Bob Clark

Infobox Celebrity
name=Bob Clark
birth_date= birth date|1939|8|5|mf=yReuters reported on the day of his death, "Clark was 67, according to police, although some reference sites list him as 65."]
death_date = death date and age|2007|4|4|1939|8|5|
birth_place= New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
death_place = Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
occupation = Film director, film producer, screenwriter
website =
footnotes =

Benjamin "Bob" Clark (August 5 1939 – April 4 2007) was an American actor, director, screenwriter and producer best known for directing and writing the script with Jean Shepherd to the 1983 holiday film "A Christmas Story". His earliest success was the 1982 hit film "Porky's" and he also wrote and directed its sequel "".

Biography

Early life

Clark was born in New Orleans, but grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He grew up poor, as his father died during his childhood and his mother was a barmaid.cite news|last=Canuxploitation.com|first=|coauthors=|title=Interview: Bob Clark|pages=|publisher=Canuxploitation|date=2005-07-29|url=http://www.canuxploitation.com/interview/clark.html|accessdate=2007-04-06] After attending Catawba College majoring in philosophy, Clark won a football scholarship to Hillsdale College in Michigan,cite news
url=http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/feature/196
title=Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things: Bob Clark
author=Elaine Lamkin
publisher=Bloody-Disgusting.com
month=January | year=2006
accessdate=2007-04-04] where he played quarterback. Eventually he studied theater at the University of Miami, turning down offers to play professional football.cite web
url=http://www.filmreferencelibrary.ca/index.asp?layid=46&csid1=3517&navid=46
title=Bob Clark
publisher=Canadian Film Encyclopedia
accessdate=2007-04-04] He did briefly play semi-pro for the Fort Lauderdale Black Knights.

Career

Though best known for his involvement with these familiar titles, Clark's career actually began squarely in the horror genre, in the early 1970s. His first film of this ilk, "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" (1972), was a blend of comedy and graphic horror.

Clark and his collaborator for this film, screenwriter and makeup artist Alan Ormsby, would revisit the zombie subgenre in 1972's "Deathdream", also known by its alternate title, "Dead of Night", a Vietnam War allegory that takes its cue from the classic short story "The Monkey's Paw". The slasher film "Black Christmas" (1974) was one of his most successful films in this period, and is remembered today as an influential to the modern slasher film genre. Clark had moved to Canada, then a tax haven for Americans, and these productions were small by Hollywood standards but made Clark a big fish in the small pond of the Canadian film industry of that era.

Clark executive-produced the moonshine movie "Moonrunners", which was used as source material for the TV series "The Dukes of Hazzard". Clark later produced the 2000 TV movie "The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood". Clark and others sued Warner Bros. over the studio's 2005 movie "The Dukes of Hazzard", winning a $17.5 million settlement just prior to the movie's release. [cite news
url=http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05196/538576.stm
title=How a lingering legal issue threatened 'Dukes of Hazzard'
author=John Lippman
publisher=The Wall Street Journal
date=2005-07-15
accessdate=2007-04-04]

Turning toward more serious fare, Clark scored a critical success with the Sherlock Holmes film "Murder by Decree", starring Christopher Plummer and Geneviève Bujold, which won five Genie Awards including Best Achievement in Direction and Best Performance for both leads. He followed this with a TV movie of the Bernard Slade play "Tribute", starring Jack Lemmon reprising his Broadway role, for which Lemmon was nominated for an Academy Award and 11 Genies including a win for Lemmon's performance.

Clark returned to his B-movie roots, though, co-writing, producing, and directing "Porky's", a longtime personal project. Clark had a detailed outline based on his own youth in Florida, which he dictated into a cassette recorder due to illness, and collaborator Roger Swaybill said of listening to the tapes, "I became convinced that I was sharing in the birth of a major moment in movie history. It was the funniest film story I had ever heard." Though set in the United States, the film would go on to gross more than any other English-language Canadian film. The film was the third most successful release of 1982 and by the end of the film's lengthy initial release, in 1983, "Porky's" had secured itself a spot, albeit short-lived, as one of the top-25 highest grossing films of all time in the US. The film was (also briefly) the most successful comedy in film history. "Porky's" overwhelming success is credited as launching the genre of the teen sex comedy [http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117801630.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&query=Porky%27s 1] so prevalent throughout the 1980s and which continued into the millennium in such movies as the "American Pie" franchise. Clark wrote, produced, and directed the film's first sequel, "" (1983), which shifted the focus away from the title character to two new antagonists with perhaps greater relevance, a sleazy local politician who cynically caters to the influence of a blustering fundamentalist preacher while seducing a teenage girl. Clark refused involvement with a third film, "Porky's Revenge," which brought Porky and the sexual exploits of the cast back front and center as in the first installment.

He instead collaborated with Shepherd on "A Christmas Story", which Leonard Maltin has described as "one of those rare movies you can say is perfect in every way". Not the box-office smash of its predecessor, "A Christmas Story" has gone on to eclipse its initial success as a holiday favorite through repeated TV airings and home video. A joint effort at a sequel in 1994, "My Summer Story", did not fare as well; Maltin said that the studio waited too long, and Clark was forced to recast almost the entire film. Three other film versions of the Parker family had been produced for television by PBS with Shepherd's involvement during the late 1980s, also with a different cast, but without Clark's participation.

Clark continued to stay active in the film industry until his death, with lower-budget fare mixed in with brief runs at higher targets. A Hollywood Reporter critic, speaking after his death, described his career as "a very unusual mix of films", because he "at times was a director-for-hire and would do films that, to say the least, aren't stellar".cite news
url=http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_5596602
title=Film director Clark and son die in crash
author=Greg Hernandez
date=April 5 2007
accessdate=2007-04-05 Typographical error fixed.] Some of his last output included "Baby Geniuses" and "".

Clark was nominated twice for the Razzie Awards as "Worst Director", for "Rhinestone" and "". At the end of his life, he was working with Howard Stern on a remake of "Porky's", and three of his early horror films were slated for expensive remakes: "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", "Deathdream", and "Black Christmas". [cite news
url=http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117954908.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
title='Porky's' helmer is back: Clark prepping re-makes of his early horror films, teen sex romp
author=Brendan Kelly
publisher=Variety
date=December 3 2006
accessdate=2007-04-04]

Clark was divorced, and had one other son, Michael.

Death

Clark and his son, Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22, were killed in a head-on automobile collision on the Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles on the morning of April 4, 2007. [cite news
title=Director of "A Christmas Story" and son killed in PCH crash
publisher=Los Angeles Times
url=http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-crash5apr05,0,6240856.story?coll=la-home-headlines
accessdate=2007-04-04] The crash occurred when an SUV crossed the median and struck Clark's Infiniti I30, causing the closure of the highway for eight hours.cite news
url=http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-crash5apr05,1,5015195.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=2&cset=true
title='A Christmas Story' director dies in crash
author=Valerie Reitman and Andrew Blankstein
date=April 4 2007
accessdate=2007-04-04] Police determined that the SUV's driver, Hector Velazquez-Nava, had a blood alcohol level of three times the legal limit and was driving without a license. [cite news | url= http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=257271&GT1=7701 | title= 'Christmas Story' Director Dies in Crash | work= MSN Movie News |date=2007-04-04 | author= Associated Press ] He initially pleaded not guilty to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, [ [http://www.martyangelo.com/bob_clark.htm archived copy of LA Times Article: Driver accused of DUI in crash that killed director pleads not guilty] by Valerie Reitman and Andrew Blankstein, Times Staff Writers 3:19 PM PDT, April 6, 2007. Accessed May 11,2007] but changed his plea to no contest in August. On October 12 2007, Velasquez-Nava was sentenced to six years in prison under the terms of a plea agreement. [cite news
title = Driver sentenced in crash that killed 'Christmas Story' director
author = Tami Abdollah
work = Los Angeles Times
url = http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-director13oct13,0,6067302.story?coll=la-home-center
accessdate = 2007-10-12] In addition, he may face deportation to his native Mexico, as he entered and was living in the United States illegally. [cite news | url= http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Director_Killed.html | title= Man pleads not guilty in filmmaker crash | work= Seattle Post-Intelligencer |date=2007-04-06 | author= Associated Press ] A biographical documentary, [http://www.clarkworldfilms.com ClarkWorld] is being made on Clark's life and death.

Filmography

References

External links

* [http://www.filmreferencelibrary.ca/index.asp?layid=46&csid1=3517&navid=87 Canadian Film Encyclopedia] [A publication of The Film Reference Library/a division of the Toronto International Film Festival Group]
*imdb name|id=0163706|name=Bob Clark.
* [http://www.nndb.com/people/103/000130710/ Bob Clark at Notable Names Database] .