“It was very dignified,” an attendee at director David Aaron Clark’s memorial said of the event. “Not porny at all.”
Clark was posthumously feted by dozens of friends and colleagues at the New Beverly Theatre, a funky, friendly and free-form revival cinema in Hollywood that Clark frequented for midnight movies and grindhouse marathons. It was an appropriate venue for a Clark tribute.
Lobby cards with Clark’s image festooned the theatre as a video montage played – much of it featuring the departed with hair – and friends took the dais to reminisce.
Representatives from all aspects of Clark’s life in the Southern California end of the adult industry were there, including many past and preset employees of Evil Angel and Metro, two studios where Clark found all of his recent employment.
Christian Mann, Clark’s boss at both Metro and Evil Angel, described his relationship to Clark as “not so much a boss, but a chauffeur.”
An attendee described the event, which drew 60 people, as “not a porn shmooze-a-thon. It was nice, beyond anything. People were there to pay their respects to Dave.”
I’m sure Clark would have loved the service. It could have gone two ways, either elegant, convivial, and subdued or utterly depraved and without artistic merit. He would have enjoyed either, but it’s probably best the event wasn’t porny.
I am traveling for the holidays and couldn’t attend, but I remembered the last time I was with Clark at the New Beverly. We watched Sharon Mitchell in an ancient movie called “The Violation of Claudia.” I told him I liked the ending and he said, “That was the seventies. You expected better.”
While I’m sure Clark, whose body has been cremated, would have found a certain thrill in having his ashes scattered on a willing Asian starlet’s face, his sendoff Sunday reflected his high expectations.
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Into the realm with David Aaron Clark
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