Stephen J. Cannell Puts Up with Imus To Promote His New Book "The Pallbearers"

Stephen J. Cannell is a New York Times bestselling author with 15 novels to his name. He’s also produced a number of highly successful television programs, like The Rockford Files, The A-Team, and 21 Jump Street. It was thus necessary for Imus to cut Cannell down to size this morning, when all Cannell wanted to do was talk about his new book The Pallbearers.

First things first: A caucus consisting of Imus and Charles decided Cannell looked too thin. “I weight 195 on the dot, I’m 6-2,” said Cannell, who sort of looks like a really polished lumberjack. “What do you think I should weigh?”

Unsure how to answer this question, Imus noted the idiocy of his own observation, and asked Cannell about the forthcoming The A-Team movie. With big names like Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, and Cannell’s co-producer Ridley Scott attached to the picture, it’s sure to be a hit.

“We’re going to come out June 11 and take the landscape,” Cannell said. Sadly, the Mr. T character will not be played by the original Mr. T, a fact Imus obviously seized on.

“He wants to kill you! What are you, nuts?” Imus responded to Cannell’s claims that Mr. T understood why he was not included in the film. “You’re doing a summer movie that’s going to make $200 million and he’s not in it? Oh yeah, he’s thrilled to death.”

Segueing into less hostile territory, Cannell said he began writing novels after he sold his television studio due to a change in FCC syndication regulations that he called “a recipe to go broke.”

“I wrote the first novel, it was a bestseller,” he said. “So here I am.”

Cannell discovered later in life that he was dyslexic, a learning disability that manifests itself differently in each person. Cannell often confused words and numbers, and had trouble remembering sequences; for instance, if someone told him to go upstairs, pack a bag, get a book, etc., he would immediately forget the instructions after the first step.

“So, like, go in the tanning booth…” Imus joked, referencing Cannell’s deeply-bronzed complexion.

“The Pallbearers” is the ninth book in Cannell’s Shane Scully series. In this tale, Scully, a homicide detective in the LAPD, is called to be a pallbearer at the funeral of a man who acted as father figure to him growing up. Initially ruled a suicide, Scully and his fellow pallbearers, orphans all of them, investigate the incident and discover the truth runs deeper than any of them could have imagined.

“Good luck with the A-Team, good luck with The Pallbearer,” said Imus. “And I’m sorry we made fun of everything about you.”

-Julie Kanfer