{"id":917,"date":"2007-04-04T17:54:33","date_gmt":"2007-04-04T17:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=917"},"modified":"2007-04-04T17:54:33","modified_gmt":"2007-04-04T17:54:33","slug":"bob_clark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2007\/04\/04\/bob_clark\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Clark"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bob Clark, the director of one of my favorite holiday movies<\/a>, A Christmas Story<\/i>, was killed today in a car accident, along with his 22-year-old son Ariel. Their sedan was struck by a sport utility vehicle being driven by an unlicensed idiot who sustained only minor injuries. The idiot is expected to be booked on suspicion of driving under the influence and gross vehicular manslaughter. I hope they throw away the key.<\/p>\n

The LA Times<\/i> has the details of the accident and a brief obit here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Clark’s filmography<\/a> is pretty awful, for the most part;among other cinematic atrocities, he’s responsible for Black Christmas<\/i> (the original one), Turk 182<\/i>, the Dolly Parton-Sylvester Stallone misfire Rhinestone<\/i> (which I was forced to view in my capacity as a projectionist for a small neighborhood single-screen theater — arg!), and Baby Geniuses<\/i>. He also kickstarted an entire regrettable genre — the early-80s horny-teen comedy — with his back-to-back “classics” Porky’s<\/i> and Porky’s II: The Next Day<\/i>. (I must admit to having an extremely guilty affection for some<\/i> horny-teen comedies, although to be honest, I’ve never seen either of the Porky’s<\/i> movies.) About the only thing he did that’s worth mentioning is A Christmas Story<\/i>… but surely his part in bringing that immortal charmer to the world is worth giving the guy some respect?<\/p>\n

I know this sweet, slightly off-kilter film about a 1940s-era boy who wants nothing more than a BB gun for Christmas has become a bit overexposed in recent years, and like many other classics, it seems like everyone feels obligated to say that they love it. But I really do love it… everything about it feels authentic and warm, like an old sweater that you remember your dad wearing while he chopped firewood. It’s a curious thing: I was a boy in the 1970s but I swear the world depicted in A Christmas Story<\/i> feels like the one I used to know. Either it’s because rural\/suburban Utah of the 1970s was a lot like the idealized ’40s (a possibility… see here<\/a>), or Clark and writer Jean Shepherd, who created the tale of Ralphie and his Red Ryder, managed to capture some universal and timeless flavor of the experience of childhood. Or maybe I’m still getting flashbacks from one of my past lives. Although I suspect it’s probably the universal thing.<\/p>\n

I wish I’d had the chance to thank Bob Clark for giving us one perfect movie. All those crappy ones must’ve just been practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bob Clark, the director of one of my favorite holiday movies, A Christmas Story, was killed today in a car accident, along with his 22-year-old son Ariel. Their sedan was struck by a sport utility vehicle being driven by an unlicensed idiot who sustained only minor injuries. The idiot is expected to be booked on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}