You’re Not Dead Until You’re Forgotten: A Memoir by John Dunning (review)

Cinépix Inc., helmed by John Dunning and André Link, was the production company behind several canonical Canadian films such as Valérie (1969), Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977), Meatballs (1979), and My Bloody Valentine (1981). Yet despite being one of the most prolific Canadian film companies of all time, with nationwide distribution and exhibition holdings, relatively little research has been undertaken on the film company. One of the only articles dedicated specifically to Cinépix is Paul Corupe’s (from Canuxploitation.com) article “Sin and Sovereignty: The Curious Rise of Cinépix Inc.,” but even that piece dismisses the company’s post-1980 productions, neglecting almost twenty years of Cinépix’s history. As a consequence, much of Cinépix’s exhaustive company record remains forgotten within the Canadian film discourse.

John Dunning’s memoir, co-written with author and Montreal Gazette columnist Bill Brownstein, provides much needed insight into the inner workings of Cinépix. However, the memoir raises as many questions about Cinépix as it answers, demonstrating a need for more research into the company. The memoir unfolds chronologically, tracking Dunning’s early life, how he was essentially raised in his father’s movie theatre in Montreal, concluding just before Lionsgate purchased Cinépix in 1998. Scattered throughout the book are black-and-white photographs, with personal family photos intermingled with signed photos of a young Patrick Dempsey in costume for Meatballs III (1986) and David Cronenberg, Ivan Reitman, Diane Boucher, and Don Carmody on set of Shivers (103), among others. These photographs, many of which have never been seen before, contribute to the reader’s sense of the depth and wealth of Cinépix’s history and contributions to the Canadian film industry. As a memoir, there is no methodology or theoretical framework, so readers looking for an organized analysis may be left disappointed. Instead, Dunning colloquially muses through periods of his life in a relatively unstructured manner, often spending only a page or two reflecting on a film, and wandering off on slight, but entertaining, tangents about how he never wanted to direct (127), or his early encounters with the Montreal mafia who wanted to gain a monopoly on the local Italian film market (33), among other asides.

Often, Dunning’s writing merges into gossip as he reflects on some of the strange and bizarre undertakings that he and Link found themselves in. For example, during filming of State Park (1988), Dunning states that when the writer was asked to change her script, she would make “script decisions with the I Ching! This was truly one of the craziest shoots I had ever been part of” (135), and when filming Blackout (1977), star Ray Milland of Dial M for Murder (1954) fame, would hide alcohol all over set and the crew “had to have a guy on set run around trying to unearth Milland’s bottle stash and slow him down” (109). Additionally, the book presents great insights, not only in the way that Cinépix functioned, but also into the production processes of their (often overlooked) films. One fascinating sliver of history is the production of 1985’s Junior (also released as Hot Water and A Cut Above), a forgotten exploitation film that was conceived by Dunning, Link, and Don Carmody upon realizing that the marina set for their film Meatballs III would be destroyed by the city after production wrapped. Thus, in order to gain the maximum benefit from their original investment, the trio quickly concocted a script and rushed a hectic ten-day shooting schedule on the Meatballs III set (that they had just finished production on), burning the marina in Junior’s gruesome finale. These notes, though colloquial, scattered, and often short, add an amusing flair, making the book an easy and entertaining, although not intellectually rigorous, read.

The memoir itself, at only 157 pages, is rather short. The last forty pages are filled with testimonials...