Bob Clark: The Mr. Skin Interview

With Porky's you fired the shot heard around the world that ushered in the popular genre of teen comedies. What inspired you to create the movie?
When I first began to realize that I would be a film director, moving out of the theater--I was a theater director and an actor--I started thinking about what would be the most original material. I started in horror films with Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, those were very successful, but I started to think, "What's in my experience and what hasn't been done?"

The truth is, our high schools in the '70s and late '60s, when I was thinking about this, were repositories for a tremendous amount of our culture--what shaped us, how we thought. Our high schools were also repositories for legends. There were stories where I went to high school that were rather remarkable. Of course a great deal of them had to do with our emergence as sexual people, sexual identities. It never had really been explored, except in the silliest way.

I started evolving Porky's as early as 1968, 1969, working on it and trying to get it done. It was a meaningful film for me. First of all, just to explore the intensity and the vitality of our sexual exploits is not to be dismissed. It's real. It's a significant culture phenomenon. But Porky's also contains the anti-Semitic and racist theme. Many other things are going on in Porky's, which fortunately some bright people did recognize.

What generated Porky's is I collected stories from around the country. There's very little untruth in Porky's; most of it happened.

Does that mean the shower scene is inspired by real events?
Oh, yeah. The shower scene took place at the Casino Pool in Fort Lauderdale a few years before I came into that high school in the early '50s. That story, or variations of that story, existed in a number of the stories I collected. That story had already been in the legend of Fort Lauderdale high, about the gym teacher and the penis through the wall.

Did you expect it to become as big and influential a hit?
I was and I wasn't. I completed the script probably by '75 and trying, as my career evolved, to get somebody to do it, and they just laughed at me. To the extent that it did, yeah, you can't anticipate that, but I had known once we made the film, and had tremendous trouble getting it released, I knew then that it would have significant impact if I could get them to release it because we had screened it a number of times.

Despite critics dismissing the movie at the time, such highly regarded writers as David Mamet, Arthur Miller, and Norman Mailer all hailed Porky's. I'm curious as to what they admired.
I talked to Arthur, I did Arthur Miller's American Clock. I did talk to Norman, we were exploring something and he admitted he liked it. David, I had heard from a number of sources, said, "People are idiots. They're not looking at what's really there." The examination of our sexual awakenings is a tremendous part of what we are. It's farce, yes, but not really. It has a satirical edge. Arthur just said, "It's life, it's the stuff of life. It's also outrageously funny."

Porky's features Kim Cattrall early in her career. How'd you hook up with her?
Kim came to me for Tribute, with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, shot in Canada. I discovered her. Odd story was they kept telling me about this Kim Cattrall, and I was certain I had seen her previous project and didn't think she was quite right, but I had her confused with another young woman whose name was similar. We were getting kind of desperate and they said, "Take one more look at her tape," and I said, "Oh, my God," we liked her and brought her to Toronto quickly to audition her, put her on tape, and get approval from Fox. Kim started with me on Tribute in 1980. I told her about Porky's and she said, "I want to do it!" And I said, "Nah, it's outrageous." She said, "I know what I'm doing." When I put my cast together I was thrilled that Kim was willing to do it.

There's also a sexy hooker in Porky's named Susan Clark (Picture: 1); is she any relation to you?
No [laughs], that was my main catch. You know Susan was a very famous actress at the time, just starting, and she had done Murder by Decree for me, with Christopher Plummer, James Mason, Donald Sutherland, Sir John Gielgud, David Hemmings, Frank Finlay, Genevi? Bujold--that outstanding cast I had as a very young director. Susan was the number-one victim of Jack the Ripper in Murder by Decree. She [joined the cast of Porky's] because we had a great relationship and she liked it, she said, "I'll do it."

Was it hard to get actors to do Porky's?
Only a few--I'm not going to mention them because it's embarrassing. But I saved a few careers because Porky's virtually ruined the careers of most of the actors, tragically and moronically. But, no, I was coming off of Murder by Decree, which was a big elitist success at the time. And Tribute, which Jack Lemmon got an Academy Award nomination for. If I was willing to do [Porky's] well... Now after that for a while, I had a very difficult time getting quality actors, but fortunately that changed rather quickly.

There must have been great pressure on you, both commercially and creatively, after the success of Porky's and making the sequel Porky's II: The Next Day.
I had one more idea I wanted to explore. I wanted to do a farce. Porky's itself is not a farce, it's satirical. It may be broad, but it's no broader than we were as humans. That's how we acted.

The major part of it is the boys got nothing out of the first one and I gave them one percent, so they got nice deals out of Porky's II. I thought there was something to explore. I'm not ashamed of it, but it didn't come out like I hoped. It was very successful.

But it's the original that you like best?
The original is purely the collected stories of that experience in American culture. It certainly has many strong defenders now who think like you think. Honestly, I think they're right. It's a good movie. Actors are very good.

As I tried to do with Black Christmas seven years earlier I was portraying teenagers or early college students as they really were, as real people, not beach blanket bikinis. Black Christmas has just gotten remade by Glen Morgan and James Wong. I'm getting a lifetime achievement award for my three early horror films.

And those movies were just as influential as Porky's.
That kind of amazed me. I was very proud of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, a silly movie that cost $60,000 to make, but Deathdream was a serious movie and got serious attention at the time. Black Christmas pretty quickly got some attention and a lot of fans.

Black Christmas is arguably the first slasher movie, even before Halloween.
It was. Bravo is doing a three-hour mini-series, the premise of which is the three most influential horror films today are Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Black Christmas. I was stunned and flattered, but they said this movie has much to do with the shape of the modern horror film.

I know you're working on a remake of your early horror classic Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things--which may be one of the greatest titles for a horror movie ever--but do you have any desire to revisit Porky's?
No, Howard Stern bought the rights to Porky's two years ago and he's apparently had trouble getting the script that he wants. I own a nice piece of Porky's, but I have no control over the property like I do with some of my other properties, so I have nothing to say about it. I just heard about it like everybody else. But I like Howard. I think he's a very interesting guy. I want to see where he goes with it, but I think it's a good time to do it and I have no objections at all.

I would not remake it. The only film I've ever made that I'm remotely interested in remaking is Children because there are so many ways to do it--Monty Python meets Night of the Living Dead. It's going to the craziest zombies in history.