Go Boys

September 1, 2021 | By

It took about 5 and a half years, but Hilla Medalia’s documentary The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films (2014) finally makes it to North America via MVD, providing a different perspective on the tough indie that rose meteorically from distributor-producer to owners of cinema chains and an increasingly substantive film & music catalogue before the dream to rival established Hollywood studios collapsed.

 

Cannon’s Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus

 

Because Cannon’s hands-on producers Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus do most of the talking, Medalia’s film has a kinder, gentler tone than Mark Hartley’s rival doc, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014). It also lacks the simmering tension of Eric Friedler’s Lemon Popsicle: Of Winners and Losers / Eskimo Limon – Eis am Stiel: Von Siegern und Verlierern (2018), a finely crafted examination of how Golan and Globus’ hit teen comedy Lemon Popsicle (1978) bankrolled their migration to Hollywood while its young stars struggled with unique circumstances in its wake.

The contrast between the three views of Cannon and its bigwigs is striking, but they share the emotional curve in which hunger for success and the bullheadedness of Golan and Globus broke new ground and upset the established Hollywood production and marketing order. It’s also a tale of the one indie production entity that came closest to unnerving the major studios through energy, speed, audacity, and luck; Cannon could’ve become a mini-major, but the drive and behaviour that fueled its success remained unchanged, and out of control.

You could craft a mini-series about its flame-out, but reality, as told by its participants, is much more vibrant, hysterical, and vicious.

Thanks for reading,

 

 

Mark R. Hasan, Editor
KQEK.com

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Category: EDITOR'S BLOG

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