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Purveyor, Fine Asian Porn
Industry Role:
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Posts: 38,323
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Quote:
Originally Posted by *******
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David's love of Asian women and Asian culture, I think were among the many reasons his work stood far above and apart from most other directors in the Asian niche.
Here is a very nice obituary about David Aaron Clark, penned by one who knew him well, adult industry reporter Gram Ponante:
Quote:
David Aaron Clark, who died this weekend at 49, was a full-time fringe thinker who dabbled in porn directing.
Clark passed away on Saturday afternoon from a pulmonary embolism. He had checked into L.A.’s Good Samaritan Hospital the day before. At his side were two great and longtime friends, Evil Angel general manager Christian Mann and performer Aiden Starr. Starr, like Clark a New Jersey native, was as often Clark’s chauffeur and costume mistress on his movies.
Clark’s bald head, stoutness, preference for black attire, and stentorian delivery were often trumped by his whimsy and glee, which would show up whether he was (brilliantly) pointing out someone else’s foibles on an adult messageboard or giddily anticipating the next Wong Kar Wai film or Sci Fi Channel show.
While he’d directed porn since 1998 (and had won an AVN Best Screenplay award for Wicked’s “Euphoria” and was up for another one for this year’s “Pure”), “DAC” had always been a writer, starting out in his native Bergen County at local papers and then, in their early heyday, at adult publications Genesis and Screw, where he said of publisher Al Goldstein, “He just about made reprehensible charming.”
He also performed live BDSM scenes at clubs like Mother in New York in the mid-1990s, where one of his shows involved getting a pentagram carved on his skin by a dominatrix. He then moved to San Francisco, where he worked for years on that city’s late, lamented Spectator alternative newspaper.
While DAC missed the Golden Age of porn as an active participant in its creation, he was an intellectual force in porn’s Internet dissemination, helping to make porn a nutritious part of a delicious cultural buffet. In this endeavor he was often lonely but never alone, and made friends of kinky thinkers around the world as well as plenty of enemies here at home, with whom he’d often spar online.
He remains one of the few pornographers who were able to make the transition from writing to directing without giving up on either. This might have something to do with his early days in print publications.
Clark had early success with porn screenplays and helped make the Asian niche popular with titles like “Asia Noir,” “Asian Mouth Club,” and “Tales from the Oriental Luv Motel!”. Each was dark and thoughtful and utterly unlike any other Asian porn, often projecting onto the stars Clark’s own philosophies or otherwise introducing scenes with Buddhist quotes. It was very personal pornography and Clark grew a small but loyal fanbase who would follow him from studio to studio.
It is relevant to note that Clark was not rich, well-off, or even comfortable until fairly recently, and it is one of the reasons that his death is so devastating that it seemed like he was finding a groove again. A big man, he had lost weight and was taking better care of his nutrition and diabetes. A bequest from his mother, who died last year, had helped him pay some bills and allowed him to splurge on laser vision correction. He had a stable job authoring DVDs at Evil Angel for the past several months and, as he hadn’t had steady work for years before, it seemed to all his friends that things were looking up.
And then there was “Pure,” which will be Clark’s final film. A porn adaptation of “In the Realm of the Senses,” “Pure” was the quintessence of DAC’s love of all things Asian, combining porn and horror. Rather than chasing directing gigs for months on end, Clark told me earlier this year, he could take the time with “Pure” that he wanted and not have to depend on his director’s fee for his rent. “Pure” recently earned several AVN nominations, including Best Director.
Clark is survived by his stepfather, of whom he was fond, and several close friends in the adult industry as well as followers of his writing from his New York and San Francisco days, not to mention the megabytes of text floating round in the comments sections of other people’s websites, which he left with gusto and no regard for wordcount.
Fans of Clark’s directing would notice many of the same names above and below the line, as DAC enjoyed working with the same crew as much as possible.
Clark was often a guest at my home and a frequent visitor to my office, which is right around the corner from where he used to live. I still have his copy of the “Millennium” box set (tellingly, DAC’s last e-mail to me, sent a few days before he died, were his regrets that he couldn’t come to a party. was the entirety of the subject line).
I don’t like this recent trend of people I admire dying when things seem to be looking up, but I bet DAC would relish the chance to come back as a vengeful Japanese ghost.
There is no word yet from Clark’s inner circle about a memorial service, but DAC gained admirers on both coasts, so stay tuned.
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RIP DAC...
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