Montreal: The industry is deeply shocked and saddened by the death of motion picture and television producer Nicolas Clermont. He lost his life to cancer on April 11. He was 59.

Clermont was a highly private individual, and according to colleagues closest to him, never let on about his illness or pain.

At the well-attended funeral on April 16, Clermont was remembered as a loving husband and father, for his unique contribution to independent Canadian film and television production, for his worldly sophistication, humor and modesty, and for his high standard of professional conduct.

His most recent movies were among his best and most ambitious.

In an interview with Playback almost a decade ago, Clermont said he wanted to make bigger and better motion pictures, and when he couldn’t do that, said he preferred to produce drama for the international television market.

His most recent films include the dark comedy Free Money, directed by Yves Simoneau and starring Marlon Brando, Charlie Sheen, Mira Sorvino and Donald Sutherland, and The Art of War, directed by Christian Duguay and starring Wesley Snipes and Sutherland. The Art of War ranked second during its North American opening weekend in August of last year, going on to earn more than US$30 million in theatres. The film is also the 2000 Canadian Golden Reel winner with receipts of $4.6 million.

Dan Lyon, executive VP, TVA International, worked closely with Clermont on the launch of The Art of War. ‘I think of him as the gentle juggler – films, deals and people – and always with class,’ says Lyon.

Clermont also produced This Is My Father, a Canada/Ireland coproduction starring Aidan Quinn, James Caan, Stephen Rea and John Cusack, and Monument Ave., directed by Ted Demme and starring Denis Leary, Famke Janssen, Martin Sheen, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Billy Crudup. Both films were presented at the Sundance Film Festival and at other festivals.

The haunted thriller Eye Of The Beholder, a coproduction with Great Britain, written and directed by Stephan Elliott, stars Ewan McGregor as an obsessed high-tech spy, Ashley Judd as a genuinely deadly femme fatale, Jason Priestley and Genevieve Bujold. The film had the rare distinction of opening number one at the box office on its opening week in January 2000.

Highlights in Clermont’s international TV production career include the six-hour miniseries Vendetta II, coproduced with Titanus and Mediaset of Italy; The Breakthrough, coproduced with the U.K.; and the long-running action-adventure Highlander – The Series (106 one-hours), coproduced with Gaumont Television of France. He produced the tripartite European coproductions Young Ivanhoe and A Young Connecticut Yankee, and the HDTV series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, an elaborate F/X coproduction with the U.K.

Born in Neuilly, France in 1941, Clermont began his film career in that country in the early 1960s. In 1968, he moved to Montreal where he became involved in directing and producing, and following a short stint in Los Angeles, returned to Montreal in the early 1980s, going on to cofound Filmline International.

Chose Montreal and Canada

Clermont chose to live and work in Montreal and resisted any move to the U.S.

Speaking at the recent annual APFTQ conference dinner, association chair Denise Robert said the APFTQ and the industry in Montreal had lost an unique and irreplaceable colleague, and dedicated the evening’s ceremonies to Clermont’s memory.

Clermont found time and motivation to serve on several industry committees and was voted cochairman of the APFTQ in 1994.

‘Losing him is for me losing a very close personal friend, somebody I considered to be a great human being and a great guide in how to conduct oneself in this business,’ says Michael Prupas, president of Muse Entertainment Enterprises.

‘There was a professional sheen to every movie he did, and he was able to attract talent and great actors on a regular basis. And he [did] it as a strong, independent-based Canadian producer who never wanted to be sucked up in the American vortex.’

Prupas, who at one time was Clermont’s lawyer, says Clermont showed genuine consideration for all who worked with him. ‘He always wanted to produce great feature films. His dream was to direct a movie like Amadeus.’

Recalling all the time he spent with Clermont, David Patterson, president of Mediatoon and a former partner, says he’s saddened by the finality and truth the two will never have a chance to work together again.

‘It is a chapter of my life I’ll never be able to reopen,’ says Patterson. ‘We had often talked about maybe being in business together again. We were highly compatible in that sense. Nicolas had always wanted to pursue directing and he and I looked upon the opportunity that perhaps he would do that, and I would produce.’

Clermont’s trusted and longtime colleagues at Filmline, producer Richard Lalonde, Renee Hebert and Christiane Houle, are deeply saddened by his departure.

‘There are projects in the making and we’ll see where we can take them. Nicolas wanted the company to be maintained,’ says Lalonde.

Lalonde says Clermont never discussed his personal health, and even those closest to him at the company were shocked by the suddenness of his passing. ‘As recently as January, Nicolas was playing tennis as much as four times a week.’

At the funeral, Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, who worked on many Clermont projects, among them Bethune: The Making of a Hero (the first official treaty coproduction with China), the thrillers Hollow Point and Natural Enemy, Free Money and The Art of War, delivered a moving as well as disturbing eulogy.

‘I do not know what we’ll do without him – without his wisdom and grace,’ he said. He spoke of Clermont’s principled integrity, of his humor and patience, and his love of the movie business.

Seemingly invoking both Clermont’s own passion for life and filmmaking and the ferocity of the illness that claimed him so suddenly, Sutherland read from the William Blake Songs of Experience poem The Tyger:

When the stars threw down

their spears,

And water’d heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb

make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Sutherland recently added his voice to the fight against cancer, recording a radio PSA in Toronto on behalf of the Canadian Cancer Society, Ontario Division to support its Daffodil Month awareness campaign.

Clermont is survived by his wife, Janet Lazare Clermont, two daughters, Cecile, 33, and Alexandra, 15, and a son, Yannick, 12.

Funeral services were held Monday, April 16. In lieu of flowers, the family asked that donations be made to Gilda’s Club, a cancer support community in Montreal. *