Producer went from Porky’s to Platoon

NEW YORK — Arnold Kopelson, a versatile film producer whose credits ranged from the raunchy teen smash Porky’s to the Holocaust drama Triumph of the Spirit and the Oscar-winning Platoon, has died. He was 83.

Family spokesman Jeff Sanderson told the Associated Press that Kopelson died of natural causes at his home in Beverly Hills, California, on Monday. He is survived by his wife and business partner, Anne Kopelson, and three children.

On Twitter, fellow director William Friedkin mourned his passing, and Joan Collins posted a picture of herself with Kopelson and called him “a great friend, a brilliant producer and a fabulous dinner companion.”

A New York City native and graduate of New York Law School, Kopelson broke into show business as an entertainment and banking lawyer and began producing films in the late 1970s.

A notable and very profitable project was Porky’s, the lowbudget and lowbrow comedy made in Canada after Hollywood shunned it that went on to make more than $100 million US.

Kopelson would eventually aim higher. Director and screenwriter Oliver Stone had tried for years to get financing for Platoon, the Vietnam War drama based on his own time in the military. A 1984 deal with producer Dino De Laurentiis fell through and led to legal action.

Kopelson stepped in, and Stone was able to make Platoon after a tumultuous production in the Philippines in early 1986, at a time that the country’s longtime president, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was being forced out of power.

Platoon, which starred Willem Defoe and Tom Berenger, came out in December 1986 and has been cited as the first major feature film about Vietnam directed by a veteran of the war.

The film was a box office success and won four Academy Awards, including one for Kopelson for best picture.

Kopelson went on to produce other films, including the cult favourite Seven; Triumph of the Spirit, which starred Defoe as a boxer imprisoned in Auschwitz; The Fugitive, a best picture nominee in 1994; and A Perfect Murder.

In recent years, Kopelson served on the CBS board of directors and was in the news this summer when a video he shot of media mogul Sumner Redstone became part of a lawsuit involving CBS and whether 95-year-old Redstone was still able to make decisions.