Director of `Christmas Story' dies in collision
Tuesday was usually family night for film director Bob Clark -- best known for "A Christmas Story" and the "Porky's" movies -- and his grown sons, Ariel and Michael.
Ariel, 22, who had been studying music composition at Santa Monica College and was a part-time card dealer at a casino, would typically join his father and brother at the condo they rented in Pacific Palisades. They were night owls, said Lyne Leavy, who headed Clark's production company, Film Classic Productions.
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Bob, 67, and Ariel headed out; it's unclear whether they were going to get something to eat or driving to Ariel's Santa Monica apartment.
They had just driven a few blocks and were heading south on Pacific Coast Highway near the Bel-Air Bay Club at about 2:20 a.m. when a GMC Yukon swerved across the lane, striking their Infiniti Q-30 sedan head-on. Father and son were pronounced dead at the scene.
The driver of the sport utility vehicle, Hector Valazquez-Nava, 24, of Los Angeles and passenger Lydia Mora, 29, of Azusa were taken to UCLA Medical Center and treated for minor injuries. Valazquez-Nava was booked on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, operating a motor vehicle without a driver's license and gross vehicular manslaughter.
About 8 a.m., a coroner showed up at Edgewater Towers to inform Michael, the older of the two sons by a few years, of the deaths of his father and brother.
Michael was asleep at the apartment, said Leo Dodier, the complex's manager, but left a short time later with the coroner.
Dodier had been up since 5:30 a.m. -- awakened, he says, by the strange quiet created by the closure of PCH. The thoroughfare would remain blocked for eight hours.
"He was a nice guy, good to everybody, a quiet guy," Dodier said of Bob Clark. The producer-director had lived at the Edgewater complex since he relocated to Pacific Palisades from New England after his divorce. Starting out in a one-bedroom unit, he moved into a two-bedroom, second-floor condominium a few years later to make room for his sons, Dodier said. He had rented the larger unit for more than a decade.
"He was a gentleman, one of the nicest people I knew," said his New York business manager, Stuart Ditsky. "He always kept his word. He would never hurt anybody or put in anything in his movies to embarrass anyone."
