Bob Clark, 67

Yesterday, film director Bob Clark tragically passed away, and it's all to easy to look back at one of his films, Porky's (1982), as an example of what went wrong with the Canadian film industry. To this this date, Porky's still has the record for highest grossing Canadian film of all time, despite it being written and directed by an American director, financed through a Canadian production company (By Harold Greenberg no less) and shot entirely in Florida.

Porky's has and always will be a hot button subject when dealing with the state of Canadian cinema, because it is so easy to see what is clearly wrong with its equation - abuse of tax shelters, misogynistic content - yet financially, Porky's, love it or hate it, it is still our most successful film 25 years later. The producers of Bon Cop, Bad Cop may try to persuade the Canadian public otherwise, but it simply isn't true. Bon Cop, Bad Cop had an $8,000,000 CDN budget and made an estimated $11,100,000 world wide gross. Porky's spawned two sequels and a video game.

In the United States alone Porky's had a box office take of $105,500,000 and $55,560,00O in VHS rentals. This was on a $4,000,000 CDN budget in 1982 dollars.

Say what you will about Bob Clark, he knew what the kids wanted.

We should also mention that Bob Clark also made a little cult horror film (filmed entirely in Canada) called Black Christmas (1974). It's a much worthier Canadian film to remember him by.