From Porky’s to Platoon

Veteran movie producer’s career spanned a wide range of projects

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 to the Oscar-winning Platoon, died Monday. He was 83.

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

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

Born Feb. 14, 1935 in New York and a 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. One of his notable and profitable projects was Porky’s, the low-budget and lowbrow 1981 comedy made in Canada. The movie went on to make more than $100 million.

But Kopelson would eventually aim higher.

Director-screenwriter Oliver Stone had tried for years to get financing for Platoon, a 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, during the time the country’s longtime president, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was being forced out of power.