PRODUCER TIERNEY DIES
Champion of Quebec arts
The city has lost an original: filmmaker and Montreal Gazette columnist Kevin Tierney died early Saturday morning following a valiant three-year battle with cancer. He was 67.
His son Jacob Tierney, also a filmmaker, announced the death on social media.
“My dad, the amazing Kevin Tierney, left us this morning at 4:15,” Jacob wrote Saturday on Instagram. “My sister, mom and I were all there.”
Perhaps best known for producing and co-writing the 2006 bilingual hit Bon Cop Bad Cop, the top-grossing Canadian movie of all time, Tierney was a major cultural force on both sides of the linguistic divide in Montreal.
A passionate anglophone Quebecer, he was deeply involved in the anglophone and francophone arts communities in Quebec and Canada as a filmmaker and a writer, most recently in his Saturday Gazette column.
His best-known movies poked fun at how English- and Frenchspeaking Canadians interact. The most celebrated of those was Bon Cop Bad Cop, the story of an uptight Ontario Provincial Police officer and his fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants counterpart at the Sûreté du Québec. Despite skepticism from some quarters regarding how a bilingual movie would be received, it displaced Porky ’s to become the top-earning Canadian film in history.
Tierney’s 2011 directorial debut French Immersion, a comedy that he also co-wrote and co-produced, was about five people from the Rest of Canada taking a crash course in French in a remote Quebec community.
Remembered by friends as being sharp-tongued, opinionated and one of the wittiest raconteurs in Montreal, Tierney was quick to offer his services to many causes. He was the only anglophone to serve as head of the Cinémathèque québécoise’s board of directors. He agreed to get roasted in order to raise funds for Infinithéâtre, before his illness necessitated the event’s cancellation last week. He was honoured with the Sheila and Victor Goldbloom Distinguished Community Service Award in 2013.
Tributes to Tierney poured in from across Canada over the weekend.
“RIP Kevin Tierney,” comedian Rick Mercer wrote on Twitter Sunday. “A great Canadian and a grand movie producer.”
The Toronto International Film Festival called him “one of the greatest champions of Canadian and Québécois cinema” in a tweet. Telefilm Canada tweeted: “His films touched us all and will live on as a part of Canadian culture.”
Montreal chef David McMillan of Joe Beef renown called Tierney “a great Montrealer” in a tweet that referenced their sometimes combative written exchanges.
Tierney was born on Aug. 27, 1950. He attended South Shore Catholic High (now MacDonald Cartier) in St-Hubert and obtained university degrees in education, communications and theatre.
He went on to teach English in Chad, Algeria and China for a few years. Even after coming back to Montreal, he never lost his wanderlust, travelling widely with his wife, Terry.
In the mid-1980s, Tierney, a lifelong movie lover, began working with legendary Montreal film publicist David Novek. He became the publicist for the groundbreaking Canadian/French/Chinese co-production Bethune in 1987, and then was an executive with Rock Demers’s Les Productions La Fête. In the late 1990s, Tierney produced such acclaimed TV miniseries as P.T. Barnum, Bonanno: A Godfather’s Story and Armistead Maupin’s More Tales of the City, which received multiple Emmy nominations. He also produced a 1994 A&E documentary about Pierre Trudeau. His film production credits included Varian’s War, Serveuses demandées, Twist and The Trotsky.
Tierney died surrounded by wife Terry, children Jacob and Brigid and her partner, BK. Honouring his wishes, there will not be a funeral, but rather a “lively Irish” memorial to be announced shortly.