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Bob Clark
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Bob Clark
Benjamin Robert Clark (August 5, 1939 – April 4, 2007) was an American film director and screenwriter. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was responsible for some of the most successful films in Canadian film history such as Black Christmas (1974), Murder by Decree (1979), Tribute (1980), Porky's (1981) and A Christmas Story (1983). He won a trio of Genie Awards (two Best Direction and a lone Best Screenplay) with two additional nominations.
Clark was born in New Orleans in 1939, but grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and later moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He grew up poor. His father died during his childhood and his mother was a barmaid.
After attending Catawba College majoring in philosophy, Clark won a football scholarship to Hillsdale College in Michigan, where he played quarterback. Eventually he studied theater at the University of Miami, turning down offers to play professional football. He did briefly play semi-pro for the Fort Lauderdale Black Knights.
Clark's career began with She-Man: A Story of Fixation (1967), which was released with the exploitation documentary Queens at Heart. Clark then transitioned into the horror genre in the early 1970s. His first film, 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 alternative 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 precursor to the modern slasher film genre. Clark had moved to Canada, then a tax haven for Americans, and these Canuxploitation 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.
Turning toward more serious fare, Clark scored a critical success with the Sherlock Holmes film Murder by Decree, starring Christopher Plummer and James Mason, which won five Genie Awards including Best Achievement in Direction and Best Performance for both leads. He followed this with a 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."
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Bob Clark
Benjamin Robert Clark (August 5, 1939 – April 4, 2007) was an American film director and screenwriter. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was responsible for some of the most successful films in Canadian film history such as Black Christmas (1974), Murder by Decree (1979), Tribute (1980), Porky's (1981) and A Christmas Story (1983). He won a trio of Genie Awards (two Best Direction and a lone Best Screenplay) with two additional nominations.
Clark was born in New Orleans in 1939, but grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and later moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He grew up poor. His father died during his childhood and his mother was a barmaid.
After attending Catawba College majoring in philosophy, Clark won a football scholarship to Hillsdale College in Michigan, where he played quarterback. Eventually he studied theater at the University of Miami, turning down offers to play professional football. He did briefly play semi-pro for the Fort Lauderdale Black Knights.
Clark's career began with She-Man: A Story of Fixation (1967), which was released with the exploitation documentary Queens at Heart. Clark then transitioned into the horror genre in the early 1970s. His first film, 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 alternative 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 precursor to the modern slasher film genre. Clark had moved to Canada, then a tax haven for Americans, and these Canuxploitation 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.
Turning toward more serious fare, Clark scored a critical success with the Sherlock Holmes film Murder by Decree, starring Christopher Plummer and James Mason, which won five Genie Awards including Best Achievement in Direction and Best Performance for both leads. He followed this with a 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."