Cameron Watson Heads Back Home for "Our Very Own"

You Will Believe a Dog Can Ride Atop a Car

With "Our Very Own," Cameron Watson will make you believe two things: that it's actually possible to go back home again and that a dog can ride atop a moving automobile.

"Back in the 70's when I was growing up, there was a dog just like that who rode around on top of a car and nobody thought it was weird," Watson said via telephone from Los Angeles. "You really didn't even look twice."

Set in Watson's hometown of Shelbyville, Tennessee, the film focuses on five friends who want to experience life outside the confines of their small town. Some nights, they even borrow a car to drive to Nashville just to have something to do.

When they hear a rumor that Sondra Locke, the hometown girl who made it big in Hollywood, plans to return to Shelbyville to promote her new film "Every Which Way But Loose," the teens think that she might offer them a way out of Shelbyville.

"Sondra Locke actually is from Shelbyville and that all is true. She was a young girl from Shelbyville that kind of got discovered out of nowhere. She did 'The Heart is a lonely Hunter' back in the 1960's and got an Oscar nomination," Watson said. "She was such a myth at the time and such a legend. By the time I was a young kid, she was doing all the Clint Eastwood stuff."

Watson, a professional actor who makes his writing and directorial debut with "Our Very Own," also said that the kids in the story are all based on a conglomeration of kids that he grew up with who became professionals in the entertainment industry. "We did plays in high school and we had a community theater," he said.

When he told stories about the dog riding on the car and the waitress who talked with her tongue sticking out of her mouth, both of which are featured in the film, friends encouraged Watson to write these stories down. Later on, when he decided to turn his script into a movie, Watson said that the man who provided financing for the film came from Tennessee as well.

"He ended up being another fellow from Shelbyville who actually was an old family friend of my family," he said. "Who would have ever known that we would find the money back in that town? "