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Interviews
Over the past several years, Canuxploitation has had the opportunity to talk to several of the writers, directors and producers who helped shape the sometimes sordid history of Canadian B-film.
Bob Clark
With a career that stretches across 40 years and almost every genre of filmmaking, Bob Clark has become one of Canada's most artistically and commercially successful directors—despite being an American. Since his arrival north of the border in the early 1970s, Clark has changed the face of horror filmmaking with groundbreaking cult efforts like Deathdream and Black Christmas made his mark with Porky's--still the highest-grossing Canadian film of all time and unwrapped the universally loved A Christmas Story, one of a select handful of bona fide holiday classics.
J.A. Gaudet
Joseph Aldic Gaudet's career in Canadian film and media production has encompassed everything from industrial video production to script doctoring to lecturer. His break as a director came from infamous Emmeritus producer Lionel Shenken, who specialized in staggeringly low budget, shot-on-video movies that would air on Southern Ontario's CHCH-TV before hitting the international video circuit. Brought on to supplement Emmeritus' string of non-union directors, Joe debuted with Deadly Pursuit, a Vietnam revenge movie, and later directed his own script for the international political thriller The Hijacking of Studio 4.
Peter Jobin
Peter Jobin has been active in Canadian film for more than thirty years, but he will always be best known to Canuxploitaion fans for penning the classic 1980s Canadian horror Happy Birthday to Me with his writing partner, Timothy Bond. Despite a slightly troubled production history which saw the pair's original ending nixed, Happy Birthday to Me has gained a reputation as one of the best Canadian slashers, a film whose influence on the genre is still felt to this day.
George Mihalka
Not only has George Mihalka dabbled in almost every genre in his 30-year career, but he also worked on both sides of Canada’s great language divide, earning acclaim for both his English and French-language productions. A no-nonsense director who always brings a high degree of craft to his work, the Budapest-born,
Montreal-based Mihalka got his big break during the
tax shelter era with the hit teen sex romp Pinball Summer and fondly remembered slasher horror tale My Bloody Valentine, which was picked up by Paramount and is often cited as one of the best horror films of the 1980s. The Vice President of the Directors Guild of Canada, Mihalka continues to direct today, concentrating mainly on television and direct-to-video
films.
John Paizs
John Paizs really did mean to bee good. With his brilliantly hilarious comedy Crime Wave, the maverick director managed to establish himself as one of the country's most unique voices in an industry where " entertainment" is often considered a dirty word. Through his short films, his work on seminal Canadian TV series Kids in the Hall and his gloriously goofy sci-fi romp Top of the Food Chain, John's subtle humour and striking visuals have made an indelible mark on Canadian comedy.