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Bob Clark
At first glance, Porky's and A Christmas Story don't have much in common. Except a director.
Bob Clark, the versatile filmmaker who celebrated horny teens in Porky's, and chronicled wide-eyed youth in A Christmas Story, was killed early Wednesday when a suspected drunken motorist, allegedly driving in the wrong direction on California's famed Pacific Coast Highway, slammed into the director's car, Los Angeles police said.
The crash occurred at about 2:20 a.m., Officer Karen Smith said. Clark, 67, died at the scene, as did his passenger and son, Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22.
Lyne Leavy of Clark's production company, Film Classic Productions, said she didn't know where the Clarks were heading to, but said it's believed they were heading from Bob Clark's house in Pacific Palisades.
Hector Velazquez-Nava, 24, of Los Angeles, was arrested on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter, Smith said.
According to police, Velazquez-Nava was driving a 2007 GMC Yukon northbound in the southbound lanes of PCH in Pacific Palisades when the SUV collided with Clark's southbound 1997 Infiniti Q30.
The suspect and his 29-year-old female passenger were taken to a nearby hospital for minor injuries, Smith said. The woman was later released; Velazquez-Nava was still in the hospital as of Wednesday afternoon, she said.
Clark had been working on a number of projects of late, including a remake of his low-budget 1972 horror flick, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things.
There was something timeless and/or timelessly commercial about Clark's films that made them prime remake material: Howard Stern has been developing a new Porky's, while Dimension Films last year released Black Christmas, based on Clark's 1974 slasher offering of the same name. Even Christmas Story got remade in a way last holiday season via a Cingular Wireless commercial.
Clark didn't see a fancy reason behind all the Clark-inspired redos. "There's a trend to remake horror movies, and they've done pretty well," he told Variety last year.
Clark, however, did see something, if not fancy, then substantial to his sometimes critically dismissed movies. Take Porky's. Is the 1982 hit a sex comedy about high-school guys ogling naked girls through a hole in the shower? Not entirely.
"Porky's was about anti-Semitism, about racism," Clark said in Variety, "it's not just about boys with erections."
Or take A Christmas Story, a modest performer at the 1983 box office that became a holiday staple thanks to round-the-clock cable airings. Is it a trifle about a little boy who dreams of finding a Red Ryder BB gun under the tree? Not entirely.
"A Christmas Story may be sweet, but it's also a bit edgy," Clark said in Toronto's Eye Weekly last year. "One L.A. critic said, 'The boys in A Christmas Story who everyone loves so much will grow up to be the boys in Porky's.' And he's absolutely right."
Clark earned a Writer's Guild of America nomination for cowriting A Christmas Story. At the other end of the award-show spectrum, he rated two career Razzie nominations for Worst Director, the first dishonor for 1984's Rhinestone, in which he coaxed country music from the mouth of Sylvester Stallone, and the second for 2004's SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2, in which he coaxed words from the mouths of babes in the followup to his 1999 family comedy, Baby Geniuses.
Born Aug. 5, 1941, in New Orleans, Clark compiled a film-and-TV resume that included a little bit of everything: tear-jerkers (1980's Tribute with Jack Lemmon), period dramas (1993's The American Clock, based on the Arthur Miller play), Hollywood comedies (1990's Loose Cannons with Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd), sequels (1983's Porky's II: The Next Day, but not 1985's Porky's Revenge) and canine-martial-arts actioneers (2004's The Karate Dog).
Ariel Clark had minor roles in three of his father's films, per the Internet Movie Database: 1994's It Runs in the Family, 1999's I'll Remember April and Baby Geniuses.
Forty years into his filmmaking career, Bob Clark seemed to know the secret to success. Or at least the secret to Porky's' success.
"Penises are funny," Clark told Eye Weekly. "It's a truth of the world."
Source: E Online