Late Bob Clark changed Cdn film industry
Bob Clark may not have been an actual Canadian but it would be hard to imagine a Canadian film industry without him.
The 67-year-old director, who, along with his 22-year-old son was tragically killed last week by a drunk driver near his Pacific Palisades home, was born in New Orleans but relocated to Canada in the early 1970s to take advantage of the country’s government-instituted tax incentives designed to kick-start Hollywood North.
Although the complex tax shelter point-system structure could make it difficult for filmmakers to leave a personal imprint, it proved to be an environment in which Clark thrived both commercially and artistically.
He found early success in the horror genre, most notably with 1974’s Black Christmas, which would usher in the era of the body count slasher movie.
He’d successfully break out of the thriller arena five years later with Murder by Decree starring Christopher Plummer as Sherlock Holmes and James Mason as Watson. The film would go on to win five Genie Awards including one for best achievement in direction.
Tribute, an adaptation of the Bernard Slade play of the same name, was released the following year, earning star Jack Lemmon both a Genie Award and an Oscar nomination.
Of course, much has been written about Porky’s, the raunchy teen sex comedy that would beget American Pie and still, to the chagrin of some, remains the all-time, highest-grossing Canadian movie, with a global take of $250 million.
It almost didn’t happen.
The production company, Montreal-based Astral Communications (now Astral Media), had been a major player in the tax shelter game, making thrillers like Terror Train (starring Jamie Lee Curtis) and Death Ship.
But when the racy Porky’s scared Astral’s risk-averse investors away, company founder Harold Greenberg was forced to personally pony up the $4 million budget and the powerful multimedia outfit would become known in the industry as the house that Porky’s built.
Clark would also write and direct the less-successful 1983 sequel before making the movie for which he would best be remembered–A Christmas Story.
While not an immediate hit, viewer fondness for Clark’s adaptation of humorist Jean Shepherd’s ’40s childhood memoirs had grown steadily over the years, ensuring the film’s status as a much-loved holiday perennial.
A Christmas Story would bring Clark two more Genie Awards — for best directing, in a tie with Videodrome director David Cronenberg, and for best screenplay which he’d share with Shepherd.
That film would essentially mark the end of Clark’s Canadian period. He moved on to studio work, where his subsequent output was considerably spottier, running the gamut from the Sylvester Stallone-Dolly Parton comedy, Rhinestone to the critically maligned but commercially successful Baby Geniuses.
Ironically, Clark’s early career output had been undergoing a revival on several fronts.
The week of his death saw the DVD release of a remake of his Black Christmas while the 25th anniversary of Porky’s was marked by an Entertainment Weekly cover story on influential ’80s teen sex comedies.
Shock jock Howard Stern, who bought the rights to Porky’s several years ago, is still planning to attach his name to a new version, and Clark, himself, was preparing to do a remake of his 1972 thriller, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things.
Clark’s output also merited a reference in the irreverent, animated Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters, which opened on Friday.
But it’s A Christmas Story, and the words of the adult Ralphie (narrated by Shepherd) that provide an all-too-appropriate epitaph:
“Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”
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